Why Everyone's Obsessed with Wicker (And What It Says About Us)

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. What starts as trailer reactions turns into a wider conversation about the booming romance and "smutty romance" book industry, the trad wife movement's contradictions, media literacy, and who gets conditioned to be curious versus who doesn't.

What we discussed:

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/smut

15:39 – Trad wife influencers, rising conservatism, and the contradiction underneath it (Nara Smith)

16:54 – Aside on the novel Yesteryear

20:16 – Romance publishing stats: 52% revenue growth, $1.44B a year