Pornhub just released its year in review report for 2024, and the themes that showed the most growth in popularity this year were related to modesty, being someone’s wife, and “respectful” sex. Seeing them appear in Pornhub’s top trending spots shows how the “traditional” lifestyle influencers have made popular is, and always has been, a sexual fantasy.
Pornhub reports: “Searches for ‘demure’ rose +133%. The term ‘mindful pleasure’ was up +112% and ‘mindful JOI’ (JOI is an acronym for jerk off instructions) was up +87%. Searches related to modesty also increased. The term ‘modesty’ increased +77% and the term ‘modest milf’ was up +45%.” Terms like “simple sex,” “authentic sex,” and “respectful sex” also saw a boost in popularity this year. They attribute this to the “very demure, very mindful” TikTok trend that went viral earlier this year.
The platform also said in its report that wives are way up—and attributes it to The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. “While wives are already hot on Pornhub, the show, in addition to the interest of traditional aspects like authentic couples and authentic sex, seemed to ignite a spark into a flame,” the report says. “In general, the interest in ‘wife’ and marital searches spiked, with ‘amateur wife’ up +21%, ‘traditional wife’ up +34% and ‘tradwife’ up +72%.” Searches for “mormon wife,” “mormon sex,” “mormon missionary,” and “mormon threesome” were also way up.
“Many men were turned off by women monetizing their sexuality for themselves. Many men, I also believe, would prefer women not being in charge of their sexuality.”
The rest of the trends were much of the same old stuff that’s been popular for years: MILFs, hentai, anal, etcetera. But these first two trending themes gave me pause. After all, this has been a year of discussion about our reproductive and sexual rights being further chipped away instead of expanded. The influencer who started the “demure” trend is trans and was talking about blending in at her workplace; women historically have made themselves “mindful” and “cutesy” to survive. And after Donald Trump spent his campaign swearing he has nothing to do with Project 2025—a manifesto that includes banning porn, removing federal anti-discrimination policies that protect LGBTQ+ people, and rolling back rights around gender equity and sexual and reproductive health—the president-elect is bringing many of its authors into his administration.
Seeing a huge jump in themes of modesty and being a demure wife raised my eyebrows—a lot more than any animated stepmom creampie threesome ever could. I asked a few experts in porn and the art of jerking off if they felt the same chill at these results.
“The largest segment of guys driving this trend, I’d guess, would be those who have seen the tradwife viral videos on TikTok or Instagram and thought to themselves, ‘She’s pretty hot; I wonder if she sells feet pics.’”
Adult performer Siri Dahl told me she’s “not at all surprised” to see these trends crop up this year. “I’ve been seeing a similar trend within my own fan base when it comes to requests for custom content,” she said. “I’ve noticed I receive more requests for girlfriend or wife roleplay videos than ever before, and while that could be attributable to a number of factors, my hunch is that it’s coming from a place of fans and viewers seeking a sense of intimacy from my videos, which may not be accessible to them elsewhere in their lives.”
Dahl started an Instagram account in 2023 that parodied tradwife content creators, after her own account was banned by the platform multiple times. Tradwife content (short for “traditional wife) is fetish content, even if the “wife” isn’t showing skin. It’s a fantasy, and always has been, even when it was used to sell ovens to 1960s homemakers.
“I believe that most trends in society work through ebbs and flows and swing like a pendulum back-and-forth between opposite ideals,” Lotus Lain, performer and industry relations advocate at the Free Speech Coalition, told me. We entered a moment of “slut revelry,” she said, where open relationships and exploring kink were popular, which coincided with the pandemic and more people turning to independent creator work. During that time, OnlyFans took off, with users spending $2.4 billion on the site in 2020, and became shorthand for getting into porn to make ends meet.
But then there was a backlash to the “OnlyFans girl,” Lain said. “Many men were turned off by women monetizing their sexuality for themselves. Many men, I also believe, would prefer women not being in charge of their sexuality. I started noticing in a lot of comments or posts online that men wanted ‘good girls’ or what is now known as ‘trad wives.’ They talk about sex workers, sexually liberated women, sluts as ‘used up.’ The idea that the trad wife or good girl is ‘clean, pure, untouched’ and therefore more of a turn on in this current moment of slut revelry that we’re experiencing.”
“Maybe seeing a bunch of porn labeled ‘tradwife’ will help other people to realize that whether it’s an Instagram influencer or a Pornhub creator, tradwifery is just a fantasy after all.”
Dahl theorized that a lot of adult content creators are capitalizing on the safe-for-work trends made popular by trad-life influencers like Nara Smith, and giving them a pornographic twist. “One thing that is always going to be true about the porn industry and adult content creators is that we love any opportunity to put a creative spin on a cultural trend. I don’t know if creators started uploading tradwife content to Pornhub first, or if fans started searching for it and asking for it first, but to me, those specifics don’t really matter,” Dahl said. “There’s obviously a market for that content, and that’s what I find most interesting.”
Dr. Eric Sprankle, a professor of clinical psychology at Minnesota State University, Mankato and author of DIY: The Wonderfully Weird History and Science of Masturbation, speculated that there are three kinds of men—assuming it’s men driving these trends—who are searching for tradwife porn.
“The smallest segment, I’d imagine, would be those excited by the current reactionary political climate and are seeking porn that reflects their idealized homesteading lifestyle. This group would hold the least favorable attitudes toward porn and masturbation, though, so I would expect atonement prayers would commence after they climax from a video of a woman baking a pie,” he said. “The largest segment of guys driving this trend, I’d guess, would be those who have seen the tradwife viral videos on TikTok or Instagram and thought to themselves, ‘She’s pretty hot; I wonder if she sells feet pics.’ Simple curiosity drives their PornHub search, and it’s probably a one-and-done adventure.”
In between, he said, there’s likely a group who is already aroused by women presenting as “modest,” or as Lain said, the “clean, pure, untouched” fantasy, who became aware of the tradewife label from social media trends. Tapping a trending word into the Pornhub search bar is probably more efficient than trying to describe one’s turn-ons at length.
“These guys are aroused by women displaying modesty, chastity, or virginity who are being tempted, teased, degraded, or ‘spoiled’ by pleasures of the flesh,” Sprankle said. “It’s really no different than porn that has been around for decades that has sexualized the Amish and Catholic nuns.”
As I’ve said in many ways across many articles attempting to unpack kink and fetish, art imitates life, and porn is an art. The trad influencers are responding to something people currently crave—authenticity, simplicity, a fantasy of being provided for and providing for someone you love (or at least want to see naked) — and pornographers, being eternally savvy, follow suit.
“If anything, the fact that ‘tradwife’ is a trending porn search term reminds me that the entire concept of the tradwife is just influencer marketing in the first place,” Dahl said. “Most tradwife influencers are actually business owners and the primary breadwinners in their homes, so the term itself is kind of an oxymoron if you think about it. Maybe seeing a bunch of porn labeled “tradwife” will help other people to realize that whether it’s an Instagram influencer or a Pornhub creator, tradwifery is just a fantasy after all.”
