(LifeSiteNews) — A mother of eight, farmer and businesswoman best known online for her “Ballerina Farm” defended her lifestyle as something she fully embraces, contrary to a journalist’s suggestion that she is oppressed by her husband.
Hannah Neeleman, a Mormon and former ballerina married to the heir of an airline fortune, shared in an Instagram video posted on August 1 that she was “taken aback” by an article that took aim at Neeleman’s husband while painting an ambiguous picture of her “trad wife” lifestyle.
Journalist Megan Agnew of the UK’s The Times recently visited Neeleman and her family on their Utah ranch in order to get an up-close-and-personal look into the life of the internet’s “poster woman” for the traditional housewife. The ex-ballerina has a huge online following, helped by her “picture perfect” image: She is a beauty pageant queen who makes mouth-watering meals from scratch, milks her own cows, and is surrounded by sweet, smiling children.
While Neeleman looked forward to the interview with Agnew as something she thought would positively portray her cherished life, she found that the published article peppered in not-so-subtle suggestions that Neeleman’s husband dominated her in an undesirable way.
Jab number one: When Neeleman pointed out to Agnew that the couple both sacrificed desires in order to live their current lifestyle, with her husband Daniel having given up his “career ambitions,” Agnew suggested that instead, Hannah overwhelmingly submitted to her husband’s desires:
I look out at the vastness and don’t totally agree. 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 Neeleman’s own — a small barn she wanted to convert into a ballet studio — ended up becoming the kids’ schoolroom.
Jab number two: After describing how Daniel gave his input as Neeleman was answering questions for the article, Agnew wrote, “I can’t, it seems, get an answer out of Neeleman without her being corrected, interrupted or answered for by either her husband or a child. Usually I am doing battle with steely Hollywood publicists; today I am up against an army of toddlers who all want their mum and a husband who thinks he knows better.”
Neeleman has made clear — as shown by audio footage of the interview that has since emerged — that she has fully embraced her life, uncoerced by her husband. She can be heard saying, in a podcast shared by Agnew, “You give up a piece of yourself. I don’t think I would change it. But Daniel was like, ‘If you want to dance, go dance.’ We were open to anything, but I knew deep down that I wanted to raise my babies.”
Despite this fact, Agnew wrote in the article, upon describing the mother’s postpartum run in a beauty pageant: “Was this the ultimate act of empowerment, Neeleman doing what she wanted, or the ultimate demonstration of oppression … ?
And in the headline of the article: “Is this an empowering new model of womanhood — or a hammer blow for feminism?”
Neeleman explained in her recent video that the article “shocked us and shocked the world by being an attack on our family and my marriage, portraying me as oppressed, with my husband being the culprit.”
“This couldn’t be further from the truth. Nothing we said in the interview implied this conclusion, which leads me to believe that the angle taken was predetermined,” she said, going on to share that for her and her husband, the “priority in life is God and family. Everything else comes second.”
She concluded, “I’m doing what I love most: being a wife, mother, businesswoman, a farmer, a lover of Jesus, and making meals from scratch.”
As online portrayals of the so-called “trad wife” (housewife) lifestyle have become increasingly popular and seen as aspirational by women, a parallel movement of backlash from feminists has arisen, who scorn the life as a step backward for women, even as “indentured servitude.”
Commentator Brett Cooper highlighted the fact that after audio footage of Agnew’s interview with Neeleman showed that her “hit piece” was incongruent with reality, Agnew penned a new piece about the “Ballerina Farm” mother in which she put her family in a more sympathetic light.