Many Such Takes Special Edition: Ballerina Farm Deep Dive
A closer look at the Ballerina Farm discourse
This week, The Times published an article about “Queen of the Trad Wives” Ballerina Farm (aka Hannah Neeleman), former ballerina, homesteader, mom to 8 kids and influencer to 9.2 million followers. Important to note in all this is that the label “tradwife” was attached to her; she never identified as one and has publicly said she doesn’t identify as a tradwife. But—crucially—a lot of her followers (or at least the most vocal fans) tend to be on the trad side. You might remember her from the New York Times article about her earlier this year about how she competed in a beauty pageant at 2 weeks postpartum. She’s different from other “homestead/homeschool/natural birth/lots of kids” influencers for several reasons:
She’s married to the heir of JetBlue (see: her infamous $30,000 stove), and hasn’t tried to hide this fact (which many might say is refreshing)
She doesn’t really homeschool, she employs a governess- but, bafflingly, she is raising eight children without the help of a nanny or babysitter except for date nights.
She used to be a ballerina and still competes in beauty pageants.
When the article about her came out this week, there were two main schools of thought, both of which made a little bit of sense. One was that Hannah Neeleman was being abused or at the very least, controlled, by her husband, Daniel, and that we must “free her.” The other was that the journalist who wrote the article was jealous and bitter, and presented Hannah and Daniel unfavorably because she had an agenda from the beginning (one thing that doesn’t help her case is that she postulated that Hannah’s existence was a “hammer blow for feminism” in the subtitle of the article and repeatedly badgers Hannah and Daniel on their beliefs about abortion and birth control—which they clearly don’t want to get into.) Either way, one character sticks out prominently in both theories: Daniel.
Daniel doesn’t come off great in this article. Take for example, their “meet cute.” They had actually met six months earlier, and Daniel admitted she had rejected him. So he did what any other man in love would do: he trapped her on a five-hour JetBlue flight:
This is the kind of thing that I could maybe think was kind of romantic, except for the fact that this happened after she rebuffed him. Can you imagine being on a five-hour flight, stuck next to a guy you rejected (who’s probably talking to you the entire time) and then discovering that he engineered this?
Another piece of information (not present in the article, but posted to Twitter) that makes Daniel look like a colossal turd is the fact that Hannah reportedly dropped hints that for her birthday she wanted a trip to Greece. Surely, Daniel can afford a trip to Greece. Instead, he gave her an egg apron, still in the cardboard box in which it was shipped, and sarcastically says “You’re welcome,” when she doesn’t immediately say thank you (despite doing a very good job at pretending to be happily surprised, and according to some observers, doing a little improvised ballet dance to hide how disappointed she was.)
The egg apron bit is so absurd that you can’t help but wonder if it’s staged, especially because she begins the video by asking if the present is plane tickets to Greece, changing her tune when she sees the fabric and guessing that it’s “a hat I can wear in Greece.” But that would beg the question: why? Ballerina Farm isn’t a comedy account, nor is it a prank account, and intentionally presenting Daniel as a massive dick doesn’t really align with the brand.
I will admit, there are other parts of the article that had me wondering if the journalist did have a bit of an agenda, maybe a subconscious one. A few parts of the article have circulated as proof that Hannah Neeleman is a victim of an abusive environment, such as the fact that Daniel kept interjecting into the interview and was constantly present. And also, this:
It’s not clear how many of these things are actually Daniel’s demands, or if the journalist simply assumed he won’t allow nannies and is forcing date nights on his wife. I mean, come on…date nights are pretty fun, and I would bet $30,000 to buy them a backup stove that Hannah probably enjoys date nights too (assuming she has actually come around on him, and isn’t stuck on a perpetual Jet Blue flight.)
The article also mentions Hannah sometimes is so exhausted that she can’t get out of bed for a week. I don’t know, if I had eight kids and no nanny and no screens or prepared food…I’d probably pass out too? I feel like this just needs more context, especially what the house looks like when Hannah is in bed for a week. Is there a nanny that they use just for those times, does Daniel pick up the slack, or do they just let eight kids run wild all week?
As for Hannah’s ballet studio becoming a homeschooling room for the kids, that also seems like a weird thing to highlight. Is it expected that most moms have a room just for themselves? I like to sew and I like to write, but I sew in the shared office space and I write in the kitchen. Why is it uniquely a tragedy that Hannah doesn’t have her own ballet studio? It would be more striking if, say, Daniel had an expansive den all to himself. But there’s no evidence that he does.
