When I was a kid, my mom told me it was rude for children to order for themselves at restaurants. Addressing the waiter was a privilege reserved for the adults at the table, and she’d give me a stern side eye if I so much as asked a waiter for extra ice. This is the same logic that Courtney Palmer, 37, applies to how women should act when dining with their husbands.
In a now-viral video posted on June 21 with 5.7 million views, Courtney details the typical way that dinner dates with her husband operate. She highlights a range of practices, from allowing him to open doors for her (acceptable chivalry!) to not acknowledging the restaurant host or waiter (a tad bit rude?). Her justification for this passivity is that it’s all a part of the “princess treatment.” By definition, “princess treatment” is exactly what it sounds like: allowing your partner to shower you with affection and care while they also don’t allow you to lift a finger. “He made the reservation, he’s taking you out—let him do the logistics. You’re just being a princess,” she says. “You’re not being hoity-toity; you’re just letting him take care of it.”
In the very spirited comment section, she made sure to clarify that she doesn’t actually fully ignore waiters. “Of course, I say thank you and smile to whoever is serving us, etc. I’m not mute the entire evening out. I’m talking about two very small interactions the whole night.” So there’s that.
Essentially, Courtney just appreciates acts of service to the highest degree. But what’s made her take a controversial one is how her dining-out advice literally asks for women to remain silent. By “letting your husband lead and be masculine,” as Courtney suggests, women who subscribe to this rhetoric are releasing just a bit of their power. And while first it’s just relinquishing the right to order your own meal, what’s next!?
Respondents to Courtney’s video have said their piece on TikTok and beyond. “In a healthy and secure relationship, no one is anticipating every single one of your needs without you…communicating that to them,” says dating coach Sabrina Zohar in her own video. “Psychologically, it keeps you stuck in arrested development, where you continue to act like a child with your partner. You’re not growing, you’re just outsourcing responsibility.”
Some commenters even expressed concern for the well-being of Courtney and the wives who live by similar codes. “[The dependency] never just ends in a restaurant—it’s their whole entire lives,” says the creator, Zulf. “It sounds like like they’re stuck in 1970, and that’s exactly where her husband wants her to be so that if things go left, she’ll be left behind. And that’s what happens to women when they’re only living to appease a man.”
Courtney’s video has inspired an interesting discourse about gender dynamics and dependency. But might I remind everyone that we’ve been outraged by creators who promote tradwifery before! Nara Smith routinely gets jumped for cooking “from scratch” meals for her family. Hannah Neeleman, aka @ballerinafarm, has been the subject of ridicule for her remote tradwife lifestyle for years.
But it seems like rather than pure rage, what these women inspire is a sympathetic frustration in people. The people who are both disgusted and feel disheartened to see women who look like they’re just trapped within the confines of archaic patriarchal standards and can only be freed by an onslaught of judgmental comments and stitched TikTok responses. While sure, these conversations feel necessary to ensure young women engaging with that content don’t automatically accept the tradwife life as an unchallenged fact, how many times are we going to do this?
I thought we’d finally reached tradwife fatigue. Maybe the actual absurdity of not making eye contact with a restaurant host goes beyond the line—it feels like it goes too far to even warrant a thoughtful analysis. But so long as Courtney’s follower count continues to rise thanks to her viral tips, some people are obviously taking it 100 percent seriously.
