In Pursuit is now on PATREON

There’s an entire section of this newsletter devoted to analysis of the type of femininity performed by Hannah Neeleman online, and what the Ballerina Farm account reveals about the politics of gender in the United States. But today I’d like to talk about Daniel Neeleman, otherwise known as Mr. Ballerina Farm and/or the guy who made me start a newsletter. And/or the son of the founder of JetBlue. And/or a father o’hogs.

Daniel is representative of many trad momfluencer husbands in that he’s the setting that holds the jewel in place. He’s sometimes cringe, sometimes weird. Mostly he’s boring.

But he’s in charge. We know this not because Daniel and his peers command our attention or exude charisma or are responsible for building juggernaut social media empires. We know this because of Husband Veneration Content.

Perhaps because Daniel and his trad husband brethren are so much less interesting than their sparkling wives, who entrance us with their indefatigability, their patient smiles, and their beautiful plates of slow-cooked food, it’s easy to forget their role in the entire trad family ecosystem. Hannah is the public facing symbol of Ballerina Farm, but presumably, according to trad logic, Daniel is the decision maker, the authority figure, the one granting allowances for others’ freedom.

We see this all the time in trad couples. Think of Chip and Joanna Gaines. Joanna is who we’re paying for. She’s thin, conventionally attractive, and an expert at all things feminine. She literally makes homes. Chip is the muscle swinging a sledgehammer on demo day. He’s the dad-joking lovable goof. But, according to many of Joanna’s own statements, he’s also responsible for nurturing and enabling Joanna’s ambitions to grow and thrive. Time and time again, Joanna cites Chip as being the driving force behind the stunning success of Magnolia Inc, which now includes a television channel, multiple spin-off shows, a magazine, several homegoods lines, and a slew of Texas-based brick and mortars that function as a Fixer Upper mecca. Google “Chip and Joanna Gaines ‘Chip’s idea’” and you’ll see what I mean.

, my personal patron saint for all things evangelical and gendered, further elucidated my feelings about Chip and Joanna in our interview for .

On the outside, they really represent this “American ideal.” And obviously she works. But she works, as they have said, in the most coded way possible, with his permission. Because all of the language on Magnolia is like, “I was dreaming about this and Chip made me do it.” So it is so coded. And it's coded for a Christian audience that may have concerns because obviously she is incredibly successful in her own right, has her own shows, and does her own stuff. So it’s, “Chip pushed me to do this, Chip made me do it because it’s my dream. And he supports me so much. How lucky am I to have the most supportive husband?”

It was Chip’s idea to open the Magnolia restaurant, it was Daniel’s idea to build Hannah’s muscles by way of raw eggs, and you can either read this as loving spousal support or you can read this as male guidance for a woman to live a certain way, which, in the case of trad wives, is a hyper domestic, hyper feminine way.

Heterosexual marriage is famously unequal, and the inequality of trad marriages is often held up as not only a defining feature, but as something to be celebrated, as an indication of divine balance. But how do trad momfluencers convince mainstream audiences to celebrate female disempowerment? How do they paint a portrait of marital harmony that relies on regressive gender norms and women’s passivity and financial dependence? Husband veneration content.

We see it when Joanna rolls her eyes lovingly at Chip as he cartoonishly flexes his biceps before directing his sons to help him smash some crumbling drywall (while the boys do boy stuff, Joanna ushers her daughters to help her with flower arrangements). We see it when Hannah gives Daniel a tired embrace after he caresses her pregnant abdomen in a show of silly ownership.

We see it in Father’s Day reels, which celebrate “The ones who show up faithfully day after day, pouring into their families, discipling their children, leading family worship, working hard to protect and provide, doing the unseen work of loving and leading day after day. It doesn’t have to be Father’s Day to say thank you. We need strong husbands and fathers who love the Lord, and we honor them.”

In reels like this one, explicitly masculine qualities are highlighted. The venerated dad mentioned above is shown exercising with his kids, throwing a fireman uniform onto a boy toddler, roughhousing on a trampoline, holding a kid on his lap in front of a car’s steering wheel, and cooking meat outside (you know, man cooking). He is venerated because he’s doing dad stuff - parenting by means of asserting his gender.

Some husband veneration content functions as gentle (or not so gentle!) rebukes to overly mannish wives to better understand their place. Wives that hold opinions that might be too strong. Wives that have desires. Wives that maybe allow themselves to daydream of equality.

Content like this urges trad wives to simply “let your man be a man” and the rest will follow. “Letting your man be a man” means constant validation, compliments, expressions of gratitude, and most importantly, never muddying the marital waters with anything that might resemble a point of view or claim of expertise.

This type of advice relies on faith and an unshakeable belief in another fellow human being’s ability to make choices in your best interest. It’s the type of faith children hopefully have in their parents, because children are by nature vulnerable, in need of protection, and have famously undeveloped prefrontal cortexes.

The same can not be said of adult women. And yet.

This type of advice always presumes that a woman can only do and know so much, and that if she wants happiness, she should think less.

Central to making this messaging palatable for religious and mainstream audiences alike is an emphasis on romantic love. Female subjugation works, according to trad logic, because being in love feels so good that obedience, submission, and passivity cease to feel onerous, and instead, feel natural, right, the correct path to “balance.” A focus on soul-mate love also keeps skeptical feminists coming back to voyeuristically watch, to wonder if maybe just maybe, against all historical precedent and better judgement, maybe a traditionally gendered household would be simpler, easier, than being a woman constantly asking to be heard in white patriarchal America. Posts like this, while not explicitly endorsing the Biblical umbrella of protection (in which God is the boss of the world and the man is the boss of the home), undergird the idealization of gender norms, implicitly promising viewers that you too will still feel like dancing when no one’s watching (no one aside from your nearly 15,000 Instagram followers) after three kids and the weight of adult life, if you just believe. In God and/or the nuclear family. Often, these things are one in the same, so central is the prosperity gospel and insularity to the mythos of America.

Prior to their divorce, Rachel Hollis and Dave Hollis were the poster spouses of oxymoronic trad ideology. Despite the fact that Rachel forged an entire brand on girlboss hustle culture, she and her husband still managed to promote a vision of marriage in which she was the gifted star and he the one that allowed her to shine.

Often trad ideology leans upon the assumption that wives and mothers in gender-normative partnerships are miserable. That women might feel frustrated by a lack of agency and autonomy within a marriage and a household, that women might bemoan the unfair division of labor, that women might dare to want more from their partners than financial support, manual labor, and the occasional “good dad” song and dance.

And in response to these ungrateful (unnatural!) women, trad wives preach a type of submission that they call by any number of names. Gratitude. Love. Faith. They teach their followers that women cannot live full, happy lives without prioritizing the mental health and emotional wellbeing of their husbands above all else. A good trad wife must be her husband’s therapist, her husband’s sexual release valve, her husband’s cook and housekeeper, her husband’s moral center, and crucially her husband’s mother. Since the man in trad relationships acts as a stand-in for God, the whole setup crumbles if God isn’t happy. Do all of this, trad wives promise, and your husband will be a kind, fair, benevolent overlord, who will make you feel cherished, feminine, and content.

In several posts, Randie Megan (@raisingmaidens) exhorts her followers to build their husbands up, to be their husbands’ helpmate. Only in this way, she argues, can men reach their “earth-dominating potential.”

And here’s the thing - no matter how many beautifully lit photos of husbands cradling newborns or husbands stealing a kiss as a trad wife pulls a pie from the oven - the trad marriage exists in order to enable a man unfettered access to power. To his household, where he might employ emotional and/or physical abuse, and call it “discipline.” To the marketplace, where he might employ emotional and/or physical abuse, and call it “leadership.” To the political arena, where he might squander environmental resources, harm communities, and hoard wealth, and call it “earth domination.”

The trad marriage is a system without any checks and balances, it’s a system designed to uphold and strengthen white patriarchy, and it’s a system designed to trick the rest of us in entertaining daydreams of freedom which are nothing more than a willingness to disengage from our own lives and the lives of those with whom we might otherwise be in community. The performance of trad marital bliss, which is sometimes extreme and sometimes less so in terms of gender roles and power, also operates as an unyielding foundation upon which secular heterosexual marriage was built. This is why even those of us wives in partnerships we refer to as egalitarian still get called by the elementary school when our kid is sick, still are expected to be “flexible” when it comes to childcare bleeding into professional work, are still expected to spend tens of thousands of dollars on purity-white dresses and Cinderella pageantry simply because we’ve chosen a life partner. The dogma of trad marriage, so certain, so unbending, so encased in the amber of toxic masculinity and submissive femininity, is the fairy tale we’ve all been taught to pursue, whether we believe in God or not. Married women might choose to spend their whole lives trying to write new stories about romantic love, about family and community, about power. The effort of authorship can be exhausting, confounding, and frustrating. Or, the trad husband, holding his perfectly compatible trad wife firmly in place, argues, you can stop fighting so hard and start following instead.

Share

Related Reading

*A version of this newsletter ran here.

ANYWAY, we got some comments and DMs about Raybould’s content being off-putting because of her ostentatious display of wealth. This was really interesting to me, because while I find many things off-putting about Raybould’s online presence, for whatever reason, her wealth was never top of my list. She and her husband own a gigantic McMansion, have a fancy home gym, and take wildly pricy trips to Disney on the regular, so yes, I have always assumed they’re wealthy to some degree, but that’s where my musing has historically stopped. I guess you could say I found the aesthetics of her wealth - boring?

And that made me think about what we mean when we talk about wealth, and how our own aesthetic preferences, aspirations, and insecurities inform our understandings of money and the appearance of wealth. A caveat before we bravely continue: almost every single descriptor I’m using in this piece should be surrounded by skyscraper-sized scare quotes, because every word used to describe aesthetics or style is almost always heavily laden with implied value judgements and assumptions about class, race, and gender.

Ok, so after processing the fact that Raybould’s home decor doesn’t slap me in the face with the idea of wealth, I thought about what kind of content DOES.

