The Hoely Hour - E195 Much Ado About Ballerina Farm

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

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Welcome to The Holy Hour, a podcast about sex, relationships, mental health, and everything in between. I'm Amelia Sampson. And I'm Liz Ball. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok at TheHolyHour. I'm on Instagram and TikTok at Amelia Sampson. And I'm on Instagram and TikTok at LizBallSoHard. You can also watch us on YouTube or listen ad-free on Patreon at patreon.com slash TheHolyHour.

Check out our merch at theholyhour.com and email us your spicy stories at holyhourpodcast at gmail.com. Welcome to this week's episode of Mercury Retrograde Strikes Again. We already recorded the first five minutes of this, but here we are. Yeah, we started recording and then my computer straight up just restarted. luckily we're pretty early on so we didn't lose our content yeah just a just an introduction just a little banter about minkus which nobody will know who minkus is once again uh introducing minkus we had a third time now a whole bit about jamila jamal and him this is actually being named

jamila japil something like that i don't know minkus is a banana um squishmallow um it did not come with the name minkus that just felt like what its name should be and i don't remember its real name and that's what how we ended up on the jamila jappeal or brianna the banana brianna the banana see it doesn't hit the same the second banana banana see that's new that was new we didn't think about that the first round um yeah i mean like my only update that i already said was how tired i am today but uh liz is going to be i'm going to be taking the reigns this episode um i'm going to be talking about ballerina farm it's so hard for me to not say ballerina farms because i feel like it should be the name of like ballerina farm ballerina farm

um i started by asking amelia what do you know about ballerina farm and again i will repeat what i know the first time i ever heard about ballerina farm was um somebody had a video of this woman doing ballet on a farm and all the comments were like for me ballerina farm and then you told me about it on two episodes ago but what i know is there's this woman who was a very talented ballerina went to juilliard a mormon and this man the heir to jet blue this man as all bad stories start it's all up from there on no i'm just kidding um so a man uh the heir to the jet blue throne um like pursued her like crazy and i found out he like amelia also originally had a uh an air oh yeah pun in there it like h is it ir er h e i r yeah airplane yeah airline air airplane

yeah we'll never get it again damn well anyways well that's what you missed on our first round of this but he like pulled some strings at the airline and like sat like got to sit next to her on a flight somewhere because he she kept like turning him down for dates anyway he ended up like heavily pursuing he's like oh i'm on the same flight and then he like got on the same flight and sat right next to her yeah and they anyway they ended up getting married have having like eight kids which is like might as well be like 30 kids eight kids is too many kids she's 34 that's eight kids at 34 and she doesn't she is um one of nine kids mormons are like that's um y'all are fucking like y'all act all holy you're fucking well we'll we're gonna get

really into the weeds in this discussion oh hell yeah in this discussion um but yeah so she stopped doing ballet and uh all of the interviews that they have together she seems like really sad and only talks about like missing ballet like when he's not in the room and everyone's like for re ballerina farm and uh that's the extent of what oh and she has all these videos of her just like doing ballet like on the farm and it's like kind of like grim to see it's like oh shit she's just like on this farm with her like 30 kids just like plieing her life away well i am going to go into into the weeds on ballerina farm hell yeah um and she kind of became a topic of discussion so she's kind of always been like someone that people are watching because she is considered a

tradwife influencer and we've talked about tradwives before traditional wife is what it means and being a tradwife influencer I think is in itself a strange nuance to try and navigate especially from like a feminist lens because I think that we have started to convolute a trad wife influencer and a homemaking influencer because the more I thought about it as I was writing this outline I was like I think that like homemaking needs to be its separate brand of content compared to a trad wife influencer because I think a trad wife influencer is someone who is trying to tell other women how to be yeah and I think that homemaking content is purely for entertainment potentially education if they're teaching you

how to do something but if it's just to show you like this is how this is what my day is like yeah like that's kind of just for entertainment at this point the term trad wife sounds derogatory and I thought that it was until I saw some trad wives like describing themselves as trad wives I was like oh we do that like that's I you like that there is a type of there's a brand of person that I think exists on like the conservative spectrum who exploits these things for popularity

so you know they want to be a conservative traditional wife and they gain notoriety by being inflammatory they're just profiting off of

like being inflammatory kind of like HRH collection like she's popular because she's insane oh she's the one who's i don't think i've seen her uh you've definitely seen clips of her because she's just kind of like a meme at this point oh um have you seen the it's like the voiceover is like um why would i care what an ugly dumb rat thinks of me oh yeah yeah yeah always right that's hrh collection oh yeah and she started out as just kind of being like i think like a shopping influencer but anyways that's a different you know i think it's caught up in this

like dichotomy a little bit too much and not so well deserved is nara smith i have no idea she's the one that like she's like 22 she's married to lucky blue smith who's like uh he was like a really popular supermodel like in like the pinterest days or like the tumblr days i guess um but she like talks like this and like today my husband came home and he wanted pizza and she goes through this whole process of making like the most like complicated the most simple thing super super complicated okay i think i have seen people making fun of that just like the most like elaborate amazing clothes and like she's leaned into how ridiculous it is now you know which is good but like i feel like that's more homemakery and not trad wifey yeah so it feels like there's

a line i don't think that ballerina farms it should be considered a trad wife i agree but um i'm gonna go into the details okay so uh this article that really blew up it was posted by the times i believe it's the uk times um and it there were two articles there was the original article where the author goes to ballerina farm to meet hannah neilman who is the face and personality behind ballerina farm the um instagram handle well all the social handles um and then that received not a lot of criticism but it brought a lot of eyes to ballerina farm and ballerina farm received a lot of criticism because of this article and then there was a follow-up article that was like yes this article has gained a lot of traction and i mean that's like the whole point

