The Never-Ending Discourse of Nara Smith

The influencer and model that gets Twitter's knickers in a twist every week

I discovered the glamorous and softspoken Nara Smith, a model and influencer with 7.8 million TikTok followers, the way many people did—through a tweet. Nara Smith is best known for her videos in which she, glamorously, gorgeously and painstakingly, makes food from scratch, especially foods that are not normally made from scratch, like cereal or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

It’s also important to note that she’s not only a married mom of three, but a stepmom of one. She’s married to fellow model Lucky Blue Smith, who, like Nara, is impossibly good looking. Lucky aesthetic is a mix of James Dean and Elvis, giving off retro-cool vibes in just a T-shirt with slightly rolled-up sleeves and straight leg jeans (it could also be the toothpick that he’s basically always employing as a prop or fashion accessory.) Lucky and Nara are rich, young, gorgeous, and as far as I can tell, happily in love. I’m sure there’s nothing the Internet could ever take issue with, right?

Anyway, the tweet that introduced me to Nara Smith presented her (perhaps in bad faith) as living out the dream every young girl had for herself at 23. Only one problem: this kind of tweet is basically designed to piss off women—not only women who decidedly did not dream of living that life, but women who did (or women who envy only a portion of Nara’s life) and feel attacked because they don’t have it. It’s the perfect recipe for discourse. Contributing to the confusing nature of the discourse is the fact that Nara herself never said this, it was just said by some random person on Twitter. Nara hasn’t gloated or presented herself as living out every woman’s dream, although as an influencer, she (naturally) presents an unrealistic—perhaps purposefully—depiction of her ultra-glam life. But the attacks on the declaration that Nara is “living every girl’s dream,” inevitably become attacks on Nara, as if she herself was prescriptively declaring that all women must marry someone tomorrow and make Gogurt tubes from scratch in a Gucci gown and feather boa.

Some of the critiques of Nara have to do with the interpretation of her videos as religious propaganda, given that she and Lucky are both Mormon. The videos themselves are not religious and Nara has referred to herself as “not a hardcore Mormon.” This critique falls a bit flat I think; lots of influencers are religious and mention it far more than she does. She doesn’t even really mention it at all, unless her religious is inextricably tied to making homemade organic Pop Tarts. And even if she did mention it, people are allowed to talk about their faith.

Nara’s videos are easily meme-able because they’re a bit absurd, perhaps intentionally so. She’s always in full glam, wearing a dress (usually vaguely 1960s-inspired) that even the most glamorous woman would never wear for the purpose of cooking, quietly narrating her meticulous from-scratch cooking in a spotless luxury kitchen. She posts other stuff too, including a bizarre befeathred selfie video in which she discussed her children’s names (one of them is named “Rumble Honey”), but these are the videos that go viral. They’ve become fashion influencer videos too, with brands frequently using them as an opportunity to showcase Nara wearing their clothes.

I found myself on the receiving end of some Nara Smith defenders when I made a tweet about her kneading bread while wearing a wizard-sleeve-style robe that included copious feathers at the cuffs, because I knew this meant feathers were likely infiltrating the bread. I had never seen her before and knew nothing about her. I thought it was a pretty innocuous comment, but because there’s such a long history of people being straight-up mean to her, my mentions were flooded with people ready to fiercely defend her, some insinuating I must be ugly, unstylish, jealous, and media-illiterate.

I will say, I regret my tweet for two major reasons and I think it’s part of why the discourse about Nara Smith can be so toxic. First, she’s not a tradwife. She’s a successful model. Because I had never heard of her before, I saw the fact that she was being glamorous and cooking and immediately assumed she was a grifty “trad influencer.” Mea culpa! Cooking and being a woman is not inherently “trad,” especially if you are a wealthy woman who built that wealth with your own career. The second reason my tweet was ill-informed is that unlike many influencers who present their lives as “realistic” or “attainable” but are still clearly doing staged photo ops, Nara Smith doesn’t really do that. In fact, sometimes she deliberately tries to be as over-the-top as possible, which is actually very funny. I’ve changed my stance:

Since I learned about Nara, I’ve seen her pop up on my TL multiple times, usually for another one of her glam cooking videos, which I find pretty inoffensive and/or deliberately funny. But occasionally things get more heated, like the current controversy about Nara Smith purportedly stealing recipes from South African TikToker Onezwa Mbola. Mbola later claimed that Smith threatened to sue her, citing an email that Smith says is fabricated (it likely is fabricated, given that it’s riddled with typos.)

There’s also the fact that it can be difficult to decouple criticisms of Nara Smith from racism. Given that Nara is biracial herself and in an interracial marriage, it’s not unreasonable to think that some critiques could be based on bigotry. But certainly not all of them are.

For example, comedy TikToker Hannausaurr posted parody videos ribbing Nara and Lucky both. Some thought they were funny and well-intentioned (after all, Nara and Lucky Smith are public figures and this TikToker has posted many other parody videos unrelated to them); others thought the videos were dripping with thinly-veined racial disdain.

There’s one thing that keeps occurring to me whenever Nara Smith discourse comes up, which is just how low-stakes it is. This isn’t a person who is accused of sexual misconduct, punching someone, or anything truly offensive or harmful. This seems like way too much discourse for what is basically just another influencer. I think it can be boiled down to the fact that Nara Smith content inadvertently contains every nugget of potential discourse. Remember Bill Hader’s Stefon from the 2010s SNL? Well, *Stefon voice* “Nara Smith has everything: tradwife aesthetics, wealth, a beautiful woman, a beautiful man who bounces back immediately after pregnancy, young marriage and motherhood, religion, interracial marriage, and homemade Gushers.”

Whatever your thoughts on Nara Smith, you have to admit this is basically the perfect storm for Twitter craziness. Even if you have other, potentially legitimate reasons not to be a Nara Smith fan, you’d have to admit that she is extremely enviable. Maybe you don’t want her entire life, but who doesn’t want to be beautiful and rich? Maybe you don’t want to make gum from scratch, but surely you’d like the kitchen?

But at the end of the day, the debates about Nara Smith just feel a bit low-stakes. Even if she did steal content from another creator, that “came out” long after people were losing their minds over her in both directions, because of the aforementioned perfect storm. Whether you like Nara Smith or not, you have to admit she’s a perfect example of a discourse-starter. I can only hope for her sake that it’s helping her follower count—not that she needs much help in that area.

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