This is so good. Thank you for wrestling with these questions and making this space for us to think more critically about the content we consume — both in terms of the vision of motherhood it promotes and our own reactions to it.
Thank you for writing this and grappling with these questions. (I don’t follow BF so forgive the ignorance of the background here) but reading your paragraph where you talk about “not every mom” brought up something for me. Something I’ve noticed in the momfluencer space is this focus on posting “real” content and anything that is positive, overly privileged, is deemed toxic or bullshit, so my feed is filled with all the down sides of parenthood. It seems people tread lightly when they have positive experiences for fear of “making moms feel bad” who have different experiences. It seems too black and white. I had a very easy recovery from c section, and my baby is very easy, sleeps through the night, and Breastfeeds wonderfully. But when I tell people this, people warn me to keep it to myself. And what I’ve also noticed is MANY MANY people told me they had it pretty easy too, and the toddler stage was harder for them than the newborn stage. I say this because when I was pregnant and when I was deciding to become a mom, I was terrified by what I saw online. The current vibe had me thinking it would be awful… and then it wasn’t (of COURSE there were ups and downs and it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows but this idea of either showing ALL positive or ALL struggles isn’t helping.) So I guess my point is when we put our own experience in the context of “not all moms,” there is the possibility that the very nuanced and varied experiences (both the difficult ones and the positive ones) could be left out of the narrative skewing our perception. There’s this hesitancy to celebrate the good stuff. Motherhood is not so black and white and the more we can balance the story the more we normalize the many ways we experience motherhood.
Anyways, just my two cents. I’m really enjoying your newsletter and would love to hear your perspective!
I did theatre all through school and in college - and rereading $1 million an acre (after my eyes bugged out of my head) made me think about this concept of ‘willing suspension of disbelief.’ There’s an example for literally everything about seeing a live show of any kind (or movies/TV even) but my favorite is probably at curtain calls when the villain takes a bow and people boo - we got that caught up in the story.
And now I can’t help thinking of BF’s page this way. It’s her life, and yet, it’s set dressing. The stove, the price for an acre of land, the small business narrative (which is not not legit just that they started out with the kind of capital that the 1% have). And I feel like it’s…dark in light of recent events. Is she the person that uninformed people look at and go “other women complain too much they’d actually be happy having seven kids but they don’t know it. We know what’s best.”
Just by considering all of this, you’re doing more than most. I’m no longer on social media but I used to follow BF and personally loved the account. There’s a responsibility to be had when scrolling and posting on social media. I believe the scroller should have MORE responsibility than the poster. If you have a hard time not comparing your life to other peoples or not considering the posters background, financial status, etc. it might be time for a reevaluation of why you’re using social media. Just my two cents! Thanks for writing this :)
"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." THIS PART. I for one am enjoying being off IG and seriously contemplating not going back (been off all summer). I am so exhausted by white privilege and momfluencers in general. And I'm a stay at home white mom, whose work in the worlds is much more effective the less I'm on social media. Thanks for your writing on all of it though- it is as fascinating as it is alarming.
I love this thought process. It’s so hard! Yes, they’re people, and technically they’re apolitical, but also being neutral is *itself* political. Not having to take a side or make a statement shows your comfort with things exactly as they are. Clearly Hannah is unaffected by the overturning of Roe. She probably privately celebrated it - or does she follow current events at all? Why should she need to? Why is this so hard??
BUT I also really have to tell someone who knows that it hurt my soul deep down to see her on her kitchen floor making a banner for her son (I thought the sons didn’t care about birthdays???), running errands, cleaning her house, baking a cake, just ***days*** after having her 7th baby. (Making date balls with a freakin SPOON) Every time I see her I just think oh PLEASE let this woman rest. I really do think this sends a harmful message about motherhood and maybe it should be scrutinized.