of it is like this is an important discussion for us to have and she kind of like balances a lot of um ballerina farm and what people project onto her and her lifestyle and just kind of like this this balance between like her life is a contradiction um so i wanted to explore that a little bit more um so here's just kind of a rundown of that first article i highly recommend reading both if you haven't they're fascinating i'm going to read some headlines to you the the title of the original article is meet the queen of the trad wives and her eight children damn and um here are some other headlines that have popped up since uh this original article came out the sinister but familiar layer missing from the ballerina farm and trad wives debate who is

ballerina farms hannah nealman influencer and mom of eight the ballerina farm controversy explained why is everybody talking about influencer hannah nealman ballerina farm gave birth two weeks ago now it's time for a beauty pageant that's from february um ballerina farm says she couldn't love her life more on ballerina farm and ballet's crushing lessons in femininity ballerina farms hannah nealman blasts recent profiles attack on family and marriage um the trad wife revolution is upon us so this is just kind of like a small scale of the conversations that people are you know using hannah nealman to have yeah um and it's kind of made her like it's almost like she's not even participating in the conversation that people are having

about her yeah you know what i mean yeah i mean that's like really the the influencer plight yeah that's true the article explores hannah nealman a social media influencer known as ballerina farm who epitomizes the trad wife movement neilman who has nine million followers damn yeah uh combines traditional homemaking and motherhood with modern celebrities she's noted for her unconventional lifestyle including giving birth without pain relief breastfeeding at beauty pageants and showcasing her rural life on social media those first two are pretty badass yeah yeah uh neilman's public persona has sparked debate about whether her choices represent empowerment or a step back from feminism neilman lives with her husband daniel and their eight

children on a farm in utah despite her public image she and her family maintain traditional mormon values focusing on a rural family-centric life neilman who initially sought a career in ballet shifted to this lifestyle after starting a family the article also discusses the trad phenomenon suggesting it is a response to the failings of modern feminism and a reaction to the pressures of contemporary womanhood. And I have like a bit about like the author's intended perspective. The author aims to present a nuanced view of Hannah Nealman's life and the trad wife movement. They explore both the admiration and criticism Nealman receives framing her choices as a complex interplay of personal agency and societal expectations. The author is interested

in whether Nealman's lifestyle can be seen as a form of empowerment or if it reinforces traditional gender roles that some might view as oppressive. This perspective seeks to understand how modern feminist ideals intersect with traditional values in the context of social media influence. So just to give you a brief introduction, Hannah Nealman is the social media personality known for her Instagram account, Ballerina Farm, where she documents her lifestyle on her rural farm and her content primarily focuses on traditional homemaking farming and family life often highlighting her experiences raising a family and managing um a farm life in a picturesque often idyllic setting if you were to go look at her content like she's like

making butter from scratch she's like making everything from scratch she's on this big beautiful farm it's it's literally what it sounds like uh ballerina ballerina farm reflects a blend of her past as a ballet dancer um which is why it's called ballerina farm with her current lifestyle on a farm hannah's social media presence often features homemaking farm life um family moments it's she doesn't really share her kids like she doesn't hide her kids from her video but she like she's not exploiting them yeah exactly and i have to say i really appreciate that yeah um like her content is her making stuff yeah for the most part um if her kids show up in the video when they're in the video if they're talking in the background then that's how it is um the account

garnered attention for its aesthetic and thematic portrayal of a return to traditional values and rural living which has resonated with many followers interested in a simpler more nostalgic lifestyle so who actually is hannah nealman um so before becoming the trad wife influencer behind ballerina farm she had a diverse and eventually uh eventfully early life she was raised mormon um she's the eighth of nine children in a devout mormon family in springfield springville near salt lake city utah oh that's where my ex is from um her upbringing was deeply rooted in mormon values which emphasize traditional family roles and religious beliefs um and i don't know about like so in the article the author is like explaining how all of there's

so many kids but they all kind of like are their own unit like they take care of each other and having grown up around a lot of mormon families that that is how they operate like they're very well-behaved children um i'm and i'm this isn't an absolute you know there's always going to be yeah things about every person and group but um yeah mormon kids are typically very well-behaved and there is just like a really strong emphasis on family values and um they do like kind of take care of each other it's kind of like uh the 19 kids and counting family like the older kids are helping out with the younger kids and that's just like part of life you know yeah wait like small question do do mormons have to like worry about like inbreeding i mean they probably should

but i don't know there's so many of them like how do you avoid like having sex with your like cousin you know what i mean i mean you got to do 23 and me yeah everyone's gotta yeah um but education and ballet so this is you know a big piece of what we know about hannah so from a young age she was passionate about ballet she left home at 17 to pursue her dream at the Juilliard School in New York City where she trained as a ballerina and her her dedication to ballet was a significant part of her identity um beauty pageants is also a big part of her life um to support her education she competed in scholarship pageants so they're beauty contests that offered academic scholarships wow um this experience helped finance her studies and also introduced her to a world of public

recognition and competition she um i this is one of the things that she's been in the news for in the past she competed in um a beauty pageant like 10 days after giving birth that's crazy her most recent child that's crazy yeah it's it is bananas um and then uh she moved to New York and uh after she graduated and she continued to pursue a professional career in ballet while living in New York City and that was like her ambition and her goal that's what she also said in the interview she was like yeah this was my goal when I was younger but she had like the city life and wanted to be a ballerina that's amazing um and then shortly after that she started she met daniel uh like you had said he like pulled some strings to like meet her which is actually kind of cute

