After the Times profile was published, everyone on social media, from TikTok to Instagram, wanted Hannah Neeleman, better known on social media as Ballerina Farm, to break free from her lifestyle and her husband. Hannah Neeleman was born in Utah on June 25, 1990 (age 34). She was the eighth of nine children to parents who owned a flower shop. She loved dancing since she was a child, and at the age of 17, she enrolled in the prestigious arts college, Juilliard School, and moved to New York to pursue her passion. To pay for her tuition, she began competing in beauty pageants.
But the summer before her senior year, she met Daniel Neeleman and quickly fell in love. After dating for a few months, the two married in 2011. In May 2012, she gave birth to her first of eight children, Henry. At her graduation, she brought her one-week-old baby onto the stage, making her one of the first undergraduate ballerinas to graduate as a mother.
Image courtesy of Don Ramey Loga via Wikimedia Commons
How did Hannah Neeleman become famous?
In 2018, she and Daniel bought a farm in Utah and named it “Ballerina Farm” after the ballerina turned farmer. She started posting about the farm and now has 9.6 million followers on TikTok, 9.9 million on Instagram, and 1.67 million on YouTube. She quickly became famous for describing the picture-perfect lifestyle she shares with her husband and children.
She posts videos on social media of herself milking cows, cooking and baking (including making fresh butter and cheese), and tending to her farm. She is often seen wearing floral dresses and skirts on social media. Her popularity led to a July 20 profile in The Times calling her the “Queen of Traditional Wives,” a term used to describe women who take on traditional gender roles such as housework and child-rearing.
While there is nothing wrong with assuming traditional gender and marriage roles, social media portrays an unrealistic portrayal of what it is like to be a wife and mother. On social media, the traditional wife portrays a life of a clean house, perfect makeup, and cooking everything from scratch, including cough drops, bubble gum, cereal, and other foods. However, women with multiple children, even if they are full-time housewives, do not have the time to prepare everything from scratch. Helping children with homework, taking them to the park, feeding them, showering them, and other tasks take significantly longer, often without sufficient support.
Plus, many moms aren't juggling their day-to-day jobs with the perfect sleek bag van and outfit. And the image of a picture-perfect lifestyle leaves many moms feeling like they're not doing enough. But what social media doesn't reveal is what goes on behind the scenes: women often have multiple people helping them take care of their kids while they're creating content.
Why were viewers concerned about her after the article was published?
According to the article, she participated in a beauty contest 12 days after giving birth to her eighth child, without any painkillers. On the fifth day after giving birth, she began to doubt whether to participate in the contest due to bleeding and swelling, but on the ninth day, she tried on a costume for the contest, and on the tenth day, she had a spray tan. According to the Cleveland Clinic, postpartum recovery usually takes six to eight weeks, or longer depending on the individual, and despite her active behavior, she was told she needed to rest, which led to concerns about her health among her viewers and followers.
The article further revealed that she was sometimes too tired to even get out of bed. After the article was published, many TikTok users suggested that she should break up with her husband, saying that he was putting too much pressure on her. Her husband was further criticized when it was revealed that the space that was meant to be her ballet studio had been converted into a classroom for her children. Many criticized the fact that he, the son of billionaire David Gary Neeleman, former CEO of JetBlue Airways and founder of other airlines, could not provide her with a studio.
Some viewers felt that she was trying to discourage her husband from enjoying ballet and to distance him from a ballet career: he dreamed of settling in the Wild West, running a farm, not hiring nannies, and getting married soon, while she wanted to finish school before marriage. Furthermore, viewers were concerned by their differing answers about having children, with her husband keen and her hesitant because of her age.
How did Hannah Neeleman respond to the Times article?
However, a few days after the article was published, she responded in a TikTok video, saying that the article was attacking her family and that she loved the lifestyle she and her husband lived. They also posted their version of the story on a website, detailing their lives before and after meeting their husbands. In the story, she revealed that she learned about business in her family's flower shop and always had an entrepreneurial spirit. She also shared that she dropped out of school to major in dance, but envisioned a different future when she returned after her marriage. She also spoke about the sacrifices they made together, as her husband ended his athletic career early and moved to New York to support her. She also said that she was ready to have a family soon after her marriage, and becoming a mother became her new dream.
What can we learn from this debate?
While everyone is entitled to their own opinion on the traditional wife lifestyle, viewers need to be aware of the privilege that social media trade wife influencers have because they have so many people helping them run their successful empires. Women need to be aware that these influencers are portraying unrealistic expectations about marriage and motherhood, so as viewers, we need to be careful about the information we receive.