Read more

Caro and I hopped into a google doc to discuss the Ballerina Farm relocation to Ireland, the Neeleman’s possible endgame, and wow oh wow the PRINT ISSUE of Evie magazine, which my intrepid friend Caro purchased with non-Monopoly dollars in order to contribute to the greater good. And holy shit, IT IS GOOD. Our convo is dishy, absurd, and dare I say rather gossipy, which (particularly after reading a galley of Kelsey McKinney’s EXCELLENT new book about the far-reaching cultural implications and functions of gossip, You Didn’t Hear This From Me), I am comfortable describing as such.

Speaking of books, Caro’s forthcoming tradwife thriller, Yesteryear, is maybe my most anticipated book ever? The premise is simply brilliant, and Anne Hathaway is set to produce and star in a film adaption (!!!!!)

If you enjoy this conversation, definitely subscribe to Caro’s incredible podcast, which she makes with , . Diabolical Lies is a “podcast on a mission to untangle the various ways that patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism (the evil triad) infiltrate our culture and lives,” and it’s a whip-smart, hilarious roller coaster ride through the chaos that is our present world.

Diabolical Lies

we regret to inform you it really is That Deep™️

By Katie Gatti Tassin

Sara: So Caro, what were your initial thoughts when you saw that the BF crew had temporarily relocated to Ireland?

Caro: Okay, at the risk of offering a bit of a left turn from what you were thinking I might say: I was kind of stoked. The reason why this account skyrocketed to fame has to do with the illusion they put forth of a hard-working family loving life on a farm with no help, no major luxuries, etc — so to see the Neelemans pivot into rich bitch influencer territory was frankly very satisfying to me. I think a user who finds their account now would be much, much clearer on who these people are (rich people) and what they are trying to do (sell you shit) than someone who stumbled onto the account five years earlier.

Sara: Ok, wow, this is an excellent point. I think I’m so BF-pilled that it didn’t even occur to me that this might be a good thing in terms of their propaganda potential. I’m still fixated on the fact that it’s so (seemingly!) easy for them to fit ANYTHING into their narrative of morally untouchable modern-day pioneers even if it’s nonsensical or off-brand. So like, sure they’re doing something no [real] farmer or rancher could/would ever do (abandon the source of their livelihood for three months), but they’re doing it for the “greater good.” They’ve still somehow managed to frame the move as part of a bigger project to bring slow cooking and family values to the masses. And I feel like they’re cynically even framing this as a feminist win for Hannah. Like, look! She gets to follow her culinary dreams! Daniel’s a feminist husband king! Egg-apron be damned!

Caro: LMFAO at feminist husband king. Sara, I know you haven’t read the Evie print interview of them yet, but just FYI they claim Daniel has “rizz” so… enjoy that. But to address your point: for sure, they will always spin the narrative to fit their Mormon good vibes bill. But think: even a year ago, these people were insisting they have no help, denying that they have any ulterior motives, and basically just cosplaying a “yassified dust bowl” aesthetic, to quote my podcast partner, Katie. This year, they took the whole family to Ireland (!), left their farm with all the animals in the first year of their dairy business for three months, and are both doing chef classes. Oh, and in the Evie print interview, Hannah tells the magazine that she and Daniel do a 90 minute workout together each morning and come back at eight or nine, at which point the kids are “getting ready for school.” So like: they have nannies. They’re rich. They’re selling you shit. It’s obvious now. It’s no longer the subtext, but the actual text. And sure, they’re going to lie about it the way all influencers do, but the nuance required to see through this is about 50x less than what it was a year ago, and that makes me happy.

Sara: Before we get into the what-the-fuck of it all re: Ireland, can you treat our readers to a choice smattering of “revelations” about Ballerina Farm from the Evie print piece? Did they LITERALLY use the word “rizz?” Like actually?!?!?!?!

Caro: Oh, Sara. They literally used the word “rizz.” For those who are super interested, Katie and I recorded a bonus ep relaying our reactions to the magazine in full, but here’s a quick little TLDR to give you a taste.

Read more

It was breaking news, and I had to act [write] fast, and the result was an essay that simply couldn’t cover every pertinent detail of the Evie (anti-birth control, extremely pro-Trump) and Ballerina Farm collab. This mostly means that I had to save my pressing thoughts about the truly stunning cinematic masterpiece that accompanied the Evie piece.

Because my thoughts are so expansive (much like the rolling plains of Utah), I saved them for this movie review. So pop some popcorn, rekindle your appreciation for John Wayne, Oklahoma (the musical), Stanley Kubrick’s use of tinkly piano music in Eyes Wide Shut, AND Federico Fellini’s belief in the power of lighting to shape a story.

Ballerina Farm And The New American Dream is MY pick for Best Film (sorry - editorial film) Of The Year.

Read more

HOWEVER, I would be remiss if I did not not offer my humble thoughts about the Ballerina Farm/Rudy Jude crossover since approximately 1,209 of you have DMed me about it. I AM WRITING THIS ONLY HALF CAFFEINATED BECAUSE THIS IS AN EMERGENCY. BEAR WITH ME.

Read more

In Pursuit is now on PATREON

In the days since the now infamous Times profile of Ballerina Farm has gone viral, we’ve seen backlash to the backlash to the backlash. Many (including me) have noted the thread of patriarchal control that seems to undergird the Neeleman lifestyle. But after the first round of “free Hannah” pieces were published, there’s been an onslaught of pieces decrying “bitter feminists” for unfairly judging Hannah Neeleman’s choices, particularly since she posted this response to the profile, and this updated “About Us” page on the Ballerina Farm website.

The rose tinted conservative online magazine Evie has published defenses of Ballerina Farm, but so have plenty of mainstream journalists and influencers, implying that the Times profile was a hit piece written by a feminist with an agenda, that Megan Agnew deliberately “attacked” the Neeleman family. I don’t agree with this assessment (read Agnew’s reflection on the profile here). But I do think Hannah Neeleman’s response to Agnew’s question about feminism in the profile itself AND her defenders’ invocation of feminism, is worth taking a closer look at.

When Megan Agnew asked Hannah Neeleman if she identified as a feminist, she responded as follows:

“I feel like I’m a femin-,” she stops herself. “There’s so many different ways you could take that word. I don’t even know what feminism means any more.” She “absolutely” feels as though she has become politicised by other people. “We try so hard to be neutral and be ourselves and people will put a label on everything. This is just our normal life.”

I understand Neeleman’s confusion about feminism and I think this confusion is at the heart of the furor over both the profile and the Ballerina Farm account (and all that it represents).

Note how often feminism is mentioned in the many passionate defenses of Neeleman in this post. The general consensus is summed up neatly by these two comments:

“Seems like a lot of people claim they’re feminists until a woman chooses a life that doesn’t fit their narrative.”

“I think the point of feminism is the choice. If this is your dream, no one should be shaming you for it just like no one should shame the woman who chooses career over family. The ability to make the choice is the beauty 🩷”

The first comment was liked 5,732 times and the second 6,528 times.

So what is feminism exactly? And is it defined by a woman’s choices? Or at least, her right to choose the life she wants?

Our generation is not the first to debate the definition of feminism. In the 19th century, first wave white suffragettes argued that feminism was all about getting the white woman’s vote, but failed to see how not simultaneously fighting for Black men’s right to vote made their version of feminism limited and reliant on access to white supremacist power. Black feminists were systematically excluded from these efforts. In addition to fighting for the Black vote, Black feminists advocated against lynchings, fought for increased education access for Black people, and a definition of feminism which acknowledged the inseparability of race, class, and gender.

During the second wave of feminism, which coincided with the American Civil Rights movement, Black feminists continued to work on coalition building while many white feminists focused mainly on a woman’s right to work outside of the home. Again, white feminists didn’t extend this fight to the many domestic workers and childcare workers of color. These women, because of systemic racism and structural poverty, were often unable to make the choice between staying home or working outside the home.

During the third wave, Black scholar and theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced the concept of intersectionality to address how various layers of marginalization interact to impact people’s lives and their ability to access equity, support, and access. Most recently, critiques of girlboss feminism and lean-in feminism, which celebrate a single woman’s ability to succeed in a patriarchal system that actively oppresses marginalized groups, have reckoned with the futility of trying to win at a game rigged against so many.

This brings us to today, where we’re torn between defending Hannah Neeleman’s right to live out her bucolic dream and critiquing how the glorification of that dream impacts cultural demands and expectations of mothers and women.

In her indispensable book White Feminism: From the Suffragettes to Influencers and who they Leave Behind, Koa Beck writes about the limitations of self-optimization in the white feminist movement, which salutes a woman’s individual ability to access her goals while ignoring how that access is not available or accessible for all people. Women or not.

For Beck, feminism is not about a single issue (such as choice), it’s about all people having access to joyful, safe, and productive lives.

We need to build a more holistic, ambitious approach to inequality that doesn’t just isolate a single issue as definitive Feminism or ask that we aspire to that single issue. Nationally, we need a tiered movement toward gender equality that addresses the reality of people’s lives and that involves not only marginalized genders being seen, but securing food and basic resources like clean water and housing. Then workplace protections, decent wages, and a reformed justice system. Finally, once basic needs, workplace protections, and our legal system are secured, they need the opportunities to grow through education and small business opportunities. White feminism has never been this movement.

In other words, feminism necessitates active resistance against oppression. It is not politically neutral, nor does it equate interrogation of women’s choices (and the landscape in which those choses are made) as being synonymous with misogyny or anti-feminism. As Beck writes, white feminism “aligns being ‘pro-woman’ with being entirely self-seeking. The self becomes the dominant lens by which you metabolize oppression, reframed narrowly as a lack of business opportunity, a lack of seed money, a lack of confidence, a lack of stamina, a lack of an ability to simply believe in yourself.”

In the Ballerina Farm discourse, we see this “pro-woman” white feminism time and time again as BF defenders praise Hannah Neeleman’s work ethic, her entrepreneurship, her energy and her drive, without stopping to consider how her various layers of privilege enable her to employ these strengths in the first place. Does the undocumented single mother of three lack work ethic, entrepreneurship, energy, or drive? Or does she lack access?

writes the newsletter , which is about misogyny, fatphobia, and more, and is the author of Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women, and Unshrinking: How to face Fatphobia. She teaches philosophy and gender studies at Cornell University. I asked her how the idea of “choice” factors into our understanding of feminism.

