What Is ‘Princess Treatment’ & Why Is TikTok Mad About It?
If you’ve spent more than 20 seconds on TikTok lately, odds are you’ve come across a woman calmly explaining why she never opens her own doors, doesn’t order her own food, has her husband do the talking in public and believes being “soft” is her superpower. That woman is Courtney Palmer, a self-described “housewife princess” whose lifestyle philosophy — dubbed “princess treatment” — has become a lightning rod for debate across the app.
Palmer’s viral videos show her wearing a quiet luxury-style blouse as she talks about how she allows her husband to pull out her chair and expects him to confirm dinner reservations — all acts she describes as “care,” not control. “It’s not about him, it’s about you,” she told People in an interview over the weekend, defending her stance after a wave of backlash. “You’re choosing softness, calm and grace. It’s very intentional.” Palmer says she was surprised by the criticism, adding, “It breaks my heart. We’re all just trying to do our best.”
But many critics aren’t buying the gentle packaging. To them, Palmer’s brand of princesshood doesn’t feel empowering — it feels regressive. An op-ed in The Guardian described the lifestyle as “a nauseating prospect that leaves women dangerously vulnerable,” likening it to a domestic fantasy in which women cede autonomy in exchange for diamond earrings and Chanel flats.
Whether or not Palmer sees her content as traditional or transactional, it’s undeniably part of a larger online wave — a cousin of the tradwife revival and the ultra-curated “clean girl” aesthetic, where submission is reframed as wellness and feminism is filtered through soft lighting.
It’s tempting to see princess treatment as a quirky quirk of social media, a mildly annoying lifestyle trend that will fade like cottagecore or butter boards. But as Reckon culture writer Emma Beddington points out, this isn’t just about nap dresses and love languages. “It confirms the manosphere’s misogynistic assumptions about ‘alphas’ and ‘high-value females,’” she writes, warning that what looks like harmless romance content can reinforce the idea that women prefer to be led — or managed.
Palmer, for her part, insists she’s not part of any movement. “We never had a conversation about any of the things that I talk about in my videos,” she said of her 18-year marriage. “We just naturally fell into it.” But TikTok — and the media machine that monetizes it — doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Whether consciously or not, influencers like Palmer are selling a fantasy (and making bank talking about said fantasy) that intersects with a broader ideology.
Look no further than the rise of Ballerina Farm’s Hannah Neeleman, another TikTok darling who’s built a lifestyle empire out of milking cows in puffed sleeves while raising eight children on a Utah farm. Like Palmer, Neeleman packages domestic labor, financial dependence, and heteronormative ideals in an aspirational aesthetic — and her popularity is no accident. She was recently on the cover of Evie Magazine, a Peter Thiel–funded publication known for its anti-birth control, “trad beauty” content. As Marie Claire pointed out earlier this year, these trends aren’t apolitical — and they happen to be algorithm (and money-making) friendly.
To be clear: wanting kindness, support, or luxury in a relationship isn’t the problem. But as with most things on the internet, the question is who benefits — and what gets buried beneath the pretty narrative. Because when femininity is only celebrated in its most docile, ornamental form, that’s not softness. That’s erasure.
So yes, TikTok is mad about princess treatment. But the real issue isn’t just the door-opening or the ordering dinner. It’s what happens when that becomes the only version of womanhood allowed to exist.
Before you go, click here to see actresses who were way too young to play these mom roles.