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SALT LAKE CITY — Hannah Neeleman, who runs Utah-based Ballerina Farm, has many titles: Mrs. American, professional ballerina, business owner, member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, wife and mother. One title she doesn't call herself — but that has been used to describe her in media reports and elsewhere — is "tradwife."
The term "tradwife" is short for traditional wife, meaning they live by traditional gender roles in their marriage.
With more than 9 million followers on Instagram and millions more on TikTok and YouTube, the 34-year-old Utahn is no stranger to the public criticism that comes with being a social media influencer. However, a recent controversy following the publication of a feature story on her and her family by a reporter for The Times, a British newspaper based in London, has led to some on social media calling Neeleman a victim.
But is that fair? Neeleman is a business owner and works alongside her husband Daniel Neeleman. They homeschool their eight children, and the story mentions Daniel Neeleman does all of the laundry.
In the Times article published July 20, Hannah Neeleman told reporter Megan Agnew that she doesn't see herself as a tradwife. "I don't necessarily identify with it," she said, "because we are traditional in the sense that it's a man and a woman, we have children. But I do feel like we're paving a lot of paths that haven't been paved before."
"So for me to have the label of a traditional woman," Neeleman told Agnew, "I'm kinda like, I don't know if I identify with that."
That's likely because she's a businesswoman. Unlike most stay-at-home moms, Neeleman helps run a farm and an enterprise built on her social media presence. Along with her income from social media influencing, they sell meat boxes from the cattle they breed, along with multiple other branded farm products like sourdough starters, beeswax candles and rock salt.
Following the uproar online after the first article on Ballerina Farm was published, Agnew posted a second article on Monday, more than a week after her first story went viral, to give some more insight into her experience going to the 328-acre farm just outside of Kamas, Utah.
Ballerina Farm article goes viral
"Since we published the interview, we have had an enormous and impassioned response, a whirl of arguments and opinions whipping up speed on social media," Agnew said.
She added, "I think this is the reason she inspires such strong opinions: The trad life makes women feel threatened by one another's choices. It is as if one lifestyle is going to inhibit the other. That our freedom — however we interpret 'freedom' — is being undermined by the existence of someone else's."
The second story gave a little bit more perspective into why the Utah mother chooses to live the life she does.
"Anything great requires sacrifice," Hannah Neeleman told Agnew. "You know what it took to get to where you're at."
One of the biggest controversies following the profile piece on Ballerina Farm implies Hannah Neeleman gave up her dreams of being a professional dancer in New York City after studying at the Juilliard School, to instead live the dream of her husband, Daniel.
That's because Agnew wrote excerpts like the following in her original article: "Daniel wanted to live in the great Western wilds, so they did; he wanted to farm, so they do; he likes date nights once a week, so they go (they have a babysitter on those evenings); he didn't want nannies in the house, so there aren't any. The only space earmarked to be (Hannah) Neeleman's own — a small barn she wanted to convert into a ballet studio — ended up becoming the kids' schoolroom."
Hannah Neeleman posted her thoughts on the viral article Wednesday, saying they were "taken back" at the angle Agnew chose to use, even calling it "predetermined" by the publication before ever meeting the family.
"For Daniel and I, our priority in life is God and family. Everything else comes second," she said, adding that their marriage is equal and enjoyable.
"When we started to farm, I was swept up in the beauty of learning to make food from scratch," she said. "It makes sense why I soon fell in love with the idea of a family milk cow." She shared how learning to cook foods from scratch for her family made her want to share it with more people than just her family and friends.
"So two years of planning and an additional two years of construction, we finally did it. And soon, we'll be sharing these products with all of you," she added. "It's the world we created, and I couldn't love it more."
Contributing: Wendy Leonard
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