um the son of the jet blue founder david nealman and uh at a college basketball game and the relationship progressed quickly leading to marriage and the birth of their first child shortly after this marked a significant shift from her career focused life to a more traditional role centered around family and then they transitioned to a rural life like shortly after having their first kid what's the like where what's the line of like that's cute to pursue someone and like stalking kind of crazy like well they had already met but like what how did he know her like full like that she was going somewhere like they were they were talking so like she had told him and he was like oh no way i'm gonna be on that flight too

and then they sat next to each other wild yeah and i do think i i might i might be adding this i might be taking some liberty creative liberties i think that maybe he moved them to first class oh which what a baller ass move that would be a baller ass move if that's the case i feel like i'm already just like turning this man into a villain in my head you know i think he's just kind of like a dingus guy like i don't think he's a bad guy i'll explain more of my thoughts later as i get deeper into it um and then they transitioned to rural life uh where they moved to utah began their life on a 328 acre farm um this transition from urban life and professional ballet to a traditional farming lifestyle represented a major change in hannah's life path

and then her early social media presence she became widely known as ballerina farm um she started sharing aspects of her farm life family experiences on social media and her content focused on farm activities cooking family life and gradually evolving into the trad wife persona which she became known for um so there's just kind of like a lot of a lot of color here um for her background let's talk more about like the trad wife movement yeah the trad wife movement is a cultural phenomenon that promotes traditional gender roles particularly in the context of marriage and family and here's we have like a more detailed look on uh its definition and its origins so um traditional gender roles the movement advocates for women to embrace traditional

roles as homemakers caregivers and support supportive wives this often includes prioritizing domestic responsibilities and child rearing over professional or personal ambitions. Domesticity and family focus, trad wives typically emphasize values like homemaking, cooking from scratch, and focus on family life. They often portray a lifestyle centered around nurturing a family and maintaining a home as primary responsibilities. And online presence, this movement is largely propagated through social media platforms where individuals share their daily lives parenting practices and domestic skills this often includes cooking cleaning and other household tasks depicted in a positive light so i think that's a

key point of it's like propaganda exactly yeah um religious and cultural roots many trad wives are influenced by religious or cultural beliefs that endorse traditional family structures in some cases these beliefs are tied to christian or conservative values that emphasize family and gender roles. And if we're looking at the origin of the trad wife movement, it's considered a reaction to modern feminism. The movement emerged as a reaction to contemporary feminist movements and changing gender roles. It contrasts with the girl boss era of feminism that emphasized women's empowerment in the workplace and breaking glass ceilings. But I do think that modern feminists now would be critical of the girl boss era because I think that the girl boss era

really only it didn't accomplish much it just really only like catered to women like burning the fuck out it's like you can do it all and the expectation for women to do everything yeah like uh to to work their asses off at work and be okay with like shit maternity leave and like just uh it it didn't do what it intended to do and it really only benefited capitalism i also i feel like calling it girl boss and not just like saying boss is that's true that's also a good point hashtag girl boss cultural and political context the rise of trad wife content coincided with a broader cultural and political discourse around family values and gender roles it reflects a desire for a return to perceived traditional values in response to rapid social changes and

concerns about societal issues like declining birth rates and family breakdowns um there is a lot of nostalgia and romanticism of the good old days but those days were actually full of racism and domestic abuse i was just about to say they really weren't great yeah and i'm like okay who knew that old school marketing would work on modern idiots yeah they're just like now look at that picture it's just wild to think like this is a reaction to trying to like ask for equality and equity that's wild like why are we why is this contentious well that's part of my conclusion oh okay um overall the trad wife movement reflects a blend of traditional values and contemporary social media dynamics creating a distinct cultural phenomenon that engages with

issues of gender family and identity uh and looking more at like hannah's role in all of this um what it kind of comes down to like empowerment versus traditionalism so her choices can be seen as i want to like look at this from many perspectives her choices can be seen as empowering for some um her choices can be seen as empowering from several perspectives particularly when viewed through the lens of individual agency and personal fulfillment and um here's just like a few things multi-dimensional success she successfully balances her role as a mother wife influencer and a beauty queen her ability to manage these diverse responsibilities while maintaining a significant online presence illustrates a form

of success that combines traditional and modern aspects of womanhood i think it's fascinating that she is so successful um as a homemaker and it's it's kind of contradictory and this is what the author says as well like she is a successful businesswoman being a a stay-at-home mother who also has created like a whole business around her farm yeah you know yeah she she's created a business of showing her homemaking lifestyle online and I think that she receives kind of unfair criticism about being a trad wife I hate saying trad wife because I don't think she is one I think she's just a homemaker yeah um we don't see people criticizing Martha Stewart for being a successful homemaker and a businesswoman it feels a little dangerous to consider every woman

that like makes a home a trad wife like that feels that feels regressive in itself there's and that's i think the peak criticism of it it's like okay sure there are some issues with um kind of promoting a traditional wife lifestyle but those issues aren't necessarily like Hannah's to solve she's she's just the canvas in which people are having these conversations and I like where are we drawing the line you know like Martha Stewart or Joanna Gaines they pursued um being homemakers on television yeah and things are things have changed you know social media has given people access to careers that never even existed before totally so we see this other woman like embracing being a very talented homemaker and i like i'm i'm calling her a talented

