The Unbearable Daniel of it All
About that Ballerina Farm profile
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.
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YOU’RE WELCOME (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
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.
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.
Somehow this piece was way creepier than I expected.
I’m assuming bc it was written for the London Times, I liked that the reporter articulated aspects of the trad wife deal and context that tend to go unspoken in pieces for US audiences, I figure under the assumption that “everyone already knows.” Sara, I would LOVE to see your takes on additional tradwife coverage from outside the US.
What I can’t get over is that Hannah- and Hannah alone- is what makes their brand so successful. it’s her image, her charisma, the brand based entirely off of this, that makes them so popular. And it makes me mad that he doesn’t get that. Or maybe he really gets it, and feels insecure because of it? When the writer was trying to talk to Hannah and he was just trying to talk about his farm stuff it made me so mad. It’s her!!! No one cares about you!!!