Update, 2/8/2024: Hannah Neeleman, has addressed The Times, almost two weeks after it was published. Neeleman addressed the post directly on TikTok; it is one of the first posts she has made on the account in which she addresses her fame and the media coverage around herself and her family.
@balllerinafarm What i’ve been thinking lately #hannahneeleman #ballerinafarm #ballerinafarmsourdough ♬ Listen to Your Heart – Jhonatan Rodrigues
In the post Neeleman is direct. “A couple of weeks ago we had a reporter come into our home to learn more about our family and business. We thought the interview went really well, very similar to the dozens of interviews we have done in recent memory. We were taken back, however when we saw the printed article which shocked us, and shocked the world by being an attack on our family and our marriage, portraying me as oppressed with my husband as the culprit this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Nothing we said in the interview implied this conclusion, which leads me to believe the angle taken was predetermined. For Daniel and I our priority in life is God and family. Everything else comes second. The greatest day of my life was when Daniel and I were married 13 years ago, together we have built a business from scratch, we’ve brought eight children into this world and have prioritised our marriage all along the way. We are co-parents, co-CEOs, co-diaper changers, kitchen cleaners and decision-makers. We are one, and I love him more today than I did 13 years ago.
We have many dreams still to accomplish. We aren’t done having babies and we are excited for our new farms to open. I can’t wait to see what the future holds for the rest of it. But for now, I’m doing what I love most, being a mother, wife, a businesswoman, a farmer, a lover of Jesus and making meals from scratch.”
Hannah’s response plays over videos of the couple working out together, Hannah driving their tractor about the farm with a child on her lap, and scenes of her making smoothies and frying eggs. She has also updated the Ballerina Farm website with “Her Story”, an essay in which she describes her childhood and life prior to ballet and meeting Daniel, which she directed her audience to in an Instagram post saying: “I wanted to take the opportunity to tell you our story in my own words.” You can read Hannah’s post here.
The Times article, written by Megan Agnew, has been criticised by fans of the Neelemans and mothers on social media, who took issue with the portrayal of Hannah Neelman’s lifestyle and approach to parenting. You can read more about the response here.
Below is everything you need to know about the Neeleman saga, which was originally published on 29/07/2024.
Who Is Hannah Neeleman, aka ‘Ballerina Farm’?
Hannah Neeleman, 34, has become a figurehead of the traditional wife TikTok trend, and one of the most successful influencers on the internet. Under her handle @ballerinafarm she posts idyllic rural homemaking content from a 328-acre Utah farm. She lives there with her 35-year-old husband, Daniel Neeleman, heir to a Jet Blue fortune worth over US$400million. She has 9.3 million followers on Instagram, 8.5 million on TikTok, and 1.6 million on YouTube.
What more could a superstar influencer want?
Some peace and quiet after the last week of media coverage, presumably.
The ex-Julliard-trained ballerina and current reigning beauty pageant queen gave birth to her eighth child this year. She went from social media success to face-of-Trad-Tok-fame after winning Mrs World only two weeks after giving birth. Then, on July 20th, she went even more viral after a profile of her was published in The Times. In it, journalist Megan Agnew recounted a day spent attempting to interview Neeleman while in the presence of the influencer’s eight children and husband.
What Is A Trad Wife?
If you’re not chronically online, you may be wondering what a traditional wife is. The term denotes a style of influencer and woman who follows values similar to those of our grandmothers. These values are also espoused by the Mormon faith, to which many, including Neeleman, belong.
Trad wives restrict their work to the home, are subservient to their husbands, and focus on having and raising children. The only difference? Unlike our grandmothers, they document all of this on social media.
Unsurprisingly, trad wives are contentious figures in feminist discourse. Some argue they’re the ultimate example of “choice” feminism — why should a mother’s work be valued less than a corporate lawyer’s? Others say they’re dangerous figures who want to trick women back into the kitchen.
@ballerinafarm Just in time for the holidays, baby #8 on approach! @Daniel ♬ original sound – Ballerina Farm
But most of us assume they’re in on the bit.
After all, traditional wives like Hannah Neeleman and Nara Smith make more money with their millions of social views through sponsorship deals, affiliate programs, and TikTok’s creator fund than many corporate lawyers. Surely they’re social media masterminds laughing all the way to the bank?
The Times interview has had TikTok fans and social media pundits questioning that comfortable assumption.
What Happened During The Ballerina Farm Interview?
The Times article, titled “Meet the Queen of the ‘Trad Wives’ (and her eight Children)“, included several quotes from Hannah Neeleman and her family about their lives on the farm that suggested Neeleman was far from an influencer steering her ship. In fact, it seemed to infer that she had been duped into the specific version of wifedom and motherhood she’s currently living.
TikTok’s reaction was swift. One post reads: “Ballerina Farm has ruined me. A talented woman with a full ride to Juilliard whose millionaire husband convinced her to give up her dreams of becoming a ballerina in NYC.”
Another wrote, “Ballerina Farm broke me. May we always follow our dreams and never feel guilty about it.”
Some of the speculation spurred by the article is more serious. The hashtag Ballerina Farm Abuse has so far appeared in 169m posts, with social media users interpreting incidents in the article as signs of coercive control. Comments on Hannah Neeleman’s most recent video, which includes her husband and children, read: “Girl run and give him full custody”, “script: Daniel, voiceover: Hannah”, and “They could never make me like you, Danie.” Some simply say “free ballerina.”
So, how did it go so wrong for the Neelemans?
9 Key Revelations From The Ballerina Farm Interview
1. There are no nannies
“I would like to know seriously how many housekeepers and nannies you have to help you with the house and the (many) kids. Thanks,” writes an aggrieved-sounding Instagram follower on a video of Neeleman baking while juggling an infant.