homemaker as like a full-time job like she's not even it's multiple full-time jobs we know that we know it's multiple full-time jobs to cook for a family of 10 yeah and um like care for her entire home care for her kids like child care they have no child care help that's crazy especially with having more money than god they have a one-room schoolhouse on property good lord and i mean there are some points in the article that you know do kind of make it seem like hannah and her dreams have been steamrolled like um the school room it used to be her ballet studio oh my god that's so heartbreaking what the fuck just build another one you have so much money so there's little things like that where you're like oh it's see i just there's so many points of this where

it's like there are people that want to be homemakers and that's fine you know what i mean and like i think that she does get some flack because she it she seems so like she's had to like pat down her own dreams to do this as though she hates it which i don't think is a fair representation yeah i don't think it's fair either because it's like sure maybe she does wish she had more time for ballet but like don't you wish you had more time to do other shit yeah oh yeah like i i was just kind of thinking like okay as a woman i'm two years younger than her maybe a year and a half so as like a child childless woman who is unmarried and living a completely different lifestyle if I'm thinking about what I wanted when I was 20 it's completely different than what I

have now and I am more happy than I probably would have been with if I had followed through on that so yeah there is kind of this like piece of it and I I'm I can talk about it again later because I feel like I'm getting off track um it feels a little infantilizing to act like this grown woman with she's a mother to eight kids yeah like to act like this grown woman is a victim of her own lifestyle and choices is infantilizing yeah and i think that she did she she agreed to live the life that she's living i think that where where it gets a little bit muddy is how she is in interviews like how she talks when her husband's not in the room like she seems more like dreamy about her past life like she can't talk about it around him I think that that's where people

started to be like oh no like free this woman you know but like in reality like you could both like like you're saying both things can be true like you can love the life that you have and miss the life that you used to have like that is such a normal experience for people I think that's also a normal experience for moms yeah your entire life is different the second you have a kid right right um okay let's talk about the other points of empowerment versus traditionalism that we can look at um she rejects stereotypes which is kind of ironic um like she defies stereotypes associated with both traditional and modern gender roles like a traditional a trad wife isn't fucking running an entire social media business and a farm yeah a trad wife is not a successful business

woman yeah you know and that's not the expectation like for a traditional wife in the first place is to be this big successful businesswoman and she rejects the the modern stereotype of a working woman you know by making um homemaking into a thriving business yep um she challenges narrow definitions of what it means to be empowered she competes in beauty pageants days after giving birth she gives up a competitive city ballerina lifestyle and makes homemaking into a wildly profitable business that supports her entire family she is a walking contradiction of modern feminism um monetizing her skills so i think that's also like when we think about things that we consider women's work and how undervalued they are like for her to monetize them so successfully

I think that should be seen as like an impressive yeah that's very empowering yeah a valuable feat that's really challenging and like I think it should be recognized how difficult it is to be good at this yes absolutely to the point where it's now a business um her business model serves as an example of how personal passions can be transformed into professional opportunities empowering through example her success in homemaking can inspire others who are passionate about this role but may feel undervalued or overlooked her visibility and achievements offer a model for how one can take pride in homemaking and find personal and professional fulfillment in this role and validating traditional roles I mean and that's

kind of like up to whoever's discretion you know like by achieving success through homemaking Nealman provides validation for those who choose to embrace traditional roles um and I think the the key operative word here is choose it's a choice it's her choice to embrace this traditional role and I think that's like the most important part is that it should be a choice um her accomplishments help broaden the definition of empowerment showing that fulfilling and influential careers can be built around traditional domestic roles um and then let's look at the critiques i think those are a little more obvious and i think they're also a little more harmful um but she can be seen as controversial for several several

reasons the first one being what the last one was traditional gender roles uh her hannah nealman's content often emphasizes traditional roles of wife and mother which some view as a throwback to outdated gender norms critics argue that this portrayal can reinforce conservative views on gender and domestic roles potentially undermining modern feminist ideals of gender equality and women's independence and i think that's kind of like the more sinister thing underneath it all is that um there are alt-right conservatives who are trying to use this type of content to be like this is how women should be yeah this is the expectation like this this woman is literally like a beauty pageant queen yeah she she is gorgeous and she um is wildly talented and

like you know has all these beautiful kids running around like so there's this like sinister part where there are people who have um ulterior motives yeah using her content to try and yeah yeah that's the perfect word they're weaponizing her content um her high-profile public persona her visibility including participating in beauty pageants shortly after giving birth has sparked debates about the intersection of personal choice and public perception some see her choice choices as empowering and a reflection of personal freedom while other others view them as a reinforcement of unrealistic standards and pressures on women oh shut up like the pressure of like okay this woman just popped out her eighth baby and now

she is like competing and winning a beauty pageant nobody should feel threatened by that like yeah you know i don't want to like tell people how to feel but like it feels like such a stretch to be like well this is like really harmful it's like this this one woman is doing this like the perspective i could understand it from is i agree i think that she's she this is similar to the expectation that women don't need maternity leave or need as much time to recover from like a birth but like you're saying this is just one person yeah like and if this is her goal if she's like driven and wants to participate in this like yeah fuck yeah sister but but i also understand the other end of like it being weaponized to hold women to an unrealistic expectation yeah i mean

not all of us are fucking beauty pageant ballerinas well some of us i am i am um her religious and cultural views uh her lifestyle is intertwined with her mormon faith which includes traditional views on family and gender roles and this has led to discussions about how religious beliefs influence and potentially limit the perceptions of gender roles and women's rights and i think that's a valid um criticism i think a lot of religions do tend to kind of like put women in a box especially a christian based christian-based faith like if you look into the history of the bible like patriarchy did a lot of work to um harm women totally through the bible it does it's like that i feel like that's the only criticism that you've said so far that doesn't lack nuance a