Feminism becomes meaningless when it's reduced to empty rhetoric about supporting women's choices. Unfortunately, women often choose to be subservient and kowtow to men's desires because that's what's rewarded under patriarchy. That's simply not feminism. Feminism, to me, is defined by a belief that white supremacist patriarchy is real and a commitment to ending it. That means supporting abortion rights, being an advocate for more vulnerable women and girls, and, most controversially, standing up for trans folks and other people marginalized in virtue of their gender expression or identity

Millions of women defend Hannah Neeleman’s right to choose her own life, but are they also defending other women’s right to choose? What about a trans woman’s right to choose gender affirming healthcare? What about a queer woman’s right to choose to raise children? What about a disabled woman’s right to live freely without being hindered by ableist physical landscapes and power structures? What about a migrant woman’s right to choose to live free the threat of from political violence? What about an Indigenous woman’s right to choose to live unburdened by the generational trauma of colonialism?

Kate clarifies that “of course feminist don’t, and shouldn’t, agree about everything. But we can have productive arguments over, say, how best to relate to beauty standards and make society more equitable without women’s basic freedoms and equality with men up for grabs.”

Serene Khader is a feminist theorist and the author of the forthcoming Faux Feminism: Why We Fall For White Feminism and How We can Stop. In response to the women flocking to the Ballerina Farm account to praise Hannah Neeleman’s freedom to choose her own destiny, Serene argues that all choices are “socially shaped,” and that it’s worth having conversations about whose choices deserve to be celebrated.

No one would support a woman of color launching a Ballerina Farm-esque account. Welfare rights activists such as Johnnie Tillmon used to argue that white women like Hannah Neeleman are celebrated for being “perfect” housewives, while Black women with many children are vilified as “welfare queens” and drains on the system.

Many outspoken BF defenders claim that people raising questions about whiteness, patriarchy, and feminism as it pertains to the massive cultural power of the Ballerina Farm account “hate” women simply because we’re not going out of our way to celebrate one particular woman’s very particular choices. But I think this misunderstands what leads so many thinkers to write about the impact of Ballerina Farm. I think it also ignores the urgency of many questions raised by the account.

Is it feminist to celebrate Hannah Neeleman for living her dream? How does such a feminism actively support other women’s ability to live their dreams? Or is it feminist to examine how Daniel Neeleman can openly disavow reproductive justice and divorce but the Ballerina Farm account is still called “politically neutral?” Is it feminist to expect the Neelemans to talk about generational wealth and the inability for people who don’t look like them to “build businesses from scratch?”

Subscribe now

Every generation fucks up feminism, and I’m sure folks reading this twenty years from now will point out the many ways that I have fucked up feminism. And that’s a good thing! Resting on an easy, inflexible definition of feminism will only prevent progress and a radical reconsideration of how to create a more just world. We should be thinking and asking and wondering and discussing.

But in response to the recent push to “stop talking about Ballerina Farm,” I guess I just have to ask, why? Posting hateful comments on a stranger’s Instagram account sucks and isn’t productive. Of course. But I don’t think the people writing about Ballerina Farm critics being anti-feminist, or the influencers and random BF followers splashing the Ballerina Farm account with comments of support, are talking about internet trolls. I think they’re talking about their discomfort with a version of feminism that requires active political participation, that requires active engagement with privilege, that requires active work to destroy white supremacy.

A couple years ago, I interviewed Kyla Wazana Topkins about trad wives. Kyla an author, the chair of gender studies at the University of Buffalo, and the executive producer of the Feminist Keywords podcast. When I asked her what she made of the ways in which “choice feminism” has been recently weaponized, she said this:

It’s interesting to see many Ballerina Farm comments align feminism (which many of them call “true” feminism as though it is a religion) with “choice.” “True feminism,” they say, “means respecting every women’s choice.”

And yet: it is fundamentalist Christianity that is trying to deny women choice over their own bodies and therefore their own futures when they seek to limit reproductive healthcare; and it is fundamentalist Christianity like Mormonism that advocates for fewer life choices for women AND men, when it comes to sexual and gender freedom, and freedom to make alternative romantic choices. 

Actually feminism fundamentally complicates the idea of choice by asking: how does the world form the paths in front of us before we even get to imagine that we have choices. Feminism doesn’t care if Hannah Neeleman chooses to have eight children. Feminism cares to ask complicated questions about what choice is, and to clarify how what seems like a choice may not be one at all. Only Hannah can decide that for herself: if only everyone could say the same.

There’s little to be gained by parsing one person’s individual choices, particularly since none of us will ever know how these choices were made and in what type of cultural, religious landscape they were fostered. Choices, after all, are never made in a vacuum. And some choices are freer than others. For many, sometimes the best “choice” is just the least shitty option. So I’ll keep talking about Ballerina Farm as long as I continue to be curious about choices. Who gets to make them, whose choices are celebrated, and whose are suppressed.

When we talk about Ballerina Farm, we’re talking about ourselves and how we’re engaging with feminism. We’re asking ourselves what our feminism is worth. What it means, who it protects, and who it ignores.

Share

In Pursuit is now on PATREON

I find myself writing this piece with nothing more eloquent than a heavy sigh.

OG readers of In Pursuit know that I started this newsletter by posting a question to Twitter about whether or not people wanted my take on the most famed daddy o’ hogs the internet has ever known. A bunch of people said yes, and the rest was Substack history.

Today, as then, I am motivated by a potent combination of weariness and rage. In the above piece, one of the most salient points of fury was Mr. Ballerina Farm’s insistence on speaking for his wife, his need to voice her narrative. Stunningly, the post that launched this newsletter appears to no longer exist (ARE YOU READING THIS DANIEL?!), but here’s the text of the caption.

Hannah prefers cooking, cleaning, and reading during natural light hours. She calls it the clearest and most invigorating light, irreplaceable by artificial contributors. The children, diurnal creatures in their own right, agree. In light of this, I often stumble upon a jam packed school study session stationed near the ample living room window. Stunningly crafted and presenter of breathtaking mount views, this treasured window is a people magnet in our home as it carelessly dumps buckets of natural light onto grateful recipients below.

You can read all of my detailed thoughts about why this caption makes me want to throw my laptop across the room like a Frisbee, but what’s most relevant for today’s purposes is that Daniel has long had a nasty little habit of speaking over and for the person whose Instagram presence is responsible for Ballerina Farm the company becoming what it is today, a multi-tiered business with millions of followers. Hannah Neeleman is the star of Ballerina Farm and always has been. But this hasn’t prevented Daniel from continuously inserting himself where, frankly, he simply isn’t needed (or wanted?!?!?!)

Before we get into the Times profile that has all BF watchers abuzz, note Daniel’s proprietary attitude towards his wife’s 8th pregnancy in this pregnancy announcement ⬇️

Note his belly rub. Note her eyes.

Daniel, in addition to being almost unforgivably boring (shout-out to these Redditers who have dubbed him Dim Dan 🫣), not only needs to be the boss, he needs everyone who’s watching Ballerina Farm (9.1 million on Instagram and counting) to know that he’s the boss.

I wrote about Daniel’s preoccupation with patriarchal control in this piece ⬆️ so wasn’t exactly shocked to see him lay bare his belief in supreme male authority in the Times profile. But I was surprised at just how little he tried to hide his ironclad grip on power. So let’s get into it.

Megan Agnew surely intended to write a profile of Hannah Neeleman because Hannah Neeleman is followed by millions of people and those millions of people are surely reading this profile because they’re interested in her. But Agnew ended up writing a piece about Daniel Neeleman, simply because she had no other choice. Simply because Daniel insisted on his point of view being centered.

From the beginning of the profile, it’s clear that Daniel is the subject. He welcomes Agnew into the home, he tells her her that “Hannah will be out in a minute.” He answers Agnew’s questions to Hannah about trad life, he answers Agnew’s questions to Hannah about whether online hatred impacts her personally. He says that he’s not the “head of the house,” but we’re all wondering what Hannah would say if he weren’t constantly looming over her. At one point, he is literally standing behind her as she attempts to talk to Agnew.

One of the only questions Daniel lets Hannah attempt to answer herself is about feminism, but it’s hard not to view her answer as just proof of self-censorship, as evidence she’s accustomed to filtering her viewpoints through Daniel before daring to own them.

Is she a feminist? “I feel like I’m a femin-,” she stops herself. “There’s so many different ways you could take that word. I don’t even know what feminism means any more.”

Daniel says he wants more children despite the fact that he won’t abide nannies, and despite the fact that his wife is sometimes bedridden for a week due to exhaustion, a fact he chooses to share. For - reasons?

During a brief moment during which Daniel checks on some animals, Agnew asks Hannah if this (life on the ranch) is what she always wanted, to which Hannah responds directly for the only time in the interview. “No.” She goes on to cite her love of New York City and her dreams of professional dancing. When asked the same question, Daniel also answers directly. “Yes.” He says he “expected Hannah to be more at home with the kids but she said, ‘I watched my parents working together and so whatever we do, we got to do it together.’”

The courtship and marriage happened on Daniel’s terms after he “saw her and was ready to go,” which really screams respectful curiosity about another human being. Hannah tells him she won’t go on a date with him for six months, and instead of, you know, respecting her wishes, he stalker-style finds out when she’s next flying from Salt Lake to New York, calls Daddy Jet Blue, and gets a seat immediately next to hers. On a five flour flight. Where she is unable to leave. Within three months, at Daniel’s insistence, they are married and Hannah has a newborn, putting an effective end to her dancing dreams, at least as she’d originally conceived of them. The room that was originally intended to be Hannah’s dance studio is now the kids’ school room.