Like many consumers of traditional wife content, this user assumes that wealthy creators like Neeleman and Nara Smith have an army of nannies behind the camera, making their vision of domestic bliss achievable.
After all, it’s hard to imagine running several of the most successful social media accounts on the Internet while also managing eight children — and doing it alone.
It’s for this reason that the most immediately shocking revelations in the Ballerina Farm interview were that Neeleman and, to some extent, her husband, perform all the childcare by themselves. This is because Daniel Neeleman reportedly “didn’t want nannies in the house”.
2. Neeleman often spends a week in bed sick with exhaustion
How does Hannah Neeleman cope? The profile left the impression she doesn’t. Her husband disclosed in the interview that she is often so sick with exhaustion that she doesn’t get out of bed for a week. (Agnew doesn’t ask who takes care of childrearing at these times.)
3. The journalist could not talk to her alone
While Agnew said she is accustomed to navigating steely-eyed publicists when interviewing high-profile celebrities, she says she was unprepared for the challenges of interviewing Neeleman. “I am up against an army of toddlers who all want their mum and a husband who thinks he knows better,” she writes, noting that Neeleman is routinely interrupted, corrected and answered for by both her children and her husband.
4. Her husband pulled strings to get his first date with her
According to comments included in the Times article and allegedly made by Hannah and Daniel Neeleman during the interview, friends introduced them at a basketball game. But Hannah wasn’t interested in dating Daniel; she had her sights set on New York. Daniel found a workaround when Neeleman mentioned she was flying from Salt Lake City to New York to attend Juilliard. He pulled strings at his father’s airline, Jet Blue, to get a seat next to her, pretending it was a coincidence. This might have seemed romantic in a ’90s romantic comedy, but it has not been well received on TikTok in 2024, with people accusing Daniel Neeleman of leveraging his privilege and… being creepy.
5. She seemingly had to quit ballet.
Neeleman had saved her own money to enrol herself in Juilliard. “I was going to be a ballerina; I was a good ballerina,” she said in a string of words that are being replayed on TikTok to sad music.
But, when she started dating Daniel Neeleman, he was insistent that their waiting until she finished school before marrying was “not going to work”. Instead of waiting the 12 months Hannah wanted, they were married within three months of dating. She was pregnant at six months, cutting short her ballet career.
6. The Neeleman’s don’t use birth control
Another surprise was the intensity of the Neelemans’ Mormon faith. Like many influencers, Hannah Neeleman keeps discussions of religion and politics out of her feed; after all, her followers want to see her making lavender jelly and not sounding off on presidential campaigns. So while it was assumed that, like many traditional wives, Neeleman practiced Mormonism, many readers were taken aback to discover the Neelemans don’t use birth control at all and that all of their eight pregnancies have been unplanned. Hannah Neeleman claimed she asks God, “Is it time to bring another one to the Earth?” and says he’s never told her no.
7. Hannah Neeleman only took pain relief during childbirth when her husband wasn’t present
Neeleman has given birth to six of her eight children at home, without pain relief. She told Agnew this was a personal preference. But in the article, Agnew says that when her husband left the room to take a call, Hannah then added that she did take pain relief when she had her daughter, Martha. “I was two weeks overdue, and she was 10lb, and Daniel wasn’t with me.” Neeleman doesn’t say that she would not have taken pain relief had her husband been with her. However, despite saying it was “an amazing experience,” she has had two subsequent children without epidural.
8. There’s no space for the ballerina on the Ballerina Farm
One of the most haunting elements of the story is that Neeleman, despite her wealth and popularity, seems far from the reigning queen of TikTok at home. Her sequinned gowns from pageant wins have been moved from her cupboard to the garage to make room for children’s paraphernalia.
Meanwhile, the small barn she wanted to convert into a ballet studio has become a kid’s schoolroom.
9. The egg apron birthday present
@kaulitzzzjaceyyy ballerina farm #viral #ballerinafarm #xyzbca #unflopme #fyp ♬ som original – andressa
While egg-belt birthday gift gate is not part of the Times article, TikTokers have dug up an old video of Hannah Neeleman being presented with a lacklustre unwrapped birthday gift by her husband, which has gone viral in the wake of the article. In the video, she asks excitedly whether the plain brown box is a ticket to Greece. As she rips open the cardboard, she says, hopefully, “a hat to wear in Greece”? Instead, it’s a makeshift apron with several small pockets that can be used to collect chicken eggs.
Daniel Neeleman seems pleased with himself and a bit amused, saying, “You’re welcome” to a visibly disappointed Neeleman. TikTok users and non-TikTok users alike have agreed it’s a woeful gift.
What did we learn (if anything) from the Ballerina Farm interview?
Journalist Megan Agnew followed up her article with a far more muted reflection on her time spent on Ballerina Farm. She wrote, “In the week since we published the interview, we have had an enormous and impassioned response—a whirl of arguments and opinions whipping up speed on social media.” To Agnew, this confirmed that Neeleman had, somewhere along the line, “become an avatar through which people hotly debate motherhood, womanhood and freedom to choose either.”
While the matters raised in the interview (and in the Internet’s response to it) are disturbing, the most obvious takeaway seems to be that for women, there is rarely an escape from “work” that feels impossible. Whether it’s raising sourdough, responding to emails, or sweating at the gym 3.5 times a week because a voice in our head tells us it’ll be summer soon and we should, or doing all three while juggling unequal distribution of childcare duties.
Our grandmothers worked in the home, but we’ve burnt out in our jobs, and it seems the social media influencers (whether wearing egg belts or bikinis) who live lives of idyllic ease for our entertainment online are, in reality, just as exhausted and vulnerable as we are.
This article originally appeared on Marie Claire Australia and is republished here with permission.