and b like that's the one that i've heard the most of like oh like when people find out that she's mormon they're like oh that makes sense this is so fucking sad you know it's like it really is like all of the i don't want to say propaganda again but like all of the like i don't know everything about the mormon faith is centered around like women being baby makers really yeah being submissive and obedient to their husband yeah i like having grown up around so many mormon families too i like i think the main um focus is family values like the mormon kids i went to school with i know i have been a critic of the mormon religion and i will always be a hater until i die especially of like christian-based religion yeah christian-based religions but um

i will say like the the mormon kids i went to school with were like friendly they weren't totally i wouldn't say they're welcoming but like their inner family dynamics was like a very close bond and there is something where you feel like a little left out as a kid not being able to kind experience um like being welcomed into a home like that you know what i mean yeah like as just as their friend because you're not mormon right you would have to like convert it's bizarre yeah did you know if you marry a mormon man you have to convert to get married in the church yeah it's just like it's so in group out group yeah and that's i think my biggest issue with it yeah it's very it's not welcoming and there is a lot of like shaming around like i don't know

there were obviously girls who got pregnant and weren't married and that was just watching these these girls get ostracized by this community that's supposed to value like faith and support and family and and then betraying at the second someone behaves like outside of like your little rules yeah anyways um social media dynamics the curated nature of social media can amplify both positive and negative reactions the idealized portrayal of farm life and traditional values may be seen as escapism or contributing to unrealistic expectations for women's for women and families and then criticism of authenticity some critics question the authenticity of hannah's portrayal of farm life and domesticity suggesting that her social media presence may not fully

reflect the challenges challenges and complexities of rural living and traditional roles does anybody's yeah that's my point too I'm like okay no one's like people aren't really posting about like their fucking everyday struggles you know and the author did do a good job of explaining like people ask me is it really like what it which what it's like when she posts and she's like yeah it is like I rolled up to the farm there's all these beautiful kids and they're a little chaotic but they like kind of manage themselves and like it's exactly how she portrays it like they're all like everyone's in their cute clothes and her house is beautiful like they live on this beautiful farm so I I don't think she's ever intentionally like misleading trying to hide anything yeah she's

not trying to like she's not doing voiceovers of like today I made yeah pancakes from scratch yeah I don't know yeah it took me 12 hours um she's not making content like that um you just have to watch it i was scrolling through it before you got here um it's just like clips she doesn't even put music on it she doesn't do voiceovers it's just like whatever's happening there it is yeah on your screen it has 10 million views um but let's kind of like look at some more legitimate criticisms through an intersectional feminist lens um class and economic factors i think that is the number one thing we can look at like you need to have economic access and resources to live the lifestyle that she's portraying her her husband has money yeah

their farm is really successful her um presence that her social media presence is very successful and i'm sure brings in a shit ton of money but um aside from that like you if she wasn't an influencer they would still need to have money to be living the lifestyle that they have right now so that's not something that is affordable or accessible especially if you are in like if it is being weaponized um in a more sinister way to hold women to this unrealistic expectation of what a woman and a wife should be her ability to focus on homemaking and turn it into a business may be influenced by her economic background and access to financial resources whether through personal wealth or supportive partnerships can significantly impact someone's ability to engage and commercialize

homemaking her visibility and success might be supported by class privilege that supports opportunities and stability not accessible to everyone and um market and consumerism the commercialization of homemaking as seen in neilman's case often caters to specific socioeconomic classes I think that is another like kind of important piece of this like there is something that this is like so appealing to white women you know what I mean yeah and Hannah is a white woman so um I can see from like a more sinister perspective where conservatives are trying to get white women to want to like live this lifestyle yeah to to become to become like this especially with kind of the panic of like conservatives thinking that like white people are

a minority somehow like yeah oppressed and just yeah and just kind of wanting to you know they're they're neo-nazis yeah that's that's what their focus is so they're looking at this content from that lens um race and cultural factors representation and visibility hannah nealman is a white woman and her success in the homemaking sphere reflects broader trends in how race intersects with public perception in many western contexts white individuals have historically had greater visibility and access to platforms for promoting traditional roles this can influence how her brand is received and perceived compared to those from a different racial background cultural expectations and norms the trad wife movement often reflects specific cultural and

racial ideals in western society traditional gender roles are often framed through a particular cultural lens which might not take into account the diverse experiences of people from various racial and ethnic backgrounds her success may inadvertently perpetuate a narrow view of traditional roles that aligns with certain cultural norms and then obviously gender role and expectations challenging and reinforcing gender norms her choice to embrace and promote a traditional homemaking role challenges some modern gender norms but also reinforces others her influence can be seen as part of a broader trend where traditional gender roles are reinterpreted and marketed in ways that may not fully address the diverse experiences of women

across different socioeconomic and racial backgrounds it doesn't really feel like she's trying to be that though i mean i haven't watched any of her videos but it feels like it's very obvious that this woman comes from a lot of money you know what i mean it's not like like do things this way and you'll have the exact life as me that's true she's not hiding that her husband is the jet blue air you know what i mean like i don't know it all feels very i feel like a sympathize her now i started this like free her and now i'm like let her live yeah but like it does feel like she's being and this is too i've said this i now this is the second time i'm saying this it feels like like influencers are held to the standard like they're supposed to be

