Cow milk’s resurgence has been constructing for years. In 2021, Emily Sundberg wrote for Grub Road that — not less than anecdotally — complete milk was again, with public sentiment on plant-based milk beginning to curdle at espresso retailers and on-line, not not like almond milk in sizzling espresso. Sundberg referenced a tweet: “Sizzling ladies are ditching the options and are going again to fundamentals.”
Although a 2023 Purdue College evaluation discovered that gross sales of dairy milk have, in reality, decreased between 2018 and 2022, not less than on a vibes degree, cow milk has seen a wave of latest champions.
This yr, “why I went again to complete milk” movies made the rounds. So did movies of “milk mukbangs,” during which the creator Peggy Xu scooped the thick cream high from bottles of Straus Creamery milk, inflicting a surge in gross sales for the longstanding California dairy. In an episode of the vastly widespread Subway Takes video sequence, comic Danish Maqbool claimed that “America has gotten comfortable ever since we stopped ingesting complete milk.” On TikTok, that clip now has over 8 million views and 1.3 million likes, with commenters co-signing issues like: “He’s really talking information,” and “Natural Entire Milk is the brand new wave.”
Among the renewed curiosity in cow milk appears fueled by rising fears round ultra-processed meals, which has been a significant speaking level this yr. Cow milk is pure, its followers declare, not like non-dairy milks with their oils and components. The rise of uncooked milk took this mistrust of food-processing and the federal authorities to the subsequent degree, even though hen flu has just lately been detected in uncooked milk, inflicting California to declare a state of emergency.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s ascension as President Trump’s decide for secretary of the Division of Well being and Human Companies solely emboldened raw-milk drinkers, with Kennedy citing uncooked milk as one among a number of issues being aggressively suppressed within the FDA’s “battle on public well being.”
Dairy milk has turn out to be a type of cultural flag, particularly amongst conservatives. That Ballerina Farm’s Hannah Neeleman — who is probably essentially the most outstanding face of the present tradwife second — had such a profitable yr matches seamlessly into this. Although the video in query was uploaded in 2022, one of many enduring photographs of Neeleman is of her making mozzarella cheese from scratch, utilizing uncooked milk from her personal farm, along with her kids — she has eight — audible within the background. By way of milk, farming, and household, Neeleman has provided a conservative fantasy of American life that’s resonant in a society that’s shifting towards the suitable.
For trad-leaning varieties who submit on X about “Western civilization,” the tradwife, whose female aesthetics typically channel milkmaids, continued to symbolize the kind of tradition that they see as in want of defending. Think about that one well-known trad influencer goes by the identify “Gwen the Milkmaid”: A former OnlyFans mannequin, she now touts “religion, femininity, [and] holistic well being” and shills “grass-fed tallow skincare.” (It’s been a giant yr for cows, as an entire: Tallow, too, has had a second just lately and is poised to rise additional.) Persevering with this connection between milk and femininity, milk additionally made up one of many greatest ladies’s perfume tendencies of the yr.
Naturally, this culminated within the yr’s last gasp of milk-adjacent discourse when the conservative ladies’s journal Evie launched its “uncooked milkmaid costume” final week. The costume’s description reads: “Designed within the French countryside and impressed by the hardworking dairymaids of Seventeenth-century Europe, The Uncooked Milkmaid Gown is handmade from luxurious natural cotton and 100% female vitality.” It’s additionally not precisely modest, which highlights the truth that for all milk’s ties to household, custom, and purity, the entire milkmaid factor appears to be not less than a bit tied to sexual fantasy too. In fact, teachers have argued that, particularly in Western society, milk is a logo of feminine sexuality and has thus turn out to be “attractive” itself.
And with that we will finish on what appears to be milk’s final massive, attractive second for the yr: the forthcoming film Babygirl, out in theaters on Christmas. Babygirl facilities on a CEO, performed by Nicole Kidman, who’s struggling along with her personal desirability and begins to discover the submissive fantasies she’s hidden her complete life after assembly one among her firm’s new interns.
At one level, as a part of this new dynamic, she publicly chugs a giant glass of milk, so thick and white it’s unmistakably meant to be dairy. Although the manufacturing ultimately switched to utilizing dyed water, capturing the scene concerned ingesting “enormous quantities of milk,” Kidman mentioned in an interview. The new ladies, it appears, had been the canary within the coal mine.