Katie Metka: Depression-era cosplay with 9 kids

[NachosFlandersStyle]

17 hours ago, Wolf in Sheeples’ Clothing said:

This woman named her youngest daughter Honey Fern… Why!?

https://www.homesteadmamas.com/2021/11/a-little-back-story-for-yall/

They also have a Poppy and a Birdie. 

[katilac]

12 hours ago, AliC said:

You can get away with naming your child anything when they don't go to public school. 

I've worked in public schools, and Honey Fern doesn't even make it onto the short list of unusual names. 

[JMO]

Some how I had missed that all 9 are girls. 9 more under educated girls that have been raised on "bean soup and love". No worries,  they can sew, cook and love the Bible. I'm going out on a limb and wondering if her parents helped to pay for their first house that clearly helped bankroll the Texas property and now this one. 

[JermajestyDuggar]

7 hours ago, katilac said:

I've worked in public schools, and Honey Fern doesn't even make it onto the short list of unusual names. 

Honey, Poppy, and Birdie are all very twee. But you’re right, there are much much worse. 

[SolomonFundy]

5 hours ago, JMO said:

Some how I had missed that all 9 are girls. 9 more under educated girls that have been raised on "bean soup and love". No worries,  they can sew, cook and love the Bible. I'm going out on a limb and wondering if her parents helped to pay for their first house that clearly helped bankroll the Texas property and now this one. 

No clue. I don't know if they are well-off enough to buy houses, but I'm sure they were at least a viable safety net in the early years of establishing credit, etc. Katie does have other siblings as well.

Oresti worked some odd jobs, but mainly seems to have found a niche in construction. Katie did work as a family photographer for a few years after they moved back to the states when the eldest 4 were tiny.  I would imagine that it would have been possible for them to keep up with a house payment on their own. They bought the original homestead pretty early on, so suburbia only lasted through the babies up to #5, I think.

[Melissa1977]

No way she is homeschooling at all. 

 The dirtyness, the house without bedrooms (and without beds, I guess), the ripped dresses, the lack of everything (toys? Books?)... What is that? They could have quite a comfortable life but choose that for the kids?

 

[AmazonGrace]

I just want to know how people living in a one-bedroom shack with their kids manage to have more kids.  

[anachronistic]

She admits somewhere that she does a sort of unschooling and utilizes Charlotte Masons ideas. So a lot of reading aloud but not a lot of memorizing math facts. I think at this point the older kids probably teach the younger but they aren’t getting a good education at all. They’re too busy working.

I don’t quite understand the obsessive love that people have of black and white photography. We live life in color. I want to see the colors. Maybe she sticks to black and white because if we saw her life in color we’d see how drab and dreary it is, and the dirt and filth would definitely show up more.

[usedbicycle]

I'm not sure if it's my hippy inclinations or the fact that I loved growing up in a large family... but I don't see too many red flags around Katie. My red flags in fundie families are authoritarian parenting, extreme sheltering, corporal punishment, emotional neglect, spiritual abuse, and physical neglect (undernourishment...). Of course we have no idea what goes on when the camera isn't rolling but the girls look well fed and well loved by both their parents, if a bit disheveled - which I'm fine with because as mom of kids who spend a lot of time outside, that's just what they look like. 

We really won't know how their childhood was until they grow up and speak out. I have friends who grew up in hippy communes/RVs/homesteads in similar conditions and loved their childhoods. I know others who were really affected by the scarcity or bad parenting and vowed to never live like that again. But as a general rule, kids who had unlimited access to the outdoors and a lot of freedom growing up have fond memories of that. The Hales for instance all have a love for rural Alaska despite the hell endured from their father. I'm disillusioned by suburban living - the lack of independence that children have in car-centric environments, the influence of screen time... I don't judge people who decide to try something different for their family. If Katie has the privilege of falling back on family money if shit hits the fan, good for her. Choosing voluntary simplicity in a rural setting is different than cosplaying poverty. Poverty in the US has a different face now - the depressing lack of opportunity, the daily struggle to cope with all the requirements and bills of modern living on a minimum wage that is not livable. Choosing to shift out of that paradigm has its hardships but I don't blame anyone for trying. 

[Melissa1977]

@usedbicycle Katie' s kids have no beds and are not (home)schooled. This is not simplicity, this is neglect. 

[Soulhuntress]

One room shack no running water and sleeping area smaller than the jail?  

[nausicaa]

On 9/8/2022 at 12:36 AM, NachosFlandersStyle said:

I think what's bugging me most is that her photos really are so evocative of FSA photography. I'm attaching some which were taken not too far from where the Metkas live now. And if Katie has studied photography, there's a very good chance she's seen these pictures and is actively emulating them. But the entire reason that FDR was paying real-deal photographers to go find people like this in the Ozarks was to demonstrate that a lot of people were living really fucking hard lives in seriously substandard housing and it needed fixing! The people in these photos did not choose to live that way, and they did not agree to be photographed with the idea that someone would see them and think "oh, that's lovely." Why are you romanticizing life in a shack?! 