I agree with you on all points here. And yes I DO enjoy a little lightheartedness, some snark, and a good laugh every once in awhile. I feel you hit the balance perfectly. I have no grudge against Hannah and I enjoy her content, but I do think her content can be damaging if “regular” moms/women are comparing ourselves to her. Most of us don’t have her genetics/thinness/beauty/talent, and wealth so in no way would be able to accomplish what she seems to be able to accomplish each day.
This is so great! I’m new to Substack. Looking for more things to read with substance. And a space to share my own writing. THIS topic needs to be delved into. I became a mom in 2000 and had my fourth in 2015. So I’ve seen the before and after social media. I recently wrote about my first year as a new mom.
Looking back, I can laugh at a lot of things. But not everything. So much anxiety was needless and it still lingers today. And then the internet took this to a whole new level. Every decision could be researched and quantified and compared. And now momfluecer social media feeds can bring the compare-and-despair pressures into someone’s headspace ALL the time. But I can understand the draw. As a parent, especially a new one, it’s normal to be hypersensitive to all that social signaling. It feels needed to make sure your kid’s gonna be okay. Even more so if you’re feeling isolated.
Overall, I think the fake mom lifestyle is about a mom’s personality, privilege and need to feel validated. Over the years, I’ve gotten better at recognizing and owning my deeper motives in my parenting style and decisions. As I do, I feel less certain, but also more clear. And I’m learning to love it here. I think that’s a message that needs to be shared more. I'm looking forward to reading your book!!
Yes! I love this. Thank you for grappling with these issues which are huge for so many aspects of culture and “civilization” right now. Thank you for being so human.
I really appreciated this post - I’ll definitely be thinking about all of these questions for a long while. I’ve followed BF for most of her time on Insta and have always been both fascinated and conflicted by so many aspects of her posts and her life as it’s presented online. Thank you for this!
I’m a new subscriber but in general I feel that it is up to the follower, reader, listener to be discerning, critical, analytical. It is usually not the fault of a person posting how their posts land with others (with obvious exceptions for hateful garbage). We should strive to read and follow a variety of people living a variety of lifestyles and not ask every person posting to address/speak to every type of person.
We should all have a healthy filter and mature understanding of reality, and if we don’t, we should strive to cultivate it and/or stay off social media. Social media doesn’t harm everyone.
But following people like you HELP everyone develop that healthy-criticism filter. Helping us be less negatively affected, obsessively compare ourselves with others, going down a weird rabbit hole of “that’s the right way to live, that’s the ideal, let me measure myself against it etc”
So people like you do the WORK for many of us which gives us a healthier perspective.
The thing that gets to me about Ballerina Farm is, like, are her children so well-behaved that they don’t need supervision? If she’s “in the kitchen all day” who is keeping these small children from throwing blocks at each other? If she’s getting birthday stuff ready “before the kids wake up” does that mean ALL of them just wake up at 7:30 or whatever every day? HOW?
I've followed your work since I got pregnant with my first baby. Then I started following BF when I realized she was a few weeks ahead of me in her pregnancy. I loved the pictures and even got inspired to bake bread. I understood that her Instagram account was a business and very performative, and yet, at some point, it made me start to feel like an utter loser for not keeping up with this ideal of motherhood. Hannah had her baby a few weeks before I did. I remember scrolling through Instagram a month later while breastfeeding my newborn at night. This person had gone back to her same body in less than a week. She was filming herself doing planks and riding a bike two weeks postpartum while I was still healing from diastasis recti and a weak pelvic floor. Who will ever know if her body felt different post-partum? I later saw Instagram stories where she woke up to bake 20 recipes from scratch in a day, milk cows, homeschool, and teach a ballet class. She even posted stories of her latest travel adventure with her seven kids. Oh, and she still goes on dates with her husband. I have so many questions. She mentioned that "a teacher comes to homeschool the kids" so casually. Alright, girl, that's good, so it's not you doing it all. You pay someone. That makes sense. She never mentions if she has nannies or pays for help for someone to watch her kids, but I assume this is precisely the case, and no shame, but why not share that aspect of her life too? Also, does her four-month-old baby sleep through the night? Is that why she wakes up looking like she got a whole night's sleep every morning? My baby still wakes up three times a night, and I only have one. Does she sleep train? Can she teach me what the heck she is doing to look so well slept? So, in summary. I think your work makes sense. We need more people to look at these performances critically. These influencers have a huge podium. If Instagram is going to be a performance, it may be the influencers' responsibility to clarify that it is precisely that. And I would love to know how much help they are getting and how much they are paying for it. I never will.
