The internet wants Hannah Neeleman to be freed from her life as a tradwife. If you’re into the mommy-blogger corner of social media or have ever fallen down a tradwife rabbit hole, then you know Neeleman as “Ballerina Farm,†but if not, here’s the gist: She has many children (eight), her husband is the son of a billionaire, she was formerly a ballerina in New York City, and she currently competes in beauty pageants. In late July, a profile of Neeleman and her seemingly simple life from the Times of London sparked discourse over the reporter’s portrayal of Neeleman as someone trapped in the fantasy of her very rich husband, Daniel, the son of JetBlue founder David Neeleman. In what will surely soon be an Erin Lee Carr HBO docuseries or a one-season limited series on Hulu starring a recognizable blonde actress in an egg apron, here are all the details you need to know about the Ballerina Farm semi-controversy.
When did Hannah Neeleman become Ballerina Farm?
Hannah married Daniel Neeleman in 2011, just before her senior year at Julliard. They purchased the farm in Kamas, Utah, that would become the Ballerina Farm in 2018. Of course, no one with any sense just runs a farm in private anymore; you also need to make farm content, which is what has made her famous enough (9.8 million Instagram followers and 9.5 million TikTok followers) to warrant the July 20 profile in the Times of London that called her the “Queen of the Tradwives.†This subculture has had its moment online, but for anyone new here: Tradwives are “traditional†women who forgo having jobs in order to be stay-at-home moms. But online, Tradwives are a genre of content creators who do chores and cook food in videos, ostensibly for the benefit of their husbands and children. Despite the label often being applied to her thanks to the fact that her posts usually center around doing stuff for her family, Ballerina Farm actually has “three full-time employees on the farm, thirty at the warehouse, more than ten in the office, and a creative director who manages the website visuals,†according to the Times profile.
Why did the profile upset people?
While Hannah’s content presents an image of someone who blissfully cooks dinner from scratch on an idyllic farm while her eight kids behave, the profile paints a more harrowing portrait — that of a woman who pushes herself to do beauty pageants just weeks after giving birth without drugs, who yearns for her past as a ballerina, who sometimes can’t get out of bed for a week because she’s so tired, and who is married to a potentially controlling husband. “Daniel wanted to live in the great western wilds, so they did,†the profile reads. “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 [Hannah]’s own — a small barn she wanted to convert into a ballet studio — ended up becoming the kids’ schoolroom.†Readers were upset, both by the thought that a woman is being forced to live in rural Utah as well as the anti-feminism narrative of her giving up her dream career to be a mother. The conversation has been so loud across social media (look up the “egg apron†video for thousands of women weighing in on what birthday gifts they’d demand from their husband if they were billionaires) that the Times was moved to publish a follow-up piece on July 29 in which the reporter, Megan Agnew, gave more behind-the-scenes details from her visit to the farm. She also appeared on a Times Radio podcast episode on July 31 to address the discourse.
What did Hannah say about the profile and the internet’s reaction to it?
Hannah responded to the discourse on July 31 by posting a series of clips of herself working out with her husband while she explains in voiceover that, actually, she loves the life that she chose. She’s made it clear she considers the piece an attack on her family. Just two hours after that video, she posted her own version of her life story on the Ballerina Farm website. In it, she clarifies that while she did give up ballet, her husband also gave up playing lacrosse at Brigham Young University.
So who will play her in the inevitable limited series about all this mess?
If the project is serious, it will be Jennifer Lawrence or Anya Taylor-Joy. If the project is silly, we’re looking at a Sydney Sweeney or a Lily-Rose Depp gazing into some serious distances over a synth-pop soundtrack. It’s also entirely possible that this is the project Lily James has been waiting for all her life, but she’d have to fight Amanda Seyfried for it.