Aspirational Loathing: Ballerina Farm and The Hatred Economy

Why women despise Hannah Neeleman

Who the hell does Hannah Neeleman think she is?

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Does she really think she can just waltz into your phone with her puffed sleeves, linen aprons, and glass jars of raw milk, baby on a hip—and that ostentatious Aga in the background (which cost significantly more than an old or new minivan)—not to mention her cute, round-faced, covertly abusive evil billionaire husband, who cruelly kidnapped her from Julliard just as she was on the cusp of achieving almost certain fame as a world-class ballerina and forced her into a Mormon breeding program…? Does she?

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”Huh? Kidnapped? What’s an ‘Aga’? I have no idea what you’re talking about, says Lee, my husband, as he sweeps the floor .“Oh wait. Are you talking about that ballerina farmer?”

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This has become our routine lately—we get the kids to bed as early as possible, and then I read my latest writing piece in the kitchen while Lee tidies up. Some trad-wife I am.

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You sweet, clueless man. It must be nice not to be consumed, day and night, with thoughts of what a petite blonde woman, who lives hundreds of miles away on what is, apparently, a vast open arid desert in the middle of absolute nowhere Iowa, eats, wears, and what she really thinks about her self-evidently miserable life devoted to raising children who interrupt her and need to be fed over and over again every day. The luxury of your indifference stuns me.

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I jest, mostly. The truth is, I couldn’t care less about Ballerina Farm, and I’m not at all preoccupied with her. (SURE, Yolande—yet here you are, writing a whole article about her!!). I am, however, fascinated by the widespread obsession that others seem to have with her, and how this obsession reveals the state of womanhood today, the fractures wrought by feminism, and female neuroticism in general.

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I have also realized over the course of writing this article (which I’ve been threatening to do for a few weeks now) that the very conversation, or “debate” or question as to whether or not women who appear to be happy really are, or whether or not it’s possible to actually be happy while mothering any number of children, let alone far too many kids than is deemed acceptable by that contingent of society that self-identifies as the arbiters of appropriateness, or whether or not a blissful child-free life is easier, happier, better, more productive, more fulfilling, etc. than motherhood, is endless, pointless, circular, and impossible to reconcile.

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As with every polarizing “issue,” those on both sides occupy an entirely distinct reality, one from the other. But I digress…or do I? No, I don’t really digress, I meander—I’ll come back to this.

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I’m actually quite late to the Ballerina Farm party. It was only a couple of months ago that my sister (who happens to be one of those crazy women who wants nothing more than to set aside her career entirely and spend more time with her three children) asked me if I was familiar with Hannah Neeleman.

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NOTE: I discovered over the course of writing this article—which, as always, invariably involved forcing several of our children against their will to listen to me reading rough drafts out loud at the kitchen table—that our fourteen year old daughter has been following Ballerina Farm for far longer than any of us, and that she was utterly scandalized by the egg apron, which I found deeply confronting. We ended up in quite a heated discussion about whether or not it’s acceptable for a billionaire husband to give his wife such a parochial gift. Our daughter fell firmly in the how dare he camp, and I found myself defending his honour and pointing out that as a Christian trans-exclusionary trad-wife myself—if not a very good one—with a penchant for natural fibres, I would personally be delighted with an egg-apron, as long as it was at least 50% linen (which I assumed Hannah’s was), and that maybe he also gave her a gorgeous solid gold something-or-other and a secret trip to Greece and that it’s possible they might not actually be publicizing every single aspect of their lives…but then I realized I was arguing with a teenaged girl, and also that my love-language really isn’t gifts at all but acts of flawless, intrepid, meticulously executed service, and we both moved on.

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No, I said, when my sister asked. I was not familiar with Ballerina Farm. So she (my sister) suggested I check out the infamous series of articles that had just been released at the time in such noteworthy publications as the New York Times and the UK’s The TImes—articles that courageously unveiled the sinister likelihood (based on what can only be assumed to be the authors’ psychic readings of Neeleman’s subconscious mind) that Neeleman, instead of being a seemingly relatively happy, relatively normal woman who also happens to have a fabulously rustic kitchen, a big family, a keen eye for design, and an impressive business sense—oh, and money— is really a victim of a deranged, controlling, Mormon madman while also (and this is indeed the contention) being a conniving liar who presents a deceitfully idyllic impression of her gorgeous life and promotes a totally unrealistic fantasy of perfection in order to sell rye flour to the unsuspecting, and to bamboozle other women into believing that they too can bake bread and homeschool, while also (yes, also this) neglecting, depriving, and endangering her children, while also (yes, correct, there’s more) actually just outsourcing almost all of her domestic labour to nannies, housekeepers, and tutors. Phew! That’s a lot, Hannah. That’s really a lot.