Sara, I love your brain and openness and thoughtfulness. You engage so hard and I think this is a really really interesting point. My 2 cents is that what's problematic about this ultra-rich, many-childed lady (who I only know about because of you) isn't as much a personal problem—like Hannah didn't set out to cause harm, right? We can pretty safely assume that. The root problem here is with the power that companies like Tik Tok & Meta (and their algorithms etc) wield within our culture. Who controls Hannah? Ultimately, her power is granted by Meta (and it basically is—she's tied and beholden to their algorithm). I think about this a lot (especially since, ahem, 2016)—the way that influence operates in our culture and how it has overpowered traditional sentiment-swaying platforms (like maybe fact-checked newspapers for example etc). My pipe dream is that we, as consumers, will become more critical of our own consumption and relationship with social media and the companies that are highly motivated to keep us hanging out on their platforms—and that's *exactly* where your critical work is so important! Also, every single perinatal mental health expert I've spoken with specifically has called out the damage that the bombardment of images (like ballerina farm's clean house) we experience on social media does to us. Anyway, a bunch of disjointed thoughts maybe?
This is so good. I think the critique is necessary - and you're not inciting some IG insurrection by naming names. Saying exactly which IG account your talking about helps provide clarity and context for the reader.
And Koritha's quote perfectly captures my feelings on the "let's just all be kind" nonsense white momfluencers were spouting in the summer of 2020 at the height of the racial justice movement. (I've met Koritha when she used to lead a running group in my city. So cool to see her mentioned here. I'll have to read her book!!)
What's the point?
This is so good. Thank you for wrestling with these questions and making this space for us to think more critically about the content we consume — both in terms of the vision of motherhood it promotes and our own reactions to it.
Thank you for writing this and grappling with these questions. (I don’t follow BF so forgive the ignorance of the background here) but reading your paragraph where you talk about “not every mom” brought up something for me. Something I’ve noticed in the momfluencer space is this focus on posting “real” content and anything that is positive, overly privileged, is deemed toxic or bullshit, so my feed is filled with all the down sides of parenthood. It seems people tread lightly when they have positive experiences for fear of “making moms feel bad” who have different experiences. It seems too black and white. I had a very easy recovery from c section, and my baby is very easy, sleeps through the night, and Breastfeeds wonderfully. But when I tell people this, people warn me to keep it to myself. And what I’ve also noticed is MANY MANY people told me they had it pretty easy too, and the toddler stage was harder for them than the newborn stage. I say this because when I was pregnant and when I was deciding to become a mom, I was terrified by what I saw online. The current vibe had me thinking it would be awful… and then it wasn’t (of COURSE there were ups and downs and it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows but this idea of either showing ALL positive or ALL struggles isn’t helping.) So I guess my point is when we put our own experience in the context of “not all moms,” there is the possibility that the very nuanced and varied experiences (both the difficult ones and the positive ones) could be left out of the narrative skewing our perception. There’s this hesitancy to celebrate the good stuff. Motherhood is not so black and white and the more we can balance the story the more we normalize the many ways we experience motherhood.
Anyways, just my two cents. I’m really enjoying your newsletter and would love to hear your perspective!
I did theatre all through school and in college - and rereading $1 million an acre (after my eyes bugged out of my head) made me think about this concept of ‘willing suspension of disbelief.’ There’s an example for literally everything about seeing a live show of any kind (or movies/TV even) but my favorite is probably at curtain calls when the villain takes a bow and people boo - we got that caught up in the story.