like representing everyone on planet earth yeah like especially when they're not simply not realistic and i do have to wonder how much of it is nature versus nurture like yes this woman was raised mormon with the expectation of like what a wife is and her she comes from a really big family so who are we to say this woman didn't imagine herself with eight kids herself you know nine eight or nine kids herself right um so like she is raised in this context but she doesn't know what she doesn't know and it's can we blame her for that you know is it her responsibility as an influencer to learn everything about everyone else and then try to portray that in her content no but that's what everybody acts like yeah it is every influencer

yes i mean i've we've seen people do it to you yeah it's it's truly infuriating it is and it's it's weird when like you watch that happen because you're like you can't represent every group of person because you're only one group of like you're a very specific person that's you know it's like the difference between somebody like her like ballerina farm and then somebody like pearl like yes there's exactly i was thinking about pearl too telling people how to be and how to live and how to think and that's the difference and that is worthy of like an uproar but somebody that's just like showing how they live and not like telling somebody like you better live this fucking way you're doing it wrong like that they're

two entirely different things i also think like her as a woman like hannah is receiving an unfair amount of criticism that we don't see like what why is it always women and their lifestyles that are being criticized under patriarchy when really we know the culprit of this is patriarchy right it's it's not her fault because it's easier to criticize one person than try to tackle a whole that's true and it's way easier to blame women yeah it's it's way easier uh for people in groups of power to blame um minorities for their problems yeah um and uh social media and influence just you know the the expectation that social media sets um can be harmful yeah um and i think a good point in here is uh the ability to leverage social media for business and personal branding um depends on

access to technology media literacy and financial resources they do have other people that work full-time for them they have a pretty small like group of people that are employed full-time but they have like marketing people to help them with some of this like i think they have a designer um but i mean you know for them to be able to full employ someone full-time like a whole other person they're they're they're paying this person's salary right they're like their lifestyle essentially yeah um so that is also a socioeconomic piece of it absolutely but i also i mean yeah the the access to technology is a huge huge part of it but also there's a lot of influencers that don't come from money but are able to employ people full-time so just i don't know it just

all feels like it's there just so many criticisms so many of these criticisms that you're listing like i said lack nuance which is how we've said a million times it's how like every internet criticism is yeah well and i mean you gotta have both you gotta like we i need to be sharing both sides so we can have a nuanced conversation yes yes and um yeah i just like what was i gonna say something about the socioeconomic piece of it i guess like i also have to wonder um like how much of her popularity and success is because she's white you know absolutely um so i think i mean that's probably like the biggest piece of it when it comes to like kind of analyzing it from an intersectional lens as well absolutely um it's just you know the glorification of

a beautiful white woman totally um and if we're looking at like real life versus social media persona based on what she shows us online and what the author explained witnessing in both her original article and her follow-up article hannah doesn't seem to be glorifying her life or trying to make it seem easy um the author herself said in her follow-up article that hannah's life is very much how it's portrayed online and uh we don't know necessarily if she feels like she sacrificed being a ballerina for this life you know she's said in like other articles that um everywhere you look people are talking about her but she has said in another article like she loves her life and i don't doubt that she does yeah and like you had said earlier like

you can miss your old life and still love your current life absolutely but and that's like nostalgia yeah that's just what it is you're always going to like be nostalgic about something in your past life yeah but um yeah we my point is like we don't really know i think the author knew that this was like a hot button topic when she wrote it for the audience of women who are pushing against the trad wife expectations of alt-right conservatives i think that's who she was trying to appeal to and honestly there were a couple of parts in the article where i was like i don't love that like um it sounded like her husband was like talking over her a lot and i it i don't get the impression that he's just like some asshole trying to come like control what she's saying

in this interview i think he's just kind of like a like a talkative guy he's also a white man nepo baby exactly i i was just thinking from like a traditional home perspective and like they he he refers to them as co-ceos well so first the the um author was like she was like does the husband make the decisions in this house because i think at this point she's probably pretty agitated with him answering for hannah she's like i'm here to talk to ballerina farm yeah and um he he's like no we're like co-ceos because they do run this farm together yeah you know but he says it was always his dream to have a farm and she's like it wasn't always my dream um and when she asks hannah about birth control their their whole thing about birth control is just like well if god wants

me to have another baby then i'm gonna have one and it's like girl come on you gotta know like teach this girl how to track her cycle seriously yeah like you don't need to you don't need to be using hormonal birth control or condoms or whatever but like at least knowing when you're ovulating is is a helpful piece of that so there's no way that's like anti-religious part of me was i was annoyed by that because it's like okay is she not taught anything about her own body but that's also a failure we see across the world like not just specific to this woman and and to Mormons yeah um like I wasn't taught shit about my cycle I don't remember learning about my cycle in in school either so like in health class yeah I I learned about it as an adult

totally yeah and then what was another thing oh I think uh they asked about abortion and then they were just like well you know abortions it's not good to have an abortion we can't just have people having abortions all the time it wasn't like abortions bad it was just like uh kind of like a non-answer yeah and it's like well what did you expect you know yeah i mean that would be shocking if they were pro-choice shocking it wasn't it wasn't like they i mean they're probably not pro-choice but the they were just kind of like it seemed like the mindset of like well we don't want people to be having abortions yeah but because that sucks i think i think people who have had abortions would say yeah that shit sucked yeah like totally that's kind of like it was like

a non-answer like a very political answer and here's like here's the thing like we can't keep demanding every person on the internet like declare their their political views to the world yeah i i think like it it can be such a personal thing like i don't know i know how many how many religious people do you know like just kind of keep their religion to themselves yeah i think maybe the counter argument for that too though would be like i'm sure that she has a very large alt-right following and so people are probably hoping that she's liberal to like get through to them you know it's like well speak up but it's like she's probably not and and i also think that um well in in part of the interview she the author asks her are you a feminist and she starts to say

