Looking at Hannah Neeleman’s social media presence feels like looking at Cinderella before and after the fairytale ends. On one hand, we have a simple farm life filled with animals, tending to children, and fulfilling domestic tasks. On the other hand, there is Neeleman, more commonly known as @ballerinafarm on TikTok, with blown-out blonde hair, a soft spray tan, six-inch heels, and in a tight ball gown, strutting down the stages of beauty pageants and posing next to her multi-millionaire husband. Her fairytale, which idealises domesticity and traditional femininity, has been quite controversial online since it is highly unattainable for the majority of her following.

However, journalist Megan Agnew from The Times recently published a feature exposing the concerning reality behind Neeleman’s seemingly pristine and tranquil farm life and revealing an overworked and hollowed-out woman, who surrendered herself to husband and family.

In case you don’t keep up with the online tradwife scene, Hannah Neeleman is a Julliard-trained ballerina, pageant queen, farmer, and mother of eight children based in rural Utah (so yes, she’s a hardcore Mormon).

@ballerinafarm

Out for my birthday lunch. Best present is spending time with this crew right here. ♥️

♬ original sound - Ballerina Farm

@ballerinafarm

What an incredible experience it was to compete on the Mrs World Pagent stage. There were so many emotions last week, the biggest one being gratitude. Grateful to feel it all. Grateful to be a mother, woman, daughter, sister. Honored to have made top 17, and congratulations to our new Mrs World, Mrs Germany!

♬ original sound - Ballerina Farm

The 33-year-old is married to Daniel Neeleman, son of David Gary Neeleman, an American-Brazilian businessman who is worth a whopping $400 million.

Together, the couple oversee a massive social media empire consisting of over 20 million followers across multiple platforms. It is the centrepiece to their lucrative farm business, which sells subscription boxes filled with meat, ready-to-bake goods, honey, spices and, of course, Ballerina Farm merchandise.

@ballerinafarm

We try and go on a date once a week. Usually dinner at a nice resturant, and its the happiest. Love you @Daniel

♬ original sound - Ballerina Farm

However, who Neeleman really is becomes an increasingly difficult question to answer once we move away from the brand creation and family that has completely taken over her life.

Once we pierce through the veil of laughing children dancing around her, trying on costumes for the next beauty pageant, and a smiling husband making yoghurt in a farmhouse kitchen, Agnew’s detailed profile reveals the image of a woman overburdened with the brand she created for herself, or the husband who seems to be more interested in keeping this picture-perfect life intact than her.

From the moment the writer steps foot onto the farm, it is almost impossible to get the ballerina alone, let alone any direct quotes without her being corrected, interrupted or answered for by either her husband or children.

“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,” Agnew writes.

Over the course of the feature it becomes difficult to determine whether the dancer really had much of a hand in constructing the life she is currently living. Instead, it looks like it was engineered by her spouse from the moment they got together.

Daniel demanded that he and Hannah get married and pregnant within three months of meeting each other in 2011 when the content creator was only 21. The young mother admitted that she wanted to wait for a year so she could finish school, however, Daniel said it “wasn’t going to work.” So Hannah became the first Juilliard undergraduate to be expecting “in modern history.”

After the businessman got a job at his father’s security company the family moved to Brazil, where Hannah found herself tending to four toddlers and giving up dance.

“I gave up dance, which was hard. You give up a piece of yourself. And Daniel gave up his career ambitions,” Neeleman commented. However, after taking a look around the farm and having more indirect conversations with Daniel, Agnew concluded that Daniel didn’t have to give up much of what he wanted. Instead, his dreams became Hannah’s at the cost of eroding the young dancer’s own ambitions.

Even the way in which David initially got close to his wife seems to foreshadow the control he would go on to exercise over her life. Apparently, the businessman had his eyes on the dancer for six months before they connected but she didn’t want to have any of it.

An honest conversation with the mother only seems possible when her husband leaves the room. That’s when Agnew sizes her chance to ask Hannah why she decided against pain relievers for giving birth. “I don’t know, I just have never loved taking it,” Hannah contemplated. “Except with Martha — I was two weeks overdue and she was 10lb and Daniel wasn’t with me … ” she noted with a lowered voice. “So I got an epidural. And it was an amazing experience. It was kinda great.”

@ballerinafarm

Yes I still practice ballet!

♬ A Beautiful Morning (Single Version) - The Rascals

When Agnew was finally brave enough to enquire about birth control, the couple insisted that Jesus was the best one. “It’s very much a matter of prayer for me,” the young wife insisted. “I’m, like, ‘God, is it time to bring another one to the Earth?’ And I’ve never been told no.”

“But for whatever reason it’s exactly nine months [after a baby] that she’s ready for the next one,” Daniel added.

Neeleman’s life and the fairytales we grew up with seem to outline even more in that they are antiquated and based upon rigid gender roles. The family’s strongly held Mormon beliefs can explain some of it, with their emphasis on heterosexual unions, sexual purity, and no abortions except for cases of rape or incest (at least something). However, the rest comes down to a controlling husband, ideals that seem old-fashioned even for Mormons, and a business brand based upon that life to which she has to surrender herself. At one point, Daniel confesses that his wife sometimes “gets so ill from exhaustion that she can’t get out of bed for a week.”

“But for whatever reason it’s exactly nine months [after a baby] that she’s ready for the next one,” Daniel added.

There is a very patronising attitude that people have towards traditional wives. Society often looks at them as brainwashed victims of the patriarchy without even considering that staying at home with children is as much of a legitimate choice as going back to work after a pregnancy.

@ballerinafarm

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♬ What Dreams Are Made Of - Hilary Duff

There is a very patronising attitude that people have towards traditional wives. Society often looks at them as brainwashed victims of the patriarchy without even considering that staying at home with children is as much of a legitimate choice as going back to work after a pregnancy.

However, one cannot read this feature without wondering whether the choice aspect was present for the young ballerina. And I couldn’t read this feature without thinking back to my favourite fairytales and wondering if Cinderella was actually happy when she rode off to the castle, or whether we all just thought that she was as she trotted off towards a differently constructed prison.