And now I can’t help thinking of BF’s page this way. It’s her life, and yet, it’s set dressing. The stove, the price for an acre of land, the small business narrative (which is not not legit just that they started out with the kind of capital that the 1% have). And I feel like it’s…dark in light of recent events. Is she the person that uninformed people look at and go “other women complain too much they’d actually be happy having seven kids but they don’t know it. We know what’s best.”
Just by considering all of this, you’re doing more than most. I’m no longer on social media but I used to follow BF and personally loved the account. There’s a responsibility to be had when scrolling and posting on social media. I believe the scroller should have MORE responsibility than the poster. If you have a hard time not comparing your life to other peoples or not considering the posters background, financial status, etc. it might be time for a reevaluation of why you’re using social media. Just my two cents! Thanks for writing this :)
"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." THIS PART. I for one am enjoying being off IG and seriously contemplating not going back (been off all summer). I am so exhausted by white privilege and momfluencers in general. And I'm a stay at home white mom, whose work in the worlds is much more effective the less I'm on social media. Thanks for your writing on all of it though- it is as fascinating as it is alarming.
CANNOT wait for your book.
I love this thought process. It’s so hard! Yes, they’re people, and technically they’re apolitical, but also being neutral is *itself* political. Not having to take a side or make a statement shows your comfort with things exactly as they are. Clearly Hannah is unaffected by the overturning of Roe. She probably privately celebrated it - or does she follow current events at all? Why should she need to? Why is this so hard??
BUT I also really have to tell someone who knows that it hurt my soul deep down to see her on her kitchen floor making a banner for her son (I thought the sons didn’t care about birthdays???), running errands, cleaning her house, baking a cake, just ***days*** after having her 7th baby. (Making date balls with a freakin SPOON) Every time I see her I just think oh PLEASE let this woman rest. I really do think this sends a harmful message about motherhood and maybe it should be scrutinized.
I agree with you on all points here. And yes I DO enjoy a little lightheartedness, some snark, and a good laugh every once in awhile. I feel you hit the balance perfectly. I have no grudge against Hannah and I enjoy her content, but I do think her content can be damaging if “regular” moms/women are comparing ourselves to her. Most of us don’t have her genetics/thinness/beauty/talent, and wealth so in no way would be able to accomplish what she seems to be able to accomplish each day.
This is so great! I’m new to Substack. Looking for more things to read with substance. And a space to share my own writing. THIS topic needs to be delved into. I became a mom in 2000 and had my fourth in 2015. So I’ve seen the before and after social media. I recently wrote about my first year as a new mom.
Looking back, I can laugh at a lot of things. But not everything. So much anxiety was needless and it still lingers today. And then the internet took this to a whole new level. Every decision could be researched and quantified and compared. And now momfluecer social media feeds can bring the compare-and-despair pressures into someone’s headspace ALL the time. But I can understand the draw. As a parent, especially a new one, it’s normal to be hypersensitive to all that social signaling. It feels needed to make sure your kid’s gonna be okay. Even more so if you’re feeling isolated.
Overall, I think the fake mom lifestyle is about a mom’s personality, privilege and need to feel validated. Over the years, I’ve gotten better at recognizing and owning my deeper motives in my parenting style and decisions. As I do, I feel less certain, but also more clear. And I’m learning to love it here. I think that’s a message that needs to be shared more. I'm looking forward to reading your book!!
Yes! I love this. Thank you for grappling with these issues which are huge for so many aspects of culture and “civilization” right now. Thank you for being so human.
I really appreciated this post - I’ll definitely be thinking about all of these questions for a long while. I’ve followed BF for most of her time on Insta and have always been both fascinated and conflicted by so many aspects of her posts and her life as it’s presented online. Thank you for this!
I’m a new subscriber but in general I feel that it is up to the follower, reader, listener to be discerning, critical, analytical. It is usually not the fault of a person posting how their posts land with others (with obvious exceptions for hateful garbage). We should strive to read and follow a variety of people living a variety of lifestyles and not ask every person posting to address/speak to every type of person.
