Zahraa Magdy

Donia sets her phone to shoot a video of what she has been doing in her day since ten in the morning, then she uploads it to her channel via YouTube. The posts that increase each day shall be followed. She shares with her housewife colleagues in the Arab world her daily motivational routine to clean the house, wash clothes, care for her baby girl, and beautify before going out or her husband coming from work.

She is one of hundreds of women who have set out to launch YouTube channels. To meet with those who are not working. They spend the day cleaning and cooking. To motivate each other to take care of hygiene, care for the husband and children, the obligation to pray, and the connection to the family, even the way food is stored. To find that there are many who attract each other to this private world.

To kill boredom

Under the headline “Daily Motivational Routine, Steat House Stump Routine, Challenging Sudden Pleasures” several videos come out with more than two million views. Comments differ on each video of men and women of several Arab nationalities. They ask for a way to prepare the juices promised by the owner of the channel, or pray for the sick girl in the background of the video, or comments from similar channels requesting support.

These women show simplicity more convincing, and that their broad audience is not waiting for high-quality videos as much as it is for condolence and sharing with people like them. Although cooking channels on satellite channels have become the highest viewing, programs specifically targeted to this forgotten group have a special nature.

The content targeted at the housewife is not recent, and never fails. It started from the 1940s, with the book "The Foundations of Cooking" by Bahia Othman and Abla Nazira, which was a textbook for girls at the beginning and then achieved great commercial success.


This was followed by the emergence of a similar girl in "To Housewives", the most famous Egyptian family program, with radio station Safia Al-Muhandis. "My Aunt Bambah, Marzouq Effendi's family" and the last of the oldest Egyptian radio series, came out from it to simulate the reality of Egyptian homes and get closer to the housewife in her day.


Chefs competitions

Simplicity and intimacy dominate the videos of cooking, until they become closer to the public than the programs of the most famous "chefs" on satellite channels, as Mary Said sees in the "motivational routine" videos women like her, and makes her times during the husband's travel, and her unity in light of the spread of Corona virus, And her inability to meet her friends as usual, until she was considering launching a channel like them to share the other day.

Mostafa El-Sayed says that he only searches for information related to cooking and cleaning through these channels, and he never turns to famous chefs. Simplicity is the most important thing that distinguishes these women. Despite his quick boredom from the episodes of specialized cooking channels that do not exceed half an hour, he enjoys the talk of women using ingredients found in every home, and encourages him to do immediately to help his wife in the arrangement and cooking. Perhaps the biggest catalyst for him is the appearance of some husbands with their wives, dictating to them the ingredients in the background, and asking them questions that may arise in the viewer's mind.

Simple household tasks

Home cleaning videos are the latest ways for housewives to seek livelihood. After YouTube is filled with cooking channels, and Facebook is filled with pages of women selling "Eat My Home" they cook it and connect it, relying on their children to help their husbands.

Some channels share their audience with the way they start working on YouTube, and provide simulated videos from home. They advise women to search for excellence, set a goal like helping girls in the first year of marriage or directing content to simple housewives. This helps to attract more followers in order to achieve the profits that come with difficulty with the new YouTube terms, such as the channel has 1000 subscribers, and 4 thousand hours of the private content of the owner of the channel.