The internet is going wild over a recent Times interview with Hannah Neeleman, aka Ballerina Farm, the so-called “queen of the trad-wives.” And let me tell you, it’s giving major red flags.
What the heck is a Ballerina Farm?
Ballerina Farm is the social media persona of Hannah Neeleman, a 34-year-old, Mormon, former ballet dancer turned trad-wife influencer.
Hannah serves up idyllic rural life content to her 9.1 million followers on Instagram, 7.5 million on TikTok and 1.6 million on YouTube. Think gingham dresses, sourdough starters, and eight adorable kiddos running around a 328-acre Utah farm, which she and her husband, Daniel Neeleman, run.
Also I think the most bonkers fact about Hannah that simply must be noted is that she competed in the Mrs World Pageant 12 days after she gave birth to her eight child. No one can say she’s not committed to the bit!
The interview that unveiled a sinister reality
A recent profile in The Times has sparked intense online discussion, revealing a more complex picture behind the aesthetic AF Instagram posts.
The article, written by Megan Agnew, paints a portrait of Hannah’s life that’s far from the curated perfection seen on socials.
The couple revealed that their courtship was notably brief – they met at a college basketball game, had their first “date” on a JetBlue flight (thanks to Daniel’s family connections AKA they owned the airline), and were married just two months later. Three months after the wedding, Hannah was pregnant with their first child.
Hannah admits this wasn’t her original plan, telling The Times, “No. My goal was New York City, I left home at 17 and I was so excited to get there, I just loved that energy. And I was going to be a ballerina. I was a good ballerina”.
“I thought we should date for a year (before marriage)” so that she could finish the ballet program which she was enrolled in at Juilliard.
“And Daniel was, like, ‘It’s not going to work, we’ve got to get married now’,” she explained.
“Our first few years of marriage were really hard, we sacrificed a lot,”
“I gave up dance, which was hard. You give up a piece of yourself.”
It’s clear that Hannah’s wants and needs are often pushed to the side in the Neeleman household.
Megan writes, “Daniel wanted to live in the great western wilds, so they did; he wanted to farm, so they do; he likes date nights once a week, so they go (they have a babysitter on those evenings); he didn’t want nannies in the house, so there aren’t any. The only space earmarked to be Neeleman’s own — a small barn she wanted to convert into a ballet studio — ended up becoming the kids’ schoolroom.”
Not a regular ‘trad-wife’
When Megan asked about how Hannah feels about the term ‘trad-wife’, the couple had differing answers.
Daniel said, “We were already together, doing what we were doing. And then [‘trad wife’] came along”
“We can’t help it. This is what we are. If we’re trad dad, trad wife, so be it.”
Hannah would rather distance herself from the term.
She said, “I don’t necessarily identify with it because we are traditional in the sense that it’s a man and a woman, we have children, but I do feel like we’re paving a lot of paths that haven’t been paved before.”
“So for me to have the label of a traditional woman, I’m kinda like, I don’t know if I identify with that,” she added.
And she’d technically be right. There has been ongoing discussion about how ‘trad-wives’ are often actually mastermind marketers and play a significant role in family businesses, challenging the notion that they are simply homemakers. Hannah and Daniel even told The Times that they consider themselves, “co-CEO’s,” of Ballerina Farm.
However, in Hannah’s case, the concern stems from the fact that her current lifestyle doesn’t seem to align with her original aspirations. It raises questions about agency and autonomy within a ‘trad-wife’s’ every day life and the larger movement it has inspired.
The internet is concerned about Ballerina Farm
The internet is filled with hot takes, with users dissecting every detail of the interview.
One Redditor summed it up perfectly: “This article broke my heart. It’s like a perfect shiny apple that starts to decay the moment you take a bite out of it.” Ouch.
Many are expressing concern for Hannah, suggesting she’s trapped in an abusive situation, often referring to a part in the article where Daniel admits that “his wife gets so ill from exhaustion” that she sometimes can’t get out of bed for a week.
Others are pointing out the stark contrast between her curated Instagram feed and the reality revealed in the article.
Creator Caro Claire Burke said in a recap video of The Times article, “The real deception that’s taking place with [the Ballerina Farm] account is the appearance of everything being easy, breezy, beautiful when in fact it seems Hannah Neeleman is slowly working herself to death to do multiple jobs, take care of these children, perform as an influencer online, without any additional help.”
Author of The Times article, Megan Agnew, made a TikTok saying that, “I thought I was going to be interviewing Hannah. It turned out to be a little harder than that. Daniel is very involved in the brand, in fact he kind of leads it. Hannah seemed to be the sort of face.”
“The children are rustic and wild and gorgeous and they’re homeschooled there. They don’t have a nanny. She is the most gorgeous, generous mother. You know these children are literally swinging off her hair.”
“Daniel was a little bit more leading actually. It was sometimes hard to ask her questions, it was sometimes hard to get a direct answer from her without her being interrupted or her deferring to her husband.”
Whether Hannah will address the growing criticism or continue to embrace her role as a ‘trad-wife’ influencer remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: the internet isn’t done talking about Ballerina Farm anytime soon.
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