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After reading through the little parade of faux-neutral, unctuous, parasitical “investigative” articles published about her, I had to see Neeleman’s grotesque fabricated displays of narcissism for myself, so I obediently trotted over to instagram and watched a couple of her short videos. There, to my astonishment, I discovered…a very normal looking woman who shared snippets of her life that are remarkable only in their ordinariness. Isn’t it fairly basic for women to cook and clean and get their kids ready for church? I watched her go about the motions of her mundane life for a couple of minutes, but was soon jolted out of my reverie by my own eight children who needed me to cook and clean and get them ready for church.

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Here’s what I really think about Hannah Neeleman: There’s nothing special about her at all. She seems lovely. And normal. And fine. And yes of course I also covet her stove, (I’m an adult human female, after all). She’s also clearly got great business sense. Good for her. I also feel a degree of solidarity with her.

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No, not because I’m a gazillionaire (ha—not even close); Not because I’m a beautiful blonde ballerina (evidently not—though I did take ballet classes as a child until I was 13 or 14, and recently registered in adult ballet classes and let me just announce here that I have thunderstricken myself with how good I am, which is saying almost nothing at all); Not because I bake everything from scratch (goodness no); Not because I run a homestead. No, that’s not even remotely interesting to me, especially after having spent several years living in rural New Brunswick when our older kids were little, including one full year in a tiny straw-bale solar-powered cabin in the middle of the woods with no running water, and a sawdust bucket (that last part was fine, actually) and the responsibility of milking a very angry goat every morning. No thank you. I do adore gardening—it’s one of my favourite activities—but farming is not at all my thing. In fact, I yearn for a quirky old house in a quiet city neighbourhood, with a comfortable yet modest back yard, a high fence, space for a raised potager, a flower garden, a patio area and a bit of lawn, and the opportunity to remain relatively anonymous when I leave my home to walk to the bookstore and the coffee shop.

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Despite our dissimilarities, however, I am, like Neeleman, “religious.” I’m not a Mormon (gosh no, to each her own, but heaven forbid—I was born into a family of Anglicans since Henry, but we’re now converting to Orthodox Christianity—read a part of our conversion story here). Also like Neeleman, my husband and I obviously have “far too many” children, according, in any case, to the self-righteous Malthusian liberals (Lee and I have eight kids at home, as do the Neelemans). And, of course, Hannah and I both share glimpses into our lives as mothers in what I think might be most accurately described as a kind of multi-media auto-fiction.

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Fiction, you say? Why yes. Of course. No one knows anything* about Hannah Neeleman, and no one knows anything about me. It honestly pains me to have to spell this out for you, but no one but her closest friends and confidantes know—or will ever know—how Hannah Neelelman really feels about her life or even what her life is really like, because the internet isn’t real! It’s not real! It is *all* performance!

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Omg No, you’re so real Yolande! I love that about you! I love that everything you share is just so totally authentic! I hear this all the time, and it’s lovely and sweet, and flattering, and in a way it is kind of true. This is not me “outing myself” as a liar (other than the normal kind)—I do indeed share the truth of my experience, and I know that’s why my work resonates with so many women, but it’s a parallel truth to my actual life. Anything that has been documented, whether in words or behind a camera, has already become an artifact, and a work of art. This isn’t a bad thing—it’s wonderful. Our propensity to make art is part of what makes us human. But there is so very much I don’t show—all of my videos (and essays) are edited. Sloppily, poorly, yes, and yes, they’re often fairly raw, but there is lots I don’t share. You don’t know me from the internet, and you don’t know Hannah Neeleman either.