i think i'm a feminist but then she stops herself and then she's like it can mean so many things these days and i was thinking about it from her perspective too like she has women who are identifying as feminist intersectional feminists in her comments criticizing the way that she's living her life like if that were me i would be like i'm not a feminist because i don't want to be like these people who are ostracizing me and like criticizing me for documenting my life because it doesn't look how they want it to that is the major argument against feminism like a lot of the women that you talk to that are like i'm not a feminist like if you drill down to why that is it's because of how like militant like feminists can be about their views and how like exclusionary

they are about too many things i mean it's it's the it's two sides of the same coin really it's just like both people are digging their heels in and i mean that's what that's where we lose having productive conversations and you and i were talking about this in regards to a different conversation but just like our inability as humans to allow people to change yeah and i think i think collectively we're starting to kind of like get sick of that like hopefully i i really think we are i people are getting older and i think like a large part of the community i don't even know what i'm saying i think a large part of people online are still very young um and very vocal like you're loud and wrong yeah you know and that's just part of growing up you're loud and

you're wrong and when you get older like when you're in your like later 20s early 30s you kind of get to a point where you're like i want people to be able to change yeah i changed yeah i i didn't do it under the public eye the way that like so many of these other people have but like i if i weren't allowed to change i don't know who i would be yeah like i i don't know you that's just how life is you need to make mistakes and learn from them totally and uh sorry go ahead i was gonna i just feel like that the internet though has also perpetuated this idea that if you're not speaking up against something then you're a bad person so it's like when people are you know like jumping down somebody's throat yeah they're like you have a platform you should be saying something yeah

it's like i just i don't really think that's fair no like i don't i don't know name another job where people are demanding you declare your like political beliefs there's none and it's only if there are other jobs it's like you know like jeff bezos who is a celebrity even though he's not like a celebrity like in the traditional sense I mean when you're a billionaire yeah right so it's like in those cases yes but then also like if you're just a regular person yeah I don't know nobody yeah yeah I like I get it and I don't I'm like we need to have the reach like if if they're not doing anything problematic and they're not commenting on other things and they're just like their content is just posting their like them cooking or whatever like i don't

fucking care i'm sorry i don't need to give a shit about everybody's like it you know if they're coming on here saying like the most awful shit you've ever heard the most heinous beliefs then yeah yeah i'm done but if they're gonna keep their their mouth shut about their heinous beliefs why why am i gonna try and make them say it you know why does anybody care like what like a twitch streamer has to say about like yeah i don't know like geopolitical issues i don't give a that's not the first person i'm not like i wonder what like curtis connor has to say about like like the issues in the world you know what i mean it's like that these people aren't curtis connor does he does comment on those things a lot he like has like whole like yeah but he's like made the choice

to do that so i think that's the the piece too is like you need to let people make the choice to talk about those things and not expect like very very niche creators in in a field i guess curtis connor is a bad example because he's kind of like he's a commentator but like those big names that are just like in a niche online like i don't need to hear how they feel about very specific issues yeah because they're not the first person i think of when i want to hear from someone like exactly it just doesn't it doesn't change and what are you going to expect a woman with eight kids to say about birth control really yeah she's not like the poster child um okay let me let me let me get into i only read the first sentence of what i had written for my um i think i mean i

said this at the top i think that hannah and ballerina farm is a canvas in which women are having complex discussions of what it means to be a modern woman and I think Hannah has inadvertently challenged us to think about what that means um the way I view ballerina farm is not that this woman is trying to make her life seem like a breeze I don't think she thinks her life is easy either um she'll I think she'd be the first one to tell you that it's not uh even in the interview she told the author um that there are some weeks like she'll she'll get so exhausted that she'll be sick in bed for a week yeah and i think that's probably pretty relatable totally for most people you know like especially women especially if you're both working and

a parent like how how often are you so like exhausted you just want to be in bed for a week the way that i see hannah is like if we look at her whole life being a ballerina is incredibly competitive yeah it's not easy i think that she are we surprised that like a woman who was a competitive ballerina and went to juilliard and like competed in beauty pageants for scholarships are we surprised that she has worked her ass off to be a successful homemaker right she just seems like she has the attitude to be like to really challenge herself and be competitive about the things that she is passionate about so i think it's a little unfair to like infantilize her in this way of like oh poor free ballerina farm like why why are we assuming that she's doing all this

against her will yeah just because of how she the religion she was raised to believe i mean it's also all of these like super cuts like of like you know fan edits of her like looking sad in exactly you know which more propaganda i just kind of felt like i was like that's not really fair to do this woman no um and i think anyone who's incredibly talented us at something makes it look easy um even before she was the trad wife of it all uh Hannah showed us she didn't shy away from hard work she was and is a talented ballerina and one who attended Juilliard at that and ballet is hard it's competitive it's physically demanding and it takes dedication to be as good as she is and I'm not surprised that someone who excelled in a highly competitive perfectionist environment

applied that same level of perfectionism to other areas of her life that she was passionate about yeah like someone who is that driven yeah I'm not surprised she's fucking competing in a beauty pageant 10 days after giving birth right because she's shown us who she is yeah it's a personality structure and she's not just an influencer ballerina farm is a business that sells products too and when we talk about Martha Stewart she's not criticized for being a homemaker and she's not called a trad wife she's applauded for being a brilliant shark of a businesswoman and all the best business people participate in insider trading as we know yeah hello um she's a modern homemaker who made homemaking into her business and it's interesting to see how