We’re not totally sure how Hannah feels about feminism, but we know that Daniel is anti-abortion (“not good”), he may or may not be anti pain control during childbirth (Hannah whispers about how “great” her epidural with one of her children while Daniel is in the other room. Daniel was not present for that child’s birth). And we know he thinks Megan Agnew flew across the country to talk to him about ditches.

I check my watch, feeling edgy. I want to talk to Neeleman.

“Just one more stop,” he says. Neeleman calls him. “OK,” he says to her. “We’re just heading your way,” he adds, driving in the opposite direction out into the fields to show me another ditch.

Throughout the four hour interview, Daniel wastes Agnew’s limited time by dragging her all over the ranch explaining farm stuff no one reading this profile gives a single shit about, despite Agnew having been told she would be able to speak with Hannah alone. He interrupts Hannah time and time again. He contradicts her answers to questions posed TO HER. Agnew never does get to speak with Hannah without Daniel’s inescapable presence.

And guys, it’s all just so dark. I guess there’s a world in which the Neelemans are playing a game of 4D chess to deliberately paint Daniel as the villain in order to humanize Hannah and make feminists more empathetic and therefore open to her content, but I struggle to believe Daniel capable of such savvy orchestration. Plus there’s this. Which. I mean. I have no words.

@hannal.ballerinafarm❤️❤️❤️ #foryou #ballerinafarm

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

YOU’RE WELCOME (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Subscribe now

The Mormon church is not the only organized religion built on the back of patriarchy, but this Times piece makes it impossible not to examine the belief system holding men like Daniel up, enabling them to speak for (and over) the women in their lives.

As , a writer who grew up in the LDS church writes in this essay, “Only men can become true citizens of the LDS Church. They are ordained to the priesthood, an authority derived from God, the beginning of all things. Men have the right to preside, reveal and conceal.” In Mormonism, boys are raised with the knowledge that they will grow up to hold power. Girls are raised to view themselves as mothers and wives in training.

The Mormon church, like many evangelical Christian religions, views God (definitely not Goddess) as the highest authority, and imbues the man/husband/father as the mini-God (this is definitely a religious term, right??) of the (cis-hetero) household. To read more about how patriarchy is a feature of Mormonism, not a bug, you can consult the LDS website itself, which, like Daniel, isn’t trying to hide anything! Here’s a quote from former LDS president, Spencer W. Kimball.

“The Lord organized the whole program in the beginning with a father who procreates, provides, and loves and directs, and a mother who conceives and bears and nurtures and feeds and trains.”

The WHOLE PROGRAM though!

Both women who have left the church, like Conley, and women still practicing Mormonism, have written about the misogyny and sexism embedded in the LDS church. I particularly appreciated this piece by (paywalled but worth it), this one by , and this one by . Given the church’s long history of disenfranchising and subjugating women, it’s hardly surprising that the gender dynamics in the Neeleman household (at least as revealed in this Times profile) uphold an ideal of family in which the man’s desires and needs are paramount and the woman’s are sublimated beneath her (“God-given,” “natural,” “innate”) duty to give and serve.

I emailed to get her thoughts on the BF profile, and she had so much to say that I think I need to devote an entire interview to her insight, but this particular comment about Mormonism and evangelical Christianity sheds light on what makes the Times profile so disturbing.

I think what Hannah/Ballerina Farm did really well that made their account so successful was tapping into this belief that was just cresting from MAGA evangelicals and Christian Nationalism that women who submit to their husbands is what's best for everyone and should be reflected in our government. So they seem to downplay the Mormon part, because evangelicals don't really love Mormons typically and don't consider them real "Christians." But the benevolent patriarchy and sacrifice of a beautiful and talented young woman to the point where she agrees to live an isolated and relatively austere life on a farm alone with her husband--that lands. 

Last year, for , I spoke to , who wrote the indispensable Heretic, about leaving her evangelical, patriarchal religion. And she notes how the celebration of this ideal of marriage (and of life) so often seeps out of the home and into the political arena.

So when we see these congressional hearings, where it's all men asking about people who have uteruses and talking about reproductive rights and talking about abortion, and we're all watching this going, “They have no fucking clue.” Bu in their worldview, they don't have to. I mean, it's really the divine right of kings, just translated to the 21st century, where every man has the Divine Right of King over his own little kingdom that is his nuclear family.

I have no doubt that the Times profile might have made BF lovers and haters alike reexamine both Daniel and Hannah’s role in the account (and the business). And I get why BF watchers are in a Free Hannah moment! But it goes much deeper than the particulars of one momfluencer’s maybe (probably?) shitty marriage. The massive popularity and visibility of a woman who adheres to so many of patriarchy’s most impossible requirements both explicitly and implicitly normalizes a point of view in which it’s maybe totally ok for men to be making decisions about women’s bodies. In which it’s completely natural for men to be deciding who qualifies as a “real” woman. In which it’s God’s plan that women stay in the home and raise children alone and unsupported on a figurative island. In which daycare is synonymous with maternal neglect. In which birth control is sinful. In which paid maternity is irrelevant since mothers shouldn’t be working in the first place.

In which it’s right and sacred that the truly Good Mothers are collapsing into bed for weeks at a time.

Share

Related! State governments can make women’s lives better. And they can make them demonstrably worse. If you’d like to join the In Pursuit Giving Circle, dedicated to fighting for progressive power in swing states, you can do that here. I live in New Hampshire, a state that just signed a bunch of transphobic policies into legislation. It sucks! but Giving Circles help to fight back.

If you’re reading this as one of Sara’s regular readers, you are already fluent in the language of Ballerina Farm.

If you’re one of Virginia’s readers, you may be asking how a ballerina learned to farm? Here’s a bit about the ballet side of things, here’s a bit about the body politics side of things, here’s a bit about the trad wife side of things, and here’s the rest of the BF archive for your deep-diving pleasure.

CW for some explicit diet details (impossible to avoid when discussing this story!)

Sara

Ok, so our good buddy at Ballerina Farm has introduced a new theme into her account and I think we need to discuss it.

Virginia

She’s a protein girlie now!!

Sara

IT’S TRUE. Virginia, what do you think/know about protein?

Virginia

Well, I know that diet culture teaches us we can NEVER EVER EAT ENOUGH PROTEIN. It is the one macronutrient they have never demonized. Like, you just never hear people say, “I have to eat less protein” or “I’m cutting proteins.”  

Sara

Totally—although I feel like in the 80s/90s, protein was vilified by proxy because it often went hand in hand with fat, right? 

Virginia

Yes. But even then, it was like, eat lean chicken, eat white meat. 

Sara

Oh right. That’s also the era of “pork—the other white meat.” 

Virginia

Correct.

Sara

So I said this was new for the BF extended universe, but that’s not entirely true. Hannah has posted multiple workout videos (the ones she posts while pregnant obviously elicit polarized responses), and Mr. BF (Daniel) posts plenty of weight lifting content. 

Virginia

Hog Dad, as I know him. 

Sara

Lol, correct. 

But this feels different to me: “I’m trying to eat more protein to build more muscle.” Like, it’s super deliberate and I find that curious. I really need to talk this through, to understand why the introduction of “here’s my protein diet” feels like a big development in the Ballerina Farm universe. 

I sense it’s more complicated than BF entering a beauty pageant, or BF sharing a birth video, but I need help untangling WHY.

Read more

In Pursuit is now on PATREON

For those of you wondering what’s been happening at Ballerina Farm now that the Mrs. World pageant has come and gone, I have an update. For those of you who are blissfully clueless about what Ballerina Farm is, I LOVE THAT for you!

Ballerina Farm has always lightly dabbled in fitness influencer content - lots of pregnant workout reels, lots of green drinks, lots of dark morning gym runs. Today, Hannah announced that she was upping her protein intake in order to build more muscle. and I are working on a joint essay about the the diet culture of it all. But today’s essay is about one salient detail about this new protein regime: Daniel, otherwise known as Mr. Ballerina Farm. And/or the guy who made me start a newsletter. And/or the son of the founder of JetBlue. And/or a father o’hogs.

Daniel is representative of many trad momfluencer husbands in that he’s the setting that holds the jewel in place. He’s sometimes cringe, sometimes weird. Mostly he’s boring. But he’s in charge.

Read more

In Pursuit is now on PATREON

Celebrity profiles promise an insider’s peek into the lives of our parasocial besties, but celebrity profiles are not unvarnished records of objective truths; they are stories. And these stories are written by people making choices. About questions, about framing, about public interest. So when we talk about celebrity profiles, we’re talking about a smorgasbord of factors as much as we’re talking about the celebrity herself.

Despite the variable of human choice though, most profiles follow a few tried and true scripts.

• There’s America’s sweetheart “gobbling,” “scarfing,” and “inhaling” cool girl foods like pasta, cheeseburgers, and donuts as she entrances all onlookers with her charisma and beauty.

She drifted into the dining room followed not so much by a cloud of glitter but by some subtler, more effable magic. A force. A presence. Someone who was born to turn heads. “So sorry I’m late!” she breathed with her trademark grin, as she sat down five minutes early and promptly slathered a waiting roll with butter before popping a bite into her mouth. The ghost of jasmine floated towards me. “Oooh we MUST split the lasagna. You’ll die - it’s my favorite.” I had no choice but to acquiesce.

• There’s the celebrity profile that feels like a gentle version of trolling - or what calls the “lancing” profile (see here).

• There’s the celebrity profile used pretty much exclusively as advertisement (see here).

• There’s the celebrity profile intended to usher in a celebrity’s rebirth (or at least a reborn image) (see here).

• And on increasingly rare occasions, there’s the celebrity profile that belies a stunning lack of publicist presence and/or guidance (see here)!

What’s rarest of all is a celebrity profile that breaks through the shellack of celebrity itself and offers the reader a glimpse into a new perspective: on the celebrity, her industry, her power, or (as in this case), the celebrity’s body (and all that it communicates).

My favorite profile of all time is probably Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s profile of Gwyneth Paltrow, which manages to provide brilliant social commentary, cultural criticism, and what feels like a true look into Paltrow’s world (or at least the corner of her world that Paltrow chose to show her). Brodesser-Akner considers the impact of Paltrow’s celebrity, the scope of her influence, the financial drivers of her success, and insightfully interrogates what fuels our fascination with Paltrow and her rarefied Goop-y kingdom. It’s a true tour de force.

