BROOKLYN, NY — At 7:14 a.m. on Good Friday, 27-year-old branding consultant Maddie Polk lowered herself into a hand-built nest of organic raffia behind her parents’ Park Slope brownstone, tucked four unrefrigerated farm eggs against her sternum, and began the four-hour TikTok Live that her followers now refer to simply as ‘the brood.’
She is not alone. Across the country, a viral aesthetic dubbed #FeralEaster has taken hold among women aged 24 to 34, who have spent the holiday week constructing nests in their yards, drinking raw water from clay vessels labeled ‘tomb juice,’ and describing the experience to bewildered relatives as ‘rewilding the resurrection.’
The trend reportedly began on March 31, when a doula in Asheville posted a 92-second clip of herself ‘honoring the egg’ by humming a single sustained note over a brown chicken egg for an entire afternoon. The video has since logged 41 million views, prompting a content arms race in which influencers compete to appear maximally unwell in vegetation.
‘It’s about reclaiming the original spring energy before colonialism made the holiday about ham,’ explained Cassidy Veere, a self-described holistic anthropologist and host of the podcast Eat Pray Forage. ‘Also, ham is gluten. I’m not going to explain how, but it is.’
By Wednesday, the trend had escalated into what one sociologist is calling ‘phase two,’ in which participants begin ‘naming’ their eggs, refusing to leave the nest for meals, and posting tearful TikToks about the ‘unbearable patriarchy of refrigeration.’ At least three women in Sedona have been cited for ‘unattended brooding’ on public xeriscaping, and a Whole Foods in Silver Lake reports a 600% spike in raw watercress theft, all of it attributed to women in linen smocks who ‘apologized to the door on the way out.’
Predictably, brands have swarmed. Erewhon launched a $48 ‘Ritual Yolk’ smoothie containing one pasture-raised egg, crushed shell, and a sprig of thyme ‘foraged within emotional walking distance of the customer.’ Anthropologie is selling a $189 ‘Devotional Nesting Set’ that is, on close inspection, a basket. Goop released a candle called Empty Tomb that smells, according to its product copy, like ‘wet stone and the courage to begin again.’
‘Lily told me she was going home to her clutch, and I assumed she meant her purse,’ said Diane Polk, Maddie’s mother, who confirmed she has been bringing her daughter water bottles and gently pretending not to notice. ‘I asked if she wanted any of the lamb. She hissed. Not metaphorically.’
As of Friday afternoon, Polk had not broken the eggs and said she did not intend to. ‘I’m just letting them go on their own journey,’ she explained, adjusting a flower crown of curbside dandelions. ‘If one hatches, it hatches. If it doesn’t, that’s also a kind of Easter.’