What we can learn from "trad wife" influencer Ballerina Farm
+the course you need to strengthen your digital strategy and the cultural moments | news that caught our attention this week
quick summary ⚡️
How Ballerina Farm is giving her audience a “fantasy” through her content
How Snap is utilizing AI, Mr. Beast is coming to reality TV and more in the cultural moments and news that caught our attention this week
The economic power of YouTube
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Ballerina Farm is not a Traditional Wife
Lately, there’s been growing internet discourse about the emergence of “Trad Wife” creators such as Ballerina Farm and Nara Smith. “Trad Wives” or “Traditional Wives” is the internet’s label for women who create and post content showcasing their domestic prowess. This content often features them cooking elaborate meals from scratch in their beautiful (expensive) kitchens for their large families and breadwinner husbands.
Perhaps the most notable of the “Trad Wives” is a Juilliard-trained dancer Hannah Neeleman better known as the brand Ballerina Farm. As chronicled in her New York Times profile by Madison Malone Kircher, “She Gave Birth Two Weeks Ago. Now She’s in a Beauty Pageant” Neelman is a bit of a force. Her content showcasing her raising kids, animals, and the Ballerina Farm brand has gained huge popularity over the past three years, especially on Instagram where she has 8.8M followers.
At 33-years-old Hannah has given birth to 8 children, the oldest before finishing school. An August 2019 Facebook post of her lithe frame doing plies in an open field at sunset while her kids circle her was captioned as follows:
Daniel and I became parents to our oldest (Henry) during my senior year at Juilliard. I was the first in the school's history to have a baby before graduating. Henry was a month old in my arms as I walked across the stage to accept my diploma. Henry was no accident. Daniel and I wanted to start a family. My mother always told me I would find stages to dance on no matter what I chose in life. Little did I know my stage would be pastures and corrals, my audience livestock and Instagram friends. I certainly didn’t expect the other dancers in my company to all be under the age of seven with no dancing experience. Chalk it up to fate. I’m a dancing farm gal. Finally found my niche.
At the pageant where she was crowned Mrs. America last summer, Hannah also gave the world the soundbite heard around the internet. Asked “When have you felt the most empowered?” she answered with raw emotion and sincerity: “I have felt this feeling seven times now as I bring these sacred souls to the earth. After I hold that newborn baby in my arms, the feeling of motherhood and bringing them to the earth is the most empowering feeling I have ever felt.”
This is where the Ballerina Farm brand becomes controversial and it’s as much reflective of culture at large as Hannah herself. Her beautiful sentiments about loving motherhood were taken by conservative media and weaponized in the ongoing discourse around women’s reproductive rights. Hannah and her picture-perfect feed of domestic bliss were heralded as the ideal of womanhood, and more importantly, motherhood as a woman’s highest calling. While Hannah and her content are not inherently political, her affiliation with the LDS Church combined with the right’s deification has associated her with the movement romanticizing traditional gender roles instead of more modern ones. Hannah has done little to distance herself from this movement, claiming to be unaware the term “Trad Wife” exists in her NYT profile and ignoring the haters (of which she has many.)
Some critics of creators like Ballerina Farm–and the Trad Wife movement more generally–argue that this type of content is anti-feminist. The most unhinged theories claim that these creators are a “psyop” propagated by the government to brainwash women into having babies as the birth rate drops. Mildier and more realistic critiques focus on how, by holding this handful of incredibly privileged women up as an example, we are setting unrealistic expectations for women (and especially mothers).
In their discussion thoughtfully weighing both camps, the Pop Apologists podcast hit on an astute observation about how the seemingly wholesome content has become a lightning rod:
“I think it just really hits different women in different ways. I’m not saying that there’s a good and a bad reaction to have but I think some people like to watch her stories, see her posts, and they feel inspired. They’re like women can do everything…and then I think other women see her posts and they think it’s very annoying to see someone doing all these things when I can barely get out of bed.” - Chanler, Pop Apologists
In both scenarios laid out by the Pop Apologists, you can see how women are judging Ballerina Farm’s content based on how it makes them feel about themselves. The reality is, that the Trad Wife Discourse has become a proxy for us to grapple with the realities of motherhood in 21st century America.
The idea that women can have it all has long been exposed as a myth. During the pandemic, the cultural romanticization of a quieter life led to the “cottagecore” trend as millennials especially dreamt of a “simpler” life. We began making sourdough, planting gardens, and homeschooling. Hannah never stopped. While people marvel at her rustic decor, impossible ability to “snap back” and farm to table cooking skills, at the end of the day, she’s fulfilling a very popular escapist fantasy.
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While Hannah spends the day performing the tasks of a “Traditional” housewife, little else is traditional about her and how she’s showing up in the world. She’s the face of her brand which takes a considerable amount of work and has a team around her that she presumably leads. Additionally, she and her husband describe themselves as “first generation farmers.” While that sounds like a rugged salt-of-the-earth profession, it’s also important to note that her father-in-law founded JetBlue. So the decision to live and work on a farm was largely a willing (and likely heavily subsidized) lifestyle choice. A fantasy.
more on the MTD blog
💎cultural gems💎
The cultural moments and news that caught our attention this week:
Snap has had a hard year, but its AI tools are a bright spot (Fast Company). “Many influencers are leveraging the platform for a more intimate way to connect to their fans in real time, using new features like the option to post a public story (for users over 18) three times as often as they did last year, and an expanded revenue-share program.”
MrBeast reality show greenlit at Prime Video (NBC News). Mr. Beast’s upcoming competition reality show will feature the largest cash prize in TV history at $5 million.
It’s not just Gen Z. Here’s what TikTok’s user base tells us about a potential ban’s impact (Vox). “‘So while TikTok use is still most prevalent among that youngest cohort … it’s seen the most growth among those aged 30-49,” Pew computation social scientist Samuel Bestvater told me.’”
Free People on that viral micro-shorts post and why ‘Substack is the new Instagram’ (Glossy). “We’re getting ready to do a sponsorship of someone’s Substack newsletter for the first time. It’s a single sponsorship, and we’re going to see how it goes. … Substack is the new Instagram; it’s catching on and it’s going to be an [important] channel.”
tools
Just 19 years after the first video was posted to YouTube, the platform's creators are responsible for more jobs than General Motors.
“Estimates suggest that online creation supports tens of millions of workers and attracts hundreds of millions of customers.”
“This year, Goldman Sachs valued the creator economy at $250 billion and predicted that it would double to nearly half a trillion dollars in the next five years.”
more on YouTube on the MTD blog
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