I’ve written two profiles, the experience of which made me understand firsthand how many individual choices go into covering a celebrity. There is no such thing as truly objective journalism, and celebrity profiles are no exception. First, there’s the subjectivity of the writer herself. In the writing of one profile, my background as a chronicler of momfluencer culture significantly shaped not only my questions, but the arc of the piece itself. And in the writing of the other profile, my burgeoning awareness of diet culture and fat phobia made it nearly impossible for me to focus on anything BUT those themes within profile. But I was not the only one person making choices. There were also several editors with their own biases, motivations, and professional mandates; there were publicists mediating access; there were, of course, the celebrities themselves; there was audience interest; and lastly, there were the photographers.

The recent NYT profile of Hannah Neeleman might not have offered longtime Ballerina Farm followers any fresh perspective on white maternal ideals or the multibillion dollar momfluencer industry, and we have no way to know what sort of access the writer had (or what the parameters of her assignment entailed). But the photographs accompanying the piece offer a very clear perspective, which I want to talk about!

Read more

In Pursuit is now on PATREON

After the birth of my first child, as I lay in the hospital bed staring in wonder and shock and disbelief at the small human my body had made, one of the labor nurses told me my “uterus was shrinking beautifully.” This made me feel stupidly proud. As if the rate of uterus shrinkage was at all in my control or any sort of indicator of my maternal aptitude. A week or so after childbirth, I couldn’t walk the length of my driveway without taking breaks, I was still gingerly sitting on pillows to protect my cracked tailbone, and my postpartum night sweats made me seriously consider a plastic mattress protector. But my stomach had more or less shrunk back to its pre-pregnancy size. People commented on the shrinkage of my stomach ad nauseam because people love to comment on women’s bodies particularly when those bodies are undergoing massive transformations and you know, creating and sustaining life.

I understand through firsthand experience that some bodies do appear to “heal” quickly after childbirth. But this is only if we’re viewing thinness as health.

I was at my thinnest (pretty much ever) after having my first kid, and I was also experiencing the most devastating mental health crisis (pretty much ever). I was scared I had made a terrible mistake in becoming a mother, certain I’d never feel like myself again, and each day felt like I was climbing Mount Everest without a water bottle or even a granola bar. In no way was I “healthy.” But I was thin!

I am not going to hazard any guesses about Hannah Neeleman’s postpartum physical or mental wellbeing because it’s entirely none of my business, but the performance of Ideal Motherhood™ is my business, so let’s dig into it.

Read more

In Pursuit is now on PATREON

First of all, OF COURSE she’s pregnant again. Frankly, I’m shocked if you’re shocked. But maybe you’re like my cousin and need a bit of a Ballerina Farm primer, (which I’ve provided below) - my sweet summer child of a cousin, who fell into the Ballerina Farm rabbit hole approximately four years after the rest of us and spent a good portion of this past weekend texting our family thread screenshots accompanied by a medley of shock emojis, to which my other cousin finally responded with some Real Talk.

Background Reading

What’s the point?

On the perennial lure of momfluencer pregnancy announcements

How Ballerina Farm’s husband made me start a newsletter

Ballerina Farm and the performance of good wifehood

It’s called Ballerina Farm not hip-hop or jazz farm

The “glamorized humbleness” of Ballerina Farm baby names

Beauty pageants, domesticity, and Ballerina Farm

And now, to mark the occasion of the latest Ballerina Farm pregnancy announcement, I thought I’d create a completely arbitrary and totally ridiculous BF pregnancy announcement ranking according to no sane metrics of any kind.

I’m doing it like the Best Movies of the Year lists and ranking from worst (in my WHOLLY SUBJECTIVE opinion) to best. While I’d like nothing more than to rank all 8 pregnancy announcements, only 5 are on Instagram, so this will be a necessarily limited, tragically inconclusive ranking.

Drum roll please.

Read more

Hannah Neeleman is not new to beauty pageants. As a teenager, she competed in Miss Springville (and won). Later, she competed in Miss Utah, Miss National Sweetheart, and Miss New York City (which she won). Last year, she won Mrs. Utah and competed in the Mrs. America pageant. And this year, of course, she won Mrs. America(n). A word about the Mrs. America vs. Mrs. American confusion. As far as I can tell, both pageants are held by the same organization. Mrs. American seems to be a newish addition, whereas the first Mrs. America pageant was held in 1938. Because Mrs. American exists within the Mrs. America umbrella though, I’m going forward with my analysis assuming they communicate and uphold similar mores and values. 

Before I attempt to understand why Neeleman’s participation in the Mrs. America(n) beauty pageant has drawn so much attention (albeit in my tiny corner of the internet lol), I want to dig into the history of Mrs. America specifically and the legacy of Miss America more broadly. Much of this history is courtesy of Looking for Miss America: A Pageant’s 100 Year Quest to Define Womanhood, written by Margot Mifflin. It’s such an illuminating read, and reveals so much about why certain feminine ideals were codified by pageants and also why some of these ideals are still stubbornly sticking around today.

The first Miss America pageant was held in 1921, and many of the pageant’s early contestants required chaperones, were prohibited from going to bars or nightclubs, and had to be single, childless, and not divorced. Miss America is about beauty norms, sure, but it’s also about our cultural preoccupation with feminine “purity.” It’s about the male imagination more than it is about real women. It’s also bizarrely about mothers even if those mothers are virgins.

Read more

Some of these momfluencers are simply low-key troubling, declaring themselves “apolitical” despite splashing their pages with photos meant to glorify and celebrate a type of life made possible only by socioeconomic privilege and adhering to heteronormative ideals, white Western beauty standards, and tightly conscripted gender roles. Mothers looking beautiful in their beautiful homes with their beautiful children. Mothers milking cows, making sourdough, hanging laundry, sweeping floors. Fathers mostly out of frame and mostly out of the house.

Some of these momfluencers, though, are high-key dangerous as they “do their research,” exhort their followers to simply “ask questions,” oppose critical race theory and comprehensive sex education being taught in schools, spread disinformation about vaccines or homemade baby formula recipes, and hashtag posts with QAnon dog whistles like #savethechildren.

Both the low-key troubling and the high-key dangerous momfluencers, though, are typically aesthetically aligned. In the mamasphere, you are less likely to see oafish white men screaming about men’s rights and Hillary’s emails and more likely to see powder pink infographics about choosing femininity over feminism. By adhering to the aesthetics many of us have been culturally conditioned to view as “good” or “safe” or “maternal” (and therefore incontrovertible), conservative momfluencers can attract homesteading enthusiasts and MAGA-hat wearing Mama Bears alike. Come from the tutorial on seasonal garden bed maintenance, leave wondering if maybe you too have been brainwashed by the “liberal elite.”

Subscribe now

Check out this momfluencer’s reel about ducks. The ducks are cute! The captions are funny.

Check out her photo of farm-fresh veggies. Bright colors. Farmhouse sink. Visually interesting composition. Pretty, pretty.

Check out this before and after bathroom reno. Inspiring! Resourceful!

Check out this reel celebrating farm life. Our heroine is dancing! Her children are wearing hand-knit bonnets. A cozy fire warms the hearth. A brook babbles. Goats frolic. Edenic.

Now, check out this beautiful photo taken of our momfluencer with her husband.

So gorgeous, right? The stormy skies, the verdant grass, the seemingly passionate embrace. Sure, our momfluencer is a mom, but, as this photo communicates, motherhood has not adversely impacted her sex life or her sense of romance. She’s a mom, but she’s wearing a flowy goddess dress and she’s super into her husband and he’s super into her. Honestly, #goals.

This momfluencer (whose name, according to her bio, is Megan) offers followers recipes for “healthy” chocolate, interior design inspo, DIY life hacks, suggestions for “baby’s first solids,” liver capsule giveaways, promo codes for Airdoctor air filters, veggie canning how-tos, and spon-con for organic hemp sheets. And importantly, this account offers all of the above but makes it pretty. Megan’s photos are richly hued, thoughtfully framed, and many of them feel soothing to engage with. They provide a brief respite from that dentist appointment I’ve been reminding myself to make for months, the after-school carpool spreadsheet, and the quotidian angst of being a human in 2022.

And it’s the aspirational aesthetics paired with the wide variety of offerings (food! farming! shiplap! ducks!) that make captions like the one accompanying the hot make-out pic so insidious.

Read more

Back when I wrote my inaugural newsletter about the window everyone loves to hate, writer and PhD Chloe Angyal slid into my twitter DMs with this tantalizing message:

If you ever want to chat with me about the ways ballet is representing and reinforcing whiteness, I would be down for that!

And obviously my answer was: “HELL YES.”

Because wow. I’ve consider many facets of the Ballerina Farm brand. I’ve considered the performance of authenticity, I’ve considered the pageantry, I’ve considered Agnes the Aga stove, I’ve considered the aesthetic and ideological function of BF baby names, I’ve considered if I should be writing about Ballerina Farm at all, and obviously, I’ve considered how @ballerinafarm upholds and perpetuates the myth of the ideal mother.

But I have never considered the ballet.

Chloe Angyal is a journalist and author of the book, Turning Pointe: How a New Generation of Dancers is Saving Ballet from Itself, and is currently working on her first novel, Pas de Don’t, a romance set in the ballet worlds of New York City and Sydney.

Chloe and I chatted about the Ballerina Farm logo, the history of ballet as a white institution, and how Ballerina Farm’s band is built on both the performance of ease and the performance of labor. Here’s our conversation, which has been edited for clarity.

Subscribe now

How did you first come across Ballerina Farm?

I think it was the interview between Anne Helen Petersen and Meg Conley. And I was like, this is really interesting but why aren't we talking about the ballet part of Ballerina Farm? Because it's doing a lot of work here that no one seems to be talking about. Like, yeah, there are the babies and the pigs and the JetBlue husband, but let's talk about the ballet part of Ballerina Farm because it's really important.