/cdn-cgi/mirage/8849ac1a1548cc7a232c25bf4c3e4db3f12984ed-1663126780-1800/1280/https://www.freejinger.org/uploads/monthly_2022_09/service-pnp-fsa-8a06000-8a06400-8a06401r.jpg.57057cbbd4d774d3e3687479be780ded.jpg

/cdn-cgi/mirage/8849ac1a1548cc7a232c25bf4c3e4db3f12984ed-1663126780-1800/1280/https://www.freejinger.org/uploads/monthly_2022_09/service-pnp-fsa-8c17000-8c17500-8c17548v.thumb.jpg.f65dc9a4f6562afd7cfb13ddaf8ca040.jpg

/cdn-cgi/mirage/8849ac1a1548cc7a232c25bf4c3e4db3f12984ed-1663126780-1800/1280/https://www.freejinger.org/uploads/monthly_2022_09/service-pnp-fsa-8a28000-8a28700-8a28776r.jpg.c180c26886d1196e114d157a0ce376ad.jpg

This is truly the weirdest Fundie cosplay I've ever seen on this site. While the other ones -- post-war MGM film 50s, Jane Austen's Regency balls, and Edwardian doll tea parties -- might be historically thin and heavily romanticized, I can understand the appeal of their popular depiction. 

But I've never really seen anyone before ignorant enough to romanticize Dust Bowl life. Who on earth looks at Depression-era Okies and thinks, yeah baby, gotta get me some unwashed children, scurvy, and a tar paper shack? 

[danvillebelle]

11 hours ago, nausicaa said:

But I've never really seen anyone before ignorant enough to romanticize Dust Bowl life. Who on earth looks at Depression-era Okies and thinks, yeah baby, gotta get me some unwashed children, scurvy, and a tar paper shack? 

This.  I just finished reading "The Worst Hard Time" by Timothy Egan, about the Dust Bowl era.  My jaw was hanging open most of the time.  It's hard to believe people survived it.

[NachosFlandersStyle]

1 hour ago, danvillebelle said:

This.  I just finished reading "The Worst Hard Time" by Timothy Egan, about the Dust Bowl era.  My jaw was hanging open most of the time.  It's hard to believe people survived it.

That book is so good. Highly recommended to anyone who hasn't read it.

[Hane]

8 hours ago, danvillebelle said:

This.  I just finished reading "The Worst Hard Time" by Timothy Egan, about the Dust Bowl era.  My jaw was hanging open most of the time.  It's hard to believe people survived it.

Thanks for the recommendation. John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” shattered me.

[rurik]

Hey, as someone who has known the Metkas and been to their TX house before the move, just thought I’d add a few things for clarification.

They have followed the same model in both of their homesteads - start by building and living in a small one-room cabin (“the shanty”) with few utilities, while building a much larger and fully equipped house. I’ve been in both the small cabin and the big house in TX. They were not living in squalor. The cabin was small, but added extra privacy and space with an upper loft room. The big house was spacious and clean (I mean, as clean as you can expect of any ordinary family with lots of little kids). They had water and electricity and plumbing and everything else. Oresti built the house and nearly all the furniture, cabinetry, etc himself and it was beautiful. There was no “poverty porn.” Yes, the parents had their own room and the girls had some personal space. Also - the B&W photos have a lovely aesthetic in my opinion, but they do hide the fact that the Metkas’ house was very colorful - no bleak and beige! Furniture was painted in vibrant shades and clothes were usually bright and patterned as well.

The girls were smart, funny, and interacted well. They don’t have a lot of plastic toys, but had no end of outdoor games, handmade figurines, etc. They do help with the animals, cooking, etc, but they don’t spend a majority of their time doing chores. At least at the time, they all loved their handmade clothes and their life. As some other commenter mentioned, the oldest now has a flourishing business as an artist.

Concerns about the Metkas’ chosen Charlotte Mason/“unschooling” model may be valid. I don’t know what the girls’ education looks like or if the girls or their parents are planning for higher education. But happily I think most of the concerns I see here are stemming from the Metkas’ perceived aesthetic and not from any reality.

[fundiewatch]

@rurik what made you come find FreeJinger to defend your old friends? How did you find this fairly old thread?

[rurik]

@fundiewatch I just got curious because Katie posted that someone shared her page on TikTok and it went viral. I wondered what the Internet opinion of the Metkas looked like.

I’m not here to beef - I respect much of this site. But since I stumbled on this thread and saw so much speculation based on aesthetics and other people who present themselves similarly, I thought I’d add an opinion from someone who knows them.