We should all have a healthy filter and mature understanding of reality, and if we don’t, we should strive to cultivate it and/or stay off social media. Social media doesn’t harm everyone.
But following people like you HELP everyone develop that healthy-criticism filter. Helping us be less negatively affected, obsessively compare ourselves with others, going down a weird rabbit hole of “that’s the right way to live, that’s the ideal, let me measure myself against it etc”
So people like you do the WORK for many of us which gives us a healthier perspective.
The thing that gets to me about Ballerina Farm is, like, are her children so well-behaved that they don’t need supervision? If she’s “in the kitchen all day” who is keeping these small children from throwing blocks at each other? If she’s getting birthday stuff ready “before the kids wake up” does that mean ALL of them just wake up at 7:30 or whatever every day? HOW?
I've followed your work since I got pregnant with my first baby. Then I started following BF when I realized she was a few weeks ahead of me in her pregnancy. I loved the pictures and even got inspired to bake bread. I understood that her Instagram account was a business and very performative, and yet, at some point, it made me start to feel like an utter loser for not keeping up with this ideal of motherhood. Hannah had her baby a few weeks before I did. I remember scrolling through Instagram a month later while breastfeeding my newborn at night. This person had gone back to her same body in less than a week. She was filming herself doing planks and riding a bike two weeks postpartum while I was still healing from diastasis recti and a weak pelvic floor. Who will ever know if her body felt different post-partum? I later saw Instagram stories where she woke up to bake 20 recipes from scratch in a day, milk cows, homeschool, and teach a ballet class. She even posted stories of her latest travel adventure with her seven kids. Oh, and she still goes on dates with her husband. I have so many questions. She mentioned that "a teacher comes to homeschool the kids" so casually. Alright, girl, that's good, so it's not you doing it all. You pay someone. That makes sense. She never mentions if she has nannies or pays for help for someone to watch her kids, but I assume this is precisely the case, and no shame, but why not share that aspect of her life too? Also, does her four-month-old baby sleep through the night? Is that why she wakes up looking like she got a whole night's sleep every morning? My baby still wakes up three times a night, and I only have one. Does she sleep train? Can she teach me what the heck she is doing to look so well slept? So, in summary. I think your work makes sense. We need more people to look at these performances critically. These influencers have a huge podium. If Instagram is going to be a performance, it may be the influencers' responsibility to clarify that it is precisely that. And I would love to know how much help they are getting and how much they are paying for it. I never will.
Sara, I love your brain and openness and thoughtfulness. You engage so hard and I think this is a really really interesting point. My 2 cents is that what's problematic about this ultra-rich, many-childed lady (who I only know about because of you) isn't as much a personal problem—like Hannah didn't set out to cause harm, right? We can pretty safely assume that. The root problem here is with the power that companies like Tik Tok & Meta (and their algorithms etc) wield within our culture. Who controls Hannah? Ultimately, her power is granted by Meta (and it basically is—she's tied and beholden to their algorithm). I think about this a lot (especially since, ahem, 2016)—the way that influence operates in our culture and how it has overpowered traditional sentiment-swaying platforms (like maybe fact-checked newspapers for example etc). My pipe dream is that we, as consumers, will become more critical of our own consumption and relationship with social media and the companies that are highly motivated to keep us hanging out on their platforms—and that's *exactly* where your critical work is so important! Also, every single perinatal mental health expert I've spoken with specifically has called out the damage that the bombardment of images (like ballerina farm's clean house) we experience on social media does to us. Anyway, a bunch of disjointed thoughts maybe?
This is so good. I think the critique is necessary - and you're not inciting some IG insurrection by naming names. Saying exactly which IG account your talking about helps provide clarity and context for the reader.
And Koritha's quote perfectly captures my feelings on the "let's just all be kind" nonsense white momfluencers were spouting in the summer of 2020 at the height of the racial justice movement. (I've met Koritha when she used to lead a running group in my city. So cool to see her mentioned here. I'll have to read her book!!)