Okay, so let's talk about ballet!

First of all, it's Ballerina Farm, right? It's not Jazz Farm. It's not Hip-Hop Farm. It's not Tap Farm. It’s Ballerina Farm. We are talking about the whitest dance form that exists. All those other dance forms were originated by people of color, mostly by Black people. Ballet is the whitest art form, both in practice and also in the public imagination. It’s also really important to remember that it's not Ballet Farm. It's Ballerina Farm. We’re talking about the feminine person version of this dance form. We're talking about the pinnacle of a very specific kind of womanhood, a very specific kind of femininity.

And then there are all the other roles Hannah’s inhabiting, right? She's a mom. She's LDS. She's rural. She's a farmer. These are all positions that are heavily coded white in the public imagination. But I don't think any of those roles are more uniformly coded white than ballerina. So I don’t think you can talk about Ballerina Farm without talking about ballerinas and whiteness. And all of the symbolism that she's leaning on in the branding and in the presentation of her life online.

Can you talk a little bit about the history of whiteness and ballet?

Read more

Kyla and I first became acquainted when she weighed in my tweet about “slow down” momfluencer culture, pointing out how class, capitalism, and inequality contribute to a fetishization of slowing down to savor raising “artisanal children” when most of us are “barely freaking making it.”

Here’s Kyla’s response to my tweet:

to start: time is an unequally distributed resource and like seriously when people "move slow" because they are "healing" or "being anti-capitalist" or "anti-work" or raising their artisanal children it is fundamentally irritating to those of us who are barely freaking making it. because these people are NOT ALONE IN THE WORLD. second of all instagram parenting fetishists: stop elevating motherhood to a bespoke picturesque practice, as though it was not gritty awful smelly sticky usually loving but nonetheless boring labor unsupported by any state or cultural infrastructure

As soon as I read Kyla’s tweets, I copied her Twitter profile and pasted it into a super organized Google doc entitled simply “newsletter,” and emailed her a few weeks later to see if she’d be interested in helping me bushwhack my way through the ideological briar patch that is white, trad, conservative Christian momfluencer culture. Think petticoats. Think fields. Think calico. Think sourdough. Think sacrifice with a smile.

Some of these momfluencers have big accounts that have enabled them to gain traction for side hustles (online home goods shops; Etsy shops from which they sell aprons; cookbooks; direct-to-consumer grass-fed meat businesses). And some of them only have a few thousand followers but are clearly getting something from their Instagram labor (and it is labor) even if that something isn’t money. Otherwise, why bother?

Some of these momfluencers perform an all-in version of 19th century domestic goddess cosplay, while others simply grow their own veggies and espouse traditional gender norms while not necessarily removing all traces of the trappings of modern from their feeds. But they all traffic in the performance of traditional [white], conservative femininity and the vast majority of them make it look pretty damn idyllic.

Luckily, Kyla said yes to my interview request, and I knew she was the perfect person for the job when she immediately recognized the aesthetic and imaginative power of these accounts and frankly questioned why everyone wasn’t consuming them.

Here’s our conversation, which does not include the bit at the beginning when I realized my computer audio recording thing wasn’t working because I HAD MY EARPODS IN and asked Kyla to repeat her last three insightful statements. It also doesn’t include our consideration of a pink tulle skirt hanging in Kyla’s Zoom background, and honestly, maybe me cutting that bit of the interview was a mistake because who doesn’t love a tulle skirt?

I pretty routinely aim my cultural critiques at white momfluencer accounts that celebrate a very nostalgic, insular ideal of the nuclear family. Conservative Christianity is often involved and there’s heavy emphasis on aesthetics and the beauty of sacrificial, idealized motherhood. When people wonder what the point of this type of cultural criticism is, when they wonder where the harm lies in a few women simply sharing their lives and apple pie recipes, what do you say? Why are accounts like this inherently political?  

Okay, so these are brilliant, energetic, highly professionalized women producing very targeted, beautiful content. I honestly don’t know why we’re all not looking at it! It's smart, it's gorgeous and it's seductive. But what feels coercive about it is that the seduction of the incredible aesthetics is actually kind of a buried argument for an outdated and in fact, very limited idea of what womanhood can be in a way that reinforces a particular norm in a moment of the ascendancy and the deep power of the Christian right.

So it's not neutral, but it seems neutral, because these momfluencers are not doing any of the things that women aren't supposed to do, right? Like making an argument, like speaking forcefully, like publicly criticizing something. God forbid a woman should criticize anything. But what they are doing is performing. And by fetishizing their lifestyles, they're actually abstracting their lifestyles from living, because domestic labor, reproductive labor, and care work is hard work. It's really hard work. And the performance erases the labor: the work and mess and grit, and, you know, the barf and poo and smell and dust and dust bunnies and disease, like all of it, right?

So I understand the impulse to say, you know, live and let live, but that kind of relativistic relation to what these women are performing—which by the way, I also really admire— make implicit arguments for and against certain ideologies. And the fact that they’re making implicit arguments also affirms that women are not allowed to make explicit arguments.

Also, we know historically that Christianity has never stopped trying to tell us all what to do. Christianity is one of the religions that actively says no to certain types of people who are trying to live and create new ways of flourishing. So the argument that what these Christian, traditional momfluencers are doing is relativistic and neutral is interesting in a moment when the right doesn't experience any way of living beyond the norm as anything but a threat.

These are really brilliant women. And they're surfing the tide of late capitalism. They're making money. They're getting book deals, they're getting TV deals. They're creating cultural and social power for themselves and for their families.

And they're doing it in in ways that seem ahistorical, in a way that calls upon “the old ways” within a genius deployment of late capitalism.

I often write about food, cooking and the 19th century. And femininity and feminine skills are under theorized in the history of feminism except as a problem for a whole generation of feminists. It was like, no, I don't know how to cook. Why are you wearing high heels?

I’m a Women’s Studies professor, and very early on in my career, I remember women who were very senior to me would talk about how I wore too much makeup, that my skirts were wrong for a professor, and that my interest in femininity was somehow problematic.

There's a whole generation of feminism that failed to really speak to femininity and certain kinds of labor and knowledge that were actually completely brilliant. But they were economically and culturally undervalued according to patriarchal norms. Like, why did we stop teaching Home Economics? We should never have stopped teaching Home Economics. We should have deepened our understanding of Home Economics, and made it available to everyone.

At the time, I think our understanding of second-wave feminism made it seem progressive to get rid of that type of knowledge-making, but actually women (especially the women of color who worked for white women) knew important things that we still need to know.

And these traditional, Christian momfluencers are writing into that space that feminism failed. Mainstream feminism accepted the terms of patriarchy in many ways and let so much fall by the wayside. So if you identify with femininity, or if you identify with the type of knowledge that has been gendered as feminine knowledge, you’re living with the fact that mainstream feminist culture has debased that way of being and that kind of knowledge.

In her book The Politics of Piety, Saba Mahmood argues that according to the mandates of mainstream Western feminism, people are only exercising agency if they're resistant. And according to mainstream Western feminism, people are not exercising agency if they're actually doubling down on and celebrating patriarchal norms. But Mahmood points out that it’s really important to understand these women who embrace patriarchal norms as powerful, brilliant, active, and political.

Here’s a question about implicit versus explicit power (and implicit versus explicit influence). Some of these women will share a post of themselves photographed in the kitchen, and sort of wax poetic about the heart of a home, and feeling most fulfilled when they’re in the kitchen feeding their children. And that does strike me as an explicit argument for what they've chosen to center their lives around.

But what they’re not saying is, I am performing an ideal against which other ways of living as a woman should be judged. They’re not explicitly saying that. None of them are saying, If I was a community college professor or working in a factory instead of submitting my will to God and my husband, I wouldn't be able to be here in the home taking care of my family. None of them are explicitly saying that. It’s always performance and never an explicitly negative critique of other women’s choices. And because it’s never explicit, they’re also staying in the feminine affective wheelhouse.

And so they remain protected from accusations that their public sharing of their way of life is somehow denigrating other women's life choices.

Right.

Many of these women don’t have traditional sponsorship deals. Many of them haven’t monetized their accounts according to the standards of the influencer economy. Maybe they sell aprons on the side or whatever, but in many cases, I don't see a direct link between their social media content and financial gain. So what sort of role do these non-monetized accounts play and how much power do they wield?

I think we need to think about capitalism in more complex ways. There’s financial capital, which we all unfortunately need. And there’s social and cultural capital. And really, that’s what influencing is, to be able to wield social capital. And I think the momfluencers you’re referring to gain a great deal of social capital. A really good example of this in the 19th century was Harriet Beecher Stowe and her sister Catherine Beecher, who both wielded a great deal of cultural power while arguing for for seemingly apolitical agendas. They created domestic manuals about how women could run their households as efficiently and independently as possible. And so there’s an interesting paradox here. People like the Beecher sisters and Anita Bryant doubled down on conservative values and in doing so actually found very powerful ways to be in the world. So it might not always be about money.

Right. Phyllis Schlafly is another one that comes to mind.

Yeah. And Sarah Palin. And these women were and are so aggressive in pursuit of general disempowerment.

This might be too simplistic, but do you think if motherhood in our country was culturally respected and financially supported, like, if we gave moms the same cultural respect we give to doctors, and if moms got a financial stipend each month for their labor, do you think this desire to gain cultural capital through the performance of feminine domesticity on social media would be as great?

It's a good question. I don't know. The thing is, I got to social media because of my investment in a fantasy that I can learn how to live better. And I really do learn some skills and life hacks from some of these homesteading influencers, right? For example, I’m reading a lot about fermentation right now. And I'm interested in what people are doing that pulls back some power from capital, that says, like, I can make this on my own and I can produce this on my own. But for domestic labor and care work and traditionally feminine work to be meaningfully valued, it would require a big cultural shift. And this shift would mean that these types of knowledge were more freely available, and more freely available to all genders, right? And more classes, right?

