Pop culture
The Wicker Movie, Trad Wives & Why Romance Novels Are Booming
August 4, 2026
This episode is for you if you watched the Wicker trailer and haven’t stopped thinking about it. Or if you’ve ever wondered why romance (and especially smutty romance) is booming at the exact same time trad wife content is everywhere.
Becky and Taina are back from their summer Everything Is Political series with their regular weekly episode, kicking things off with the internet-breaking trailer for Wicker, the upcoming movie starring Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård, and Peter Dinklage about a woman who marries a man made of wicker. Taina breaks down why the village gets so threatened by a husband who’s completely devoted to his wife, and what that metal marriage collar is really saying.
What starts as trailer reactions turns into a bigger conversation about the booming romance and “smutty romance” book industry, the contradictions underneath the trad wife movement, and why entertainment is never just entertainment. They wrap with media literacy, privilege, and who gets conditioned to be curious versus who doesn’t, plus why “why” and “what if” might be the two most important questions we can ask.
“Why and what if are like my two favorite questions. Like why is something the way that it is and what if it were different?”
— Taina Brown
Prefer to listen?
🎧 Listen on SpotifyIn This Episode, We Get Into:
- Our first reactions to the Wicker trailer, and why Bookstagram and BookTok are going feral for it
- Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård, Peter Dinklage, and the best Wicker jokes on Threads
- “It’s all men until it’s not all men”: why so many women are turning to romance in the first place
- The village’s jealousy, the metal marriage collar, and a middle-aged fisherwoman who gets to keep her independence
- Trad wife influencers, rising conservatism, and the contradiction of selling submission while working full time
- Why the romance genre is growing so fast right now, and what happy endings offer in uncertain times
- Wicker as a modern fairy tale, and the parallels to Beauty and the Beast
- Entertainment as propaganda: why military movies need the military’s sign-off
- Media literacy for everything we consume, from movies to books to social media posts
- Privilege, curiosity, and who gets conditioned not to ask “why” and “what if”
Timestamps
- 00:00 – Welcome back after the summer Everything Is Political series
- 00:28 – Introducing today’s topic: the Wicker trailer
- 01:33 – First reactions to the trailer and the Bookstagram/BookTok buzz
- 04:11 – Breaking down the premise (and the jokes about it)
- 09:52 – “It’s all men until it’s not all men”: men continuing to fall short
- 10:08 – The wicker husband, village jealousy, and the metal-collar marriage symbolism
- 12:17 – Why this topic: free publicity and the bigger conversation about romance and smut
- 15:39 – Trad wife influencers, rising conservatism, and the contradiction underneath it
- 16:54 – An aside on the novel Yesteryear
- 20:16 – Romance publishing stats: 52% revenue growth, $1.44B a year
- 22:59 – Wicker as a modern fairy tale, and parallels to Beauty and the Beast
- 24:26 – Entertainment as propaganda: military movies and Hollywood contracts
- 26:14 – Media literacy: why it matters for everything we consume, not just news
- 31:21 – Privilege, curiosity, and who gets conditioned not to question things
- 34:07 – Curiosity as joy, and how a liberal arts education changed things for Becky
- 36:22 – The power of “why” and “what if”
- 43:00 – Wrap-up, and plans to revisit after we’ve both seen the movie in October
Resources Mentioned
Question for you: What’s the book, show, or movie you’ve been escaping into lately? If you looked at it through a critical lens, what might it say about what you (and the rest of us) are craving right now?
📚 The Collective Care Reading List 📚
A curated TBR to define your community, take back your power & grow your liberation journey.