There's an actual explanation in the original article about some of the wardrobe choices. It's even dumber, and it involves effective altruism.
It is a very cold home. It’s early March, and within 20 minutes of being here the tips of some of my fingers have turned white. This, they explain, is part of living their values: as effective altruists, they give everything they can spare to charity (their charities). “Any pointless indulgence, like heating the house in the winter, we try to avoid if we can find other solutions,” says Malcolm. This explains Simone’s clothing: her normal winterwear is cheap, high-quality snowsuits she buys online from Russia, but she can’t fit into them now, so she’s currently dressing in the clothes pregnant women wore in a time before central heating: a drawstring-necked chemise on top of warm underlayers, a thick black apron, and a modified corset she found on Etsy. She assures me she is not a tradwife. “I’m not dressing trad now because we’re into trad, because before I was dressing like a Russian Bond villain. We do what’s practical.”
Warm clothes instead of heating is great, but they manage to subvert it in a very EA way. The way they talk about it sounds almost Calvinist. I wonder if they have some equivalent of the secret TV in the attic.
There’s no reason to believe they live this way in reality. None of these profiles do any actual journalism. None of them investigate whether their claims about their childhood are true. This one doesn’t even talk to the neighbors who theoretically live next door for free (and do the unpaid childcare). This is stenography of neo-fash influencers self-described life and there’s no reason to believe any of it.
Yes and that’s obviously lies, as anyone who has grown up with limited income in a cold area can tell them. Cheap, warm clothing is not bought online (in the US) from Russia, and never from Etsy. In the US it’s bought — if you’re buying new at all! — from Target or Kohl’s or some other big chain. You get layers, you get things used when you can, and the cheapest way to dress warmly is the most normie, uninteresting clothes that are mass produced and sold in low end department stores.
Nothing they describe is practical or cheap. It’s cosplay Kinder, Küche, Kirche, and the journalist repeated it verbatim because she’s a chump.
Gee, I wonder what about the time period from 2015 to 2020 would have prompted the transformation from “occasional youtuber who goofily wears fascinators and cute nerdy graphic tees” to “hugo boss chic”. Must have just been her own changing tastes, couldn’t possibly be related to anything else.
the kids have to thunderdome it out for recognition, and then they have to pay for the photos with their own money that they earned in their weekend jobs (you know, the ones they get to do after their homejobs all week). just like in a perfectly normal family!