I come from four generations of single moms. It has never occurred to me that I would not work outside the home. And so the fantasy of the stay-at-home-mom is only available only to certain classes. And only available to certain racial and ethnic demographics because race and class work together alongside gender.

I feel really sad for men who wish they could stay home with their kids. My husband would be much better at stay-at-home-parenthood. For me, I tried to stay home in the early days, and I hated it. I understand why everyone used to be so medicated! For me, it was just so boring, and dull, and dirty, and I hated it. My husband would have been much better at it. But we sort of fell into traditional gendered roles. And that's the thing. Conservative Christian ideology always says no to the flourishing of difference. And encourages a failure of imagination.

I think you’re right that these accounts wouldn’t necessarily disappear if care work and domestic labor were supported and respected, but do you think they would be less intrinsically attached to essentialist understandings of gender?

Yes. And racial norms. Because gender is race and race is gender. In my friend Kyla Schuller's book, The Trouble with White Women, Kyla built on the work of so many Black feminists to show how particular performances of idealized womanhood are inherently racialized and gendered, because to exist outside of racialized, gendered norms is to be deviant.

I mean, we need free and subsidized daycare. And why do we need that? Even if I have enough money to pay for a nanny or to buy into private daycare or to send my kid to a fancy Waldorf school, there are working class and middle-class people who don’t have the money to do those things. And because I'm invested in the collective well-being of this national project that I am a part of, even if I don’t need subsidized daycare, I want my neighbor to have access to subsidized daycare because it is better for the world. And it's better for my child to live in a world in which all people have equal access, all people have the ability to thrive.

So many of the comment threads on these accounts gush about a particular momfluencer’s “good motherhood,” as evidenced only through her public performance of traditional, gendered womanhood on social media. But what continuously shocks me is that there's no consideration of whether or not these apparently amazing moms are also concerned in the collective wellbeing of the communities they live in, in the world they live in. They can be “good moms” without considering whether or not all moms have the tools and resources they need to thrive as mothers.

That's right. It's an individualized response.

Yeah, and the fact that American individualism as a paradigm supports the idea of a woman wholly concerned with her insular world (and no one outside of that world) as an incontrovertibly “good mom,” is kind of interesting to me.

It also reinforces the idea that, you know, if only I woke up earlier, if only I learned how to nurture sour dough starter, if only I bought all my food food from organic gardens, if only I existed in this constant state of trying harder as an individual when in reality the issue is lack of infrastructure. And poverty!  And the failure of a social framework.

These women’s representations of their supposedly ahistorical lives also obscures the historical reality of the way people lived in pre-industrial times, when there were more collective models of care, and when the labor of women was actually much more valued.

A woman who could produce a great deal of food was actively contributing to the economic survival and well-being of her family. And that woman wasn’t canning fall preserves on her own, you know? She worked as part of a collective of people also invested in providing food for their families and their communities. So this fantasy of individualism and insularity showcased on certain traditional momfluencer accounts never actually existed.

Thank you Kyla!

What do you think? Do you find these types of accounts fascinating? Do you (like me) struggle to get to the bottom of why they’re so alluring? Let me know! This particular subset of momfluencer culture is of evergreen fascination to me, so I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Have a great weekend, and if you happen to bake a beautiful loaf of sourdough and feel inclined to post it to social media, post away! It’s so important to extract these individual skillsets and bases of knowledge from the ideological minefield of whiteness and conservatism. We can bake sourdough and advocate for a better world in which all people, regardless of how well they adhere to gendered and racialized norms, can thrive.

We contain multitudes!

In Pursuit is now on PATREON

A friend of mine recently DMed me with some questions about my intense scrutiny of Ballerina Farm. She shares my fascination with BF, but wondered about me zooming in on so many uber-specifics of Hannah’s platform. Hannah’s a real person, after all. Are my snarky deep-dives really necessary? Are they productive? At the end of the day, what’s the point?

It’s a good question. And one I’ve asked myself more times than I can count. Because ever since becoming a mother myself, my fiercest desire has always been to support and champion other mothers, to understand their needs and desires, and to add my voice to a chorus of voices screaming for change NOW.

The momfluencers I choose to aim my cultural criticism lens at are real people with real lives and real struggles, and I have no desire to contribute to anyone’s struggles. I do not want to “take anyone down.”

But. Just like my work exists on a public platform for public consumption, so too does theirs. Hannah Neeleman has one million followers. That’s one million people who consumer her version of motherhood. One million people that might be influenced (for better or worse) by the content she chooses to share.

And yeah, it’s complicated because her content includes her family and children; her content is personal. Her content is her SELF.

But so is mine, right? I’m out here trying to figure out what triggers me personally in the mamasphere, but mostly I’m trying to figure out what individual behaviors and individual content choices reveal about systems much bigger than any one of us.

What does Hannah’s decision to post a video of her cleaning the house less than two weeks after giving birth to her seventh child communicate about the expectations of mothers in this country? Does it make any of her 1 million followers feel inspired to not let postpartum healing get in the way of being productive? Does it contribute to the toxic narrative that moms don’t need (or deserve) paid leave to heal their bodies, rest, and be taken care of? What does it mean when Daniel posts about the “ups and downs” of being a first generation rancher without giving his 72k followers any background context about the cost of ranch land and the realities of making a profit on a working farm? For context, less than one acre of land in Kamas, Utah (where Ballerina Farm is located) costs over a million dollars. Ballerina Farm owns over 300 acres. As Meg Conley wrote in Anne Helen Petersen’s newsletter:

They’re not feigning normalcy in the direction of middle-income people. They’re feigning normalcy in the direction of very upper-income people. Buying a 328 acre ranch for millions of dollars to start a direct to consumer beef business is not normal.

These types of questions also beg the penultimate question: To which standards do we hold momfluencers, and are those standards reasonable? Because the influencer economy is still so new, because it’s constantly shifting and morphing and transitioning, it’s still unclear how much onus should be on individuals (regardless of the size of their platforms) to share their political and cultural views. Perhaps if we want interrogations of social justice and issues impacting mothers more broadly, we should get off Instagram entirely?

But I do believe all of these questions are worth asking. I do believe there is inherent value in unpacking how media texts both reflect and influence our real lives and our personal belief systems. I do think it’s worth asking if the images we consume on social media impact legislation and reform. I think we should ask ourselves if what we view on Instagram is harming or hurting.

There are plenty of momfluencers who explicitly cause harm with racist rhetoric, the spreading of anti-vaxing misinformation, and QAnon conspiracy theories. But when it comes to momfluencers like Hannah Neeleman, momfluencers’ whose brands are reliant on a celebration of traditional values and the presumed goodness of a certain kind of motherhood, but who isn’t wearing a MAGA hat or claiming that her sourdough will prevent Covid, what’s the point of nitpicking?

When I first started researching Momfluenced, I emailed this very question to Koritha Mitchell, author of the indispensable book, From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture, and Koritha made the following case for interrogating the effect of seemingly apolitical, seemingly innocuous brands like BF.

These accounts reflect the pleasure to be found in a particular kind of escape: insularity. They maximize the sheen of respectability and implicit justification that come with traditional homemaking. By default, the heteronormative nuclear family configuration is viewed as ideal and beneficial, even as those assumptions are constantly contradicted. 

White women can justify ignoring any responsibility toward the public good by aggressively prioritizing motherhood. How can anyone say their priorities are in the wrong place if they're elevating motherhood? But it's a particular motherhood, one whose politics are rooted in keeping things as they are rather than working to make the world less hostile for more people. In other words, a motherhood that pretends to be apolitical is cherished. Whenever politics revolve around maintaining the status quo, everyone is taught to see that as devoid of politics and somehow pure. Meanwhile, a motherhood that prioritizes improving current living conditions for more people is not so easily and pleasingly digested. And that's the case even as such motherly priorities are also about leaving children a world with more justice and more peace. 

My aim with my cultural critiques of BF (and all public performances of motherhood on social media) is not to lambast individuals. It is to question how brands like BF function to maintain the status quo. It is to provide context for the maternal narratives so many of us are confronted with on a daily basis and interrogate the effect of these narratives. Are particular narratives and imagery good for moms? Which moms? Are they neutral? Are they entertaining? Are they aspirational? Are they contributing to making life easier for moms? Not just cis-het, marketably attractive, thin, non-disabled, wealthy, white moms? Should they be contributing to making life easier for anyone?

But back to my friend’s excellent question. Is there a functional point to me writing derisively about Daniel Neeleman’s prose style? Arguably, no. Me snarking about his love (or hatred?) of windows does not advance the cause of maternal rights. It does not reveal anything about systemic inequities. But I’m also a writer and as such, I try to think about what I’d want to read. Do I want thoughtful explorations of momfluencer culture that aim to peel back the layers of misogyny, whiteness, and gender essentialism that still comprise so much of our cultural presumptions about motherhood? Yes. But do I also want to laugh sometimes? Do I also want to feel cathartic release? Do I want to counter my rage and frustration with some levity about windows? Yup.

The line between personal takes on momfluencers (stuff you’d text your friends in the privacy of a group chat) and cultural critiques entirely removed from the writer’s personal background is hard to locate sometimes. I have failed to draw that line clearly for myself before. And I’m sure I’ll fuck up again in the future. But I’m never not grappling with the question of “what’s the point.” I never want to be punching down. I never want to level personal attacks at anyone. I never want my cultural criticism to just be a mask for my personal insecurities. It’s tricky! I definitely have personal insecurities! And imagery celebrating maternal perfection certainly triggers those insecurities. Because perfect I am not.

But I know plenty of folks who don’t feel triggered by BF content - they find the content fun, joyful, and lighthearted. The dairy cows are adorable. The sourdough is beautiful. I guess my point is that while I’m invested in critiquing momfluencer posts as cultural texts, I’m also a person, and it’s not possible to keep my personhood entirely removed from my cultural criticism because I’m a person living in the same culture I’m writing about. And I’m not even sure I’d want to read cultural criticism devoid of the writer’s personhood?