This passage, about her births, also had people believing that Daniel doesn’t let her get epidurals:
I took this a different way. Daniel is, almost certainly, a huge asshole. He missed the birth of his child to ship meat boxes. This is “egg apron of childbirth experiences.” But I didn’t take it to mean that Daniel won’t let her get epidurals. First of all, she’s talking to a journalist for The Times. Nothing she says to this journalist will be a “secret” from Daniel, who is obviously going to read the article (provided it doesn’t publish on Meat Shipping Day.) I took it to mean that for her largest baby, she got the epidural, despite not really wanting it or needing it for the others, and the fact that she didn’t have support from her spouse made it harder to deliver a giant baby without pain relief.
But hold up—I’m not defending Daniel. The article was missing some major context, which actually makes him look worse. The Classic Wife on Twitter (who I would characterize as trad-adjacent, so she hardly has a nefarious agenda) resurfaced some old content from the early days of Hannah and Daniel, which one commenter pointed out is striking due to how little support he gave her in the early years of motherhood (for example, working from 7:30 AM to 10 PM, and not giving her a car of her own) as if he were a “lower middle class striver” when he was, in fact, already rich!
My initial thoughts after reading the article was that Daniel was a jerk, but lots of men are jerks, and it’s hardly worth a thinkpiece. But this history gave me pause. It’s one thing to LARP as homesteaders for social media fame; it’s a completely different think to LARP as someone who needs to work thirteen-hour days for the sole purpose of keeping your wife at home and isolated.
But important to note is that a lot of the people describing Hannah as miserable, or a prisoner, weren’t aware of this fairly niche piece of history. She’s been maligned by more liberal women like myself as a subservient tradwife since before The Times article was even published, and as an insufficiently devoted mother, for doing pageants recently postpartum, by more traditional conservative women. While the critiques of Daniel might be warranted, all too often it seems like an excuse to jump on Hannah, by people who already had issues with her before. And even if she were being coerced and controlled by her husband, it seems unfair to refer to her as a “hammer blow to feminism,” as if she did anything wrong to other women. This topic feels fraught because it’s very possible the accusations against Daniel are justified and that some of the criticisms of Hannah and her lifestyle are projection.
Take, for example, the dismay that she abandoned her career as a ballerina for motherhood. I understand this sentiment, because she started a family so young (she quit ballet at 20) but the thing about her career is, she still has one! With 9.2 million followers, and a farm to co-run, she is arguably more of a “career woman” than I am. Because she’s Mormon, you could argue there was societal pressure for her to prioritize motherhood over her career, but there’s no evidence that she wouldn’t have chosen that anyway, even if she weren’t married to Daniel. Perhaps if she wasn’t Mormon, she wouldn’t have had eight kids, but there comes a point in many people’s lives when family takes priority over a career, which isn’t innately bad.
So, to be clear, as far as Hannah Neeleman goes, I think a few things are true:
Daniel is probably an asshole.
Hannah “gave up” her career as a ballerina, but she transitioned to essentially running her own business which is probably more lucrative and has better longevity than a career in ballet. Without being Hannah herself, we’ll never know if it makes her happier.
Hannah lives an exhausting life that most of us wouldn’t be capable of living.
Hannah lives a life that, despite being exhausting, is very enviable for a lot of people, partially because she’s super rich.
I want to zoom in on number 4, because I don’t mean that in a blanket “You ugly feminists are jealous of the based blonde tradwives” way. Hear me out.
I come from liberal feminist land. And for the most part, a “liberal feminist” is how I’d describe myself. But there is a particular kind of vitriol around women like Hannah Neeleman in my corner of the Woman World. I even feel it myself a little bit. I wouldn’t want to switch lives with her (I am 100% an indoor cat, and I will never enjoy farm work) but I would love to have lots of kids (my husband wants to stop at two, maybe three) and I would love if we had enough generational wealth to be able to do whatever we wanted. I would love to have 9.2 million Substack subscribers (Please consider being a paid subscriber, lol, just kidding! But really.) While I’m at it, I would love to be gorgeous, cook all my meals from scratch, work out regularly, and raise my kids without screens. Like, who doesn’t want to be perfect?
This tweet encapsulated this fact, although it painted women with too broad of a brush, and was perfect engagement bait, as many women (myself included) felt the need to point out why Hannah’s life wasn’t their dream:
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