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Performance, along with art, is also very human, and performance doesn’t preclude the fact that “influencers” and “trad wives” (such an intentionally demeaning term) don’t also have real lives. We’re running businesses here, people.

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This is also what Neeleman and I have in common. Ballerina Farm and I are selling different things, of course. She, bags of flour, protein powder, and…oh my goodness (I’m on her website right now)—heaps of beautiful things [I really had no idea until just this moment that she offers so many lovely goods and treasures—pasture-raised meat, gorgeous tabletop decor, evocative salts, etc.] much of which I assume she produces on her amazing farm. Again—good for her.

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I, on the other hand, am selling the book I spent 20 years writing, and the various courses and programs I have also written on birth, motherhood, and wellness informed by my 24 years of work in the field of childbirth education, midwifery, mothering and health—along with the midwifery and birth-work programs that I co-created with my dear friend and business-partner Emilee Saldaya.

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What I’m really selling, though, is the idea (and the truth as I see it) that vitality, health, power, and thriving as women, in pregnancy, birth, motherhood, and life, comes from within and that we can quite easily disentangle ourselves from the distorted, satanic systems of power and control that have sought to siphon our life-force energy and convince us that the mainstream culture of death-worship that exists all around us is in any way reasonable or acceptable.

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Put in those terms, maybe Ballerina Farm and I are, indeed, in a way, marketing something similar. Sigh. If only I were a Ballerina Farm affiliate! Alas, I’m not. Not yet, anyway! I’m not actually anyone’s affiliate. No, I am hoisted entirely by my own petard, thus far (and it’s entirely possible that using gross and embarrassing idioms in vaguely incorrect but hilarious ways is one of the reasons why I have no sponsors. So be it. At least I think I’m funny.)

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The most significant resemblance, however, between my life and Hannah Neeleman’s is that she and I have both been subjected to some pretty hardcore ridicule, criticism, trolling, and outright hatred. She, far far more than I, of course, but I’ve had a taste of it, for sure, including an auspicious mention in Rolling Stone magazine back in 2020 when I was among the first to dare to speak out about health mandates and various conspiracies (which are now being tacitly acknowledge by everyone, everywhere, finally—) (Here’s the link to the response video I made to the Rolling Stone article—and I mention this here, in part, because Candace Owens, another kindred spirit, was recently profiled by the odious EJ Dickson, who also happened to be the author of my Rolling Stone hit piece, and I have some things to say about that, and about Candace Owens herself, coming up).

Anyway. The unvarnished loathing that other women have for Hannah Neeleman is…truly stunning. And it’s really a toss-up between the mainstream articles, which seek to soften the hatred somewhat with the condescending pretence of curiosity, “analysis,” and concern (shades of what semi-professional ballerina in her right mind would ever give up a career on stage for the endentured servitude of motherhood? She must have been brainwashed!) vs. the wretched, brazen, seething viciousness of reddit.

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IMPORTANT: Do not look at the reddit threads. I mean, look if you must—if you really must, for the good of humanity take a quick peek, sure, but only for a moment. I warn you, once you’ve descended into Reddit, you’re Orpheus in the underworld, but in reverse. Look back! Remain tethered to this plane! If you keep going down and succumb to the filthy temptation to tarry there in the muck—the very dredges, where the saddest, dumbest, most jaundiced, petulant, virulent, lonely people cower, under the reeking cover of internet anonymity—the slick unguent film of hollow-eyed hate will cling to your biofield for a good long while. You may need to find an ancient artesian spring to bathe in, undergo a serious purge, attend confession, and receive a priests’s blessing to ever be at peace again.

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I did, obviously, peek at a couple of Ballerina Farm’s dedicated reddit threads—I’m no paragon, or saint, obviously, I’m not above it, by any stretch— and this is how I know how obscene those Reddit threads really are. But I didn’t linger, and no, I have not ever reddited myself—not even when our sixteen year old casually approached me recently, to ask me if I had ever seen my “own” reddit threads. Ah. This. Suddenly I saw what an inevitability this particular loss of innocence had always been—a turning point. My stomach churned.

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“Absolutely not,” I replied, “I’m not a masochist, and I don’t want to know.” Our son, then, of course, in keeping with the base nature of [all? most? many?] sixteen-year old boys, proceeded to inform me that…