if they're online they're labeled as a trad wife and if they're on tv they're just like a fun lady who cooks and decorates um the article does make it seem like she gave up her dream for her husband's dreams and it also makes her husband seem like he's trying to interrupt and run the interview but i kind of think he's just like we're saying like if we think about like yeah he's a a rich white guy who's been rich his whole life and like they have this traditional family dynamic yeah um i think he just kind of like maybe isn't as socially eloquent as you'd like um I maybe he was just annoying you know and how many people do you know how many of your friends husbands are annoying you know um I I also think he's a guy who just doesn't care about certain

issues like we're saying his background like Mormons often grow up very sheltered and if he's from a rich traditional Mormon family complicated issues just aren't polite to acknowledge in their community um and i get wanting to have wanting them to have hard stances on their politics but we can't demand every person in the public eye announce their politics to us and some people do want their politics to remain private because they just don't want to engage in political conversation on a public platform you know like yeah like i don't know if people were telling me to talk about politics and that just wasn't my thing i'd be like i don't i think i'd be like this is what I believe but I'm also not gonna like debate you about it I also think like when

you're doing something that's supposed to be just like an all-encompassing like homemaking you're gonna alienate half of your audience if you speak out against or for certain things which unfortunately you know it's like that does keep some people silent that maybe should speak up on certain things more often and also like it really doesn't really make sense for her brand to like be quiet on what she believes yeah it's also her business it's her personal business there's probably a whole bunch of shit that she's not showing people oh yeah but i think the most important piece of this complex and nuanced situation around womanhood and its expectations is that both sides are dependent on each other so one cannot exist without the other both sides want

their choice to remain a choice women who stay at home and care for their home want that to be their choice they want the choice to stay home to not have to work a traditional job and to care for their home and family because they like it and women who want the choice to go to work and not be expected to give up their career ambitions in the name of having a family and both groups don't want each other's choices shoved down each other's throats yeah so now we need to ask ourselves who is doing that who is making it seem like we can only have one or that we must do both who is an understanding that consenting in a decision of how to live your life should be an inherent right and who benefits from pitting women against each other because it's not women it's not women yeah

i was gonna say is there like a is there an equal like thing that men do or like men have where they're like forcing each other to live one way or another um i mean i think that would maybe come down to like oh you have to be like the manly man versus like but then we have that in like like super feminine you know so it just doesn't feel like there's a male equivalent not in the same way not in the same way well because what it comes down to is like men will inherently always have that choice and women it's it's just like in a balance yeah constantly of like what your rights are yeah so I think that's like the most important piece is both need each other to exist yeah and that was my overall goal with even wanting to talk about this in the first place

we both need each other to exist which is why we should both support each other's lifestyles yeah and like there are things that deserve criticism but we need to get better at recognizing like what is actually harmful versus what is like just a woman living her life like yeah and um she is a very like special case because she's so she she's made um homemaking into a career like a profitable career yeah and that's not usually the case no yeah with with homemaking two worlds colliding yeah so i i love that she's just kind of this like walking contradiction of what it means to be a modern woman i think she's just like an ultra motivated and competitive person in her own right like about the things that she cares about yeah and that just happens

to be things that are considered traditionally feminist or feminine yeah yeah absolutely damn yeah well thanks for coming to my ted talk about ballerina farm that wasn't truly remarkable i'm sure there's a lot more that i didn't cover that could have been covered it's not like i necessarily like my exposure to it was scrolling through your profile and reading both of these articles and um you know i also saw the tiktok edits of people being like free ballerina farm i was a ballerina he was a good ballerina like yeah kind of like that infantilization of her um and i bought into it at first too totally and then when i read the article that's when i texted you and i was like oh I need to do a deep dive in this yeah you're like I think my opinions changed yeah

yeah like oh shit okay I'm ready and now my opinions changed so I and the author has received a lot of criticism but I think that's a little undeserved like she really leaves it up to the reader to decide like how they should feel and the follow-up article does a good job explaining that it's like this is my fascination with ballerina farm like yeah her husband is um like this kind of old school guy but he is also he like gave up kind of this like he's the heir of this airline to pursue like a rural lifestyle but he's also like a great businessman yeah so i think there's just a lot to be balanced and like i think i encourage people to explore the nuances of it and i think that we should like look a little more at people's content before like delegating

them to the trad wife uh tunnel totally or whatever we want to call it yeah and i just think yeah there needs to be some separation there's yeah there needs to be more like market differentiation between trad wife and homemaker it's just unfair yeah and and like what where are be drawing the line between applauding someone like joanna gaines or martha stewart and chastising someone like ballerina farm yeah you know yeah so damn you did some thank you for thanks i hope i hope i sounded smarter than i feel no that was very very well written oh thank you you are like a human chat gpt which is just a human at the end of the day but like you're like uh you see what i'm trying to say i think so you're like so well worded and concise and

uh detailed i you know i would be lying if i said that i didn't use chat gpt to help me see that was a good i see i picked up on that somewhere i mean but who has time to write all that not me not you but i did tell it what i wanted it to write no i was like i need you to explore this more very very well very well done thank you no thank you no thank you no thank you okay well um my parking is out so yeah and i need to turn the ac back on and i need to go take a nap at 8 p.m just go to bed okay i'll probably just go to bed all right you want to play us out more than anything i want to play us out oh we love you our children grandpa did not like that one he's like what the fuck is going on that hit a tenor that i did not

like okay well that's what he gets for screaming in our face all fucking episode yeah we'll see We'll see if you can hear him in the background when I'm editing.