Topline
The popular TikToker behind the Ballerina Farm social media accounts has responded to a controversial article in the Times of London that sparked an online debate about the morality of the “trad wife” influencer trend, with Hannah Neelemen telling fans her choice to get married quickly and abandon her dream of becoming a New York City dancer was the “best decision I ever made.”
TikTok Inc. offices in Culver City, California, US, on Wednesday, March 20, 2024.
Key Facts
In an update to the Ballerina Farm website’s “ about me” page late Wednesday, Neeleman wrote she wanted “to take the opportunity to tell you our story in my own words” in response to the now-viral article that painted the influencer as a victim who was tricked by her wealthy husband into marrying, having a large family and moving to Utah to run a farm while abandoning her personal dreams.
In the lengthy new post, Neelemen commented on many of the article’s most controversial aspects, including her choice to marry after just months of knowing her husband Daniel (son of JetBlue founder David Neeleman), the decision to get pregnant as an undergrad pursuing ballet at the prestigious Juilliard school in New York City and her switch from dancing to farming and running a business.
Neeleman called her Ballerina Farm accounts (she has 7.5 million followers on TikTok, 9.1 million on Instagram and 1.6 million on YouTube) “an expression of my real life” and said raising eight children on her almost 400 acre farm is “beautiful” and “rewarding.”
Neeleman on Wednesday also posted a video to the Ballerina Farm account responding to the article, saying she and Daniel “thought the interview went really well,” but were taken aback when they read the published piece, “which shocked us and shocked the world, by being an attack on our family and my marriage, portraying me as oppressed with my husband being the culprit.”
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Key Background
The update comes weeks after Times reporter Megan Agnew published an expose about the Neelemen family after visiting their home in Utah. She wrote it was almost impossible to get Neeleman alone without her husband directing conversation, that she has no help with child care because her husband “didn’t want nannies in the house” and that Neeleman sometimes gets “so ill from exhaustion that she can’t get out of bed for a week.” Ultimately, the piece portrayed Neeleman as a victim of a misogynistic family structure largely born out of the Morman church, and said she was rushed into marriage and children at the detriment of her ballet dreams. After the piece was published, an online furor was sparked on behalf of Neeleman. Some say those living as “traditional wives” or “trad wives” are all the victims of the patriarchy and had little choice in how their lives played out, while others called those claims a damaging blow to feminism—just because one chose a traditional life, they said, doesn’t mean she was forced into it. As more time went on, the discussion also turned against Agnew and the Times itself, accusing her of having an agenda and going into the story determined to write a piece against Neeleman’s traditional lifestyle. Agnew published a follow up to the piece on Monday responding to some of criticism and said she’d tried to paint an accurate portrait of the Neeleman’s “life of contradictions.” She also included quotes from Neeleman that were not originally published.
Crucial Quote
“Nothing we said in the interview implied this conclusion, which leads me to believe the angle taken was predetermined,” Neeleman said in her recent video. “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.”
Tangent
The discussion around Ballerina Farm also sparked a wider conversation about the larger “trad wife” trend on TikTok, which shows women living in the traditional gender roles of child rearing, homemaking and cooking for their families—often from scratch. The biggest trad wife accounts include Ballerina Farm, Nara Smith (famous for making everything from sunscreen to bubblegum from scratch) and Estee Williams, who has posted videos about women’s “biblical submission” to men. Some, like Agnew, have suggested trad wife influencing is a “hammer blow for feminism,” while others say true feminism is giving women the ability to choose their own lives—even if they fit traditional molds.
Further Reading
Mary Roeloffs is a Forbes reporter who covers breaking news with a frequent focus on the entertainment industry, streaming, sports news, publishing, pop culture and climate change. She joined Forbes in 2023 and lives in Dallas. She’s covered Netflix’s hottest documentaries, a surge of assaults reported on social media, the most popular books of the year and how climate change stands to impact the way we eat. Roeloffs was included on Editor & Publisher Magazine’s “ 25 Under 30” list in 2023 and worked covering local news in the greater Boston area from 2017 to 2023. She graduated with a double major in political science and journalism from Northeastern University. Follow Roeloffs for continued coverage of streaming wars, pop culture news and trending topics.
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