So maybe BF content makes you angry because of its implicit perpetuation of retrograde nuclear family ideals. Maybe BF content provides a brief, innocuous hit of dopamine by virtue of pasture raised hogs and cute kids. And maybe my writing provides catharsis for your own maternal angst. But maybe it feels unnecessarily snarky. We all have our preferences.

Here’s a confession. I obviously watched Hannah’s birth video. And while the idea of a toddler touching me during intense contractions makes my entire body shudder, I was really moved by parts of the video. I earnestly related to Hannah’s attempt to capture the potential for empowerment through childbirth. I had three “easy” (unmedicated vaginal births) births, and with each one, felt an indescribable, other-worldly awe for myself and the utter magic of corporeality. I’ve never felt more fully embodied, more present, or more alive. I’ve never felt so powerful.

But the cultural critic in me couldn’t help but wonder if Hannah had some sort of responsibility to her one million followers to make clear that not every mom has a transcendent birth experience. Not every mom can afford quality care during childbirth. Not every mom can expect anti-racist care during childbirth. Not every mom will be treated with respect and dignity during childbirth. Many mothers will experience birth trauma. Many mothers have no interest in a transcendent birth experience and simply want a safe outcome for parent and child. Many mothers will feel like failures because their births didn’t go as planned. Many moms don’t become moms by giving birth.

And then of course I ask myself if it is Hannah’s responsibility to contextualize her birth experience in this way. She’s never claimed to be an activist or an educator, right? What’s wrong with her simply posting about her personal experience? Her unique reality? Maybe nothing?

I have definitely found myself up at 2:32AM after getting up to pee or whatever haunted by fears of my work somehow encouraging cyber bullying or encouraging moms to vilify other moms in order to feel better about themselves. Will my work encourage people to post hateful messages to other people’s accounts? I DO NOT WANT THAT. PLEASE DON’T DO THAT. Sometimes I wonder if I should quote from momfluencer accounts without sharing the names of the specific accounts. Sometimes I wonder if I should make my critiques more general and less specific. Sometimes I wonder if I’d be better off simply devoting my time and energy to a non-profit focused on maternal rights. It’s fucking fraught.

But I should be up in the middle of the night thinking about this. I have a responsibility to consider the potential impact of my work, and I don’t take that responsibility lightly.

I’m grateful for my friend’s question. And I promise to keep asking it of myself. Because my intended “point” is to always invite people in, never to shut people out.

I must admit to being embarrassingly late to the TikTok mom game, mostly because for book research, I restricted myself to Instagram so as not to write more than one book. But Em immediately grabbed my attention with her astute assessment of Hannah and Daniel selling meat and merch, sure, but mostly, “selling the idyllic vision of American homesteaders.”

Em points out that the exposed beams in the infamous thoughtless-window photo are an “intentional design choice that actually take more work and more money to put together” than, say, mere drywall. She also points out that Agnes the Aga stove might trick the casual viewer into seeing “authentic Utah farmhouse,” but Em posits that a typical Utah farmer’s kitchen is much more likely to look like this.

Em’s point in all of this is that aesthetics are everything. In momfluencer culture especially, aesthetics really. are. everything. We assume things about a momfluencer’s parenting philosophies, politics, diet, race, socioeconomic status, and personal style all based on her particular aesthetics. And because aesthetics are so recognizably coded, aesthetics can help us quickly assess whether or not we might want to follow a particular momfluencer or buy whatever she’s selling. With our dollars or emotional investment.

What else can indicate a momfluencer’s aesthetics according to Em? BABY NAMES.

In the case of Ballerina Farm baby names, Em thinks the girls’ names in particular emphasize Hannah’s aesthetic of “glamorized humbleness,” which she illustrates by drawing attention to Hannah’s frequent no-makeup looks.

Em notes that “we’ve been kinda conditioned to see a no-makeup face as a sign of vulnerability and bravery . . . but is this actually coming a from a place of humility or just working with mama gave you in a way that fits the narrative?” Hannah presents as conventionally or marketably beautiful with or without makeup. So choosing between presenting herself as one kind of beautiful (no-makeup or at least makeup that looks like no-makeup) and another kind of beautiful (makeup-makeup) isn’t really a difficult, vulnerable, or risky choice. Either way, Hannah is able to wield the valuable currency of feminine beauty, which is worth quite a bit in life and on social media.

Back to the names. Hannah and Daniel’s girls’ names are old-timey, yes. Frances, Lois, and Martha. But Em argues that they’re not “timeless classics” like the boys’ names (Henry, George, and Charles). Girl equivalents to these names, according to Em, might be Elizabeth, Mary, or Anne. And, Em posits, “If [Hannah] wanted American homesteader names that are still lovely and feminine, why not Lucy, Hazel, or Mabel?”

Read more

I had no intention of writing about Hannah OR Daniel this week. I really didn’t. But then I saw this post from Hannah.

“Hardly had the ink dried on our marriage certificate when it occurred to me I didn’t know how to cook. I was a 21 year old newlywed bride."

I knew this post would be a doozy after the first line because the first line is really all that’s necessary to understand Hannah’s belief that part of being a “good wife” is being a “good cook.” Her belief that to be a “wife” is to agree to uphold a certain set of expectations, most of which adhere to stringent gender norms.

For today’s newsletter, I was going to feature one of two delightful interviews I did earlier in the week (I’ll share them eventually - fear not). But goddammit guys. I was wedged into my preferred couch crevice as usual. Drinking my PG Tips tea in the dark with earplugs in. As usual. Telling the kids they were capable of pouring cereal in a bowl or putting bread in a toaster without my intervention. Begging them to put on Cocomelon so their toddler brother would stop requiring things of me. As usual! And then this image of Hannah nearly breaking into a curtsy of good wifehood foiled all my newsletter plans.

Big sigh.

So let’s dissect the image itself. Hannah’s pregnant and we know she’s mere weeks away from delivery because she shares these facts on Instagram. We know she’s pregnant with her seventh child (and apparently has no outside help in caring for her other six children). And here she is. Smiling as is her wont. In front of her beloved $24,000 stove which she had every right name to name Agnes. She cradles her belly, her chin high in the air, sort of like an under-servant at Downton Abbey waiting for Lady Grantham to lead a trio of visiting duchesses for a tour of the kitchen to ensure all is up to snuff “downstairs.”

When I was in the third trimester of pregnancy with my third kid, I felt as though my innards were in danger of dropping through my vagina almost constantly. I went to pelvic floor physical therapy twice a month and during the final weeks of pregnancy, I periodically melted to the floor when random hip spasms overtook my muscle control. I do not recall cooking. In those last few weeks, smiling was equally rare!

But because this is Hannah of course she looks thrilled to be super pregnant and standing in front of a stove instead of curled up in the fetal position in a pile of throw blankets simply waiting to no longer feel so uncomfortable.

Before we move on to the text of the post, let’s pause to give Agnes her time to shine (because shine she must).

Back in 2020, Hannah wrote in almost sneering tones about how Agnes eradicated her need for a microwave. “This stove is always on, piping hot, and ready to heat up anything a microwave would. My goal in the kitchen is simplification. I also can’t function until it’s clean.” My only guess as to her anti-microwave rhetoric is that such “new fangled” contraptions don’t exactly match Ballerina Farm’s vintage homesteader aesthetic. Bad for the brand.

Hannah wrote about Agnes again here (“They also are always hot and ready for cooking. I’m not sure if it is the cast iron matériel, the simplicity of its function or its ready-to-cook temperatures, but for me it makes for country cooking of fairytale-quality. 🌻”), and here (“Though our propane bill is likely 4x what it would be, having every meal taste like it was cooked in a Dutch oven makes me 10x happier”). Long live Agnes.

Ok, back to the post in question.

Read more

In Pursuit is now on PATREON

Taking a deep breath before I begin. Because guys. There’s so much here.

I highly recommend you stroll over to Instagram before continuing. Here’s the inciting post.

So I’ve been obsessed with Hannah Neeleman (@ballerinafarm) for a few years now. And my obsession may or may not have been the seed that led to me writing a piece for Harper’s Bazaar interrogating my fraught relationship with momfluencer culture, and that Harper’s piece may or may not have led to me writing a book proposal unpacking my obsession further. MOMFLUENCED is due April 1st to my editor, but I’m feeling decent about where I’m at and also I couldn’t not write about this so here we are.

Way back in January, 2021, I wrote this about Hannah for Harper’s:

She is a new face to the momfluencer stratosphere, but one of many conventionally beautiful, straight, white women who perform a version of motherhood that feels like pioneer cosplay hit with a dash of Brooklyn hipster aesthetics. Hannah presents her life as a utopia of yesteryear when women cooked hot lunches for their hardworking men and smiled whilst serving them. She announced her sixth pregnancy with an actual pirouette.

I just rewatched that pregnancy announcement video and I was wrong about the pirouette. I apologize. It’s more of a jaunty knee-lift (surely an actual ballet term).

In the video, Hannah is surrounded by kids. She is beaming as if she knows a juicy secret and is a little smug about no one else knowing it. Most of all, though, in the video, she makes motherhood and pregnancy look like a lark. Upon first watching the video (IN APRIL 2020), Hannah’s throw-away smile crept into me and still lives somewhere inside me, sitting heavily between my ribs.

But this essay is not about Hannah. Not really. If you want more Hannah musings, you can read my Harper’s piece (and buy my book when it comes out! She’s all up in there!) And definitely check out this excellent conversation between Meg Conley and Anne Helen Petersen published in Anne Helen’s newsletter (Meg also has a brilliant newsletter but I’m sure you already know that), which delves into Mormonism, the performance of femininity, the realities of farming (versus the Instagram version of farming), and the mythology of the nuclear white family. If you want more momfluencer content in general, Kathryn Jezer-Morton’s newsletter is a delight and a joy (she wrote a legendary essay about @rudyjude which I will treasure forever), and Jo Piazza’s must-listen podcast, Under the Influence, will lay bare the truths of how momfluencer culture became a multi-billion industry, and what that industry can reveal about motherhood, social media, and all the things.

But this essay is not about Hannah. This essay is about Daniel. Or, as he can be found on Instagram, @hogfathering.

Read more