Shocking recording reveals bias in controversial Times profile on Ballerina Farm Hannah Neeleman
“Girl, run” and “Wear red if you need help,” are the words currently flooding Hannah Neeleman’s comment section on TikTok. The 34-year-old content creator known as Ballerina Farm on social platforms has been the subject of a recent profile piece by The Times which titled her “queen of the trad wives” and painted the unsettling image of a woman who is overburdened with her isolated farm life, child-care responsibilities for eight children, and managing a controlling and overpowering husband.
It didn’t take long for netizens to accept this profile as a cry for help, providing rescue and dispensing justice through slandering her husband Daniel Neeleman online. So now, the content creator has come forward with a new video seemingly meant to assure everyone that she is fine. At the same time, evidence is emerging that reporter Megan Agnew, who wrote the controversial article, might have left one or two crucial elements out of the interview to create this dramatic narrative. Here’s the dirt.
What’s the Hannah Neeleman drama about?
Following the horrifying profile, in which Neeleman’s husband claims that his wife gets so ill from exhaustion sometimes that she can’t get out of bed for a week, netizens didn’t wait a second to voice their concerns.
2024 has seen the emergence of many controversial things and the resurgence of tradwives, also known as traditional women who act within conventional gender roles and represent an idealised life of domesticity, is one of them. I mean, even Meghan Markle jumped on the bandwagon!
Hannah Neeleman is frequently perceived as a member of this scene, although she noted in her interview with Agnew that she wouldn’t have picked the label herself.
“I don’t necessarily identify with it 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,” meaning that most tradwives don’t run a farm and a content creation business.
It’s a point that frequently gets overlooked in the debate over tradwife influencers such as Nara Smith and Estee Williams, echoing the common misconception that influencers don’t put in substantial work. Content creation is work that can easily get invisibilised, however, videos don’t film, edit, and distribute themselves. You are looking at working mothers, guys. Moving on.
Hannah’s husband, Daniel Neeleman, has thus been placed at the centre of controversy. He is one of the heirs to the multi-millionaire airline fortune of his father David Neeleman and Hannah’s farm business partner.
According to the profile, Daniel demanded that Hannah should marry him after three months, and moved the family to Brazil which eventually forced her to give up dance and replaced Hannah’s dream of being a professional dancer with his own of living on a farm and wearing cowboy hats.
@hannal.ballerinafarm Questions for Daniel and I. Part 4/8 #foryou #ballerinafarm
♬ original sound - hannal.ballerinafarm
More disturbingly, he might also be the reason why she gave birth seven times without any pain relief. Notably, the only exception was when David wasn’t present because he was shipping boxes and manning the crew. This finally allowed our girl to experience the pleasures of an epidural. It’s the simple things in life, guys.
On Ballerina Farm: the husband is a son of a billionaire and couldn't even give her rest from the dozen babies she's carried for him for a day. Abuse comes in many ways pic.twitter.com/Nn4xcpR1sW
— Sims (@Rootsandanchors) July 26, 2024
You should absolutely read the Ballerina Farm article in full, but these are the parts that really got to me.
— Nicole (@Niycoley_oley) July 26, 2024
Utterly heartbroken for and concerned about this woman. pic.twitter.com/2fpbQmgim5
After the feature was released, the internet did its thing and uncovered several clips on Hannah’s socials, showing Daniel being a so-called ‘bad husband’. The most striking video was of Hannah’s opening a birthday gift.
@hannal.ballerinafarm ❤️❤️❤️ #foryou #ballerinafarm
♬ original sound - hannal.ballerinafarm
The video starts with Hannah unboxing the birthday present of her ultra-rich husband saying: “[I’m] hoping they’re tickets to Greece.” When she opens the box and discovers folded fabric, she asks: “A hat I can wear in Greece?”
But soon she discovers that her gift is neither a ticket nor a hat—it’s an egg apron. Surprise, surprise.
“Now you can gather eggs. You’re welcome,” David calmly counters. Hannah tries the apron on with a smile on her face, but as a viewer, it’s hard not to feel disappointed, nay slightly embarrassed for him.
In response, the internet was less than kind to Daniel, albeit extremely funny.
“The smile on her face but not in her eyes says everything,” one TikTok user commented. “He didn’t even care to pick a cute one,” someone else noted.
This Hannah Neeleman’s story is the saddest thing I’ve read in a long time. That man could pull strings to get on the same flight she was on for their “first date” but he couldn’t get her a plane ticket to Greece for her birthday after 8 children???
— Tiaraoluwa 💕 (@TheOluwabukunmi) July 26, 2024
Yet, neither Hannah nor her husband have officially addressed the article or the backlash after its publication.
Instead, they continue sharing glimpses of their life that is seemingly filled with the peace, quiet and tranquillity of rural Utah.
@ballerinafarm I’m calling it “Dairy Date Night” 🐄🌾♥️ @Daniel
♬ original sound - Ballerina Farm
In her most recent video, Hannah shared the beginning of one of the couple’s date night saying: “When we started the farm, I was swept up in the beauty of learning to make food from scratch… So for date night tonight, Daniel and I snuck over to the dairy. The temperature was perfect. Little Joe was giggling and the cows were gorgeous. It’s the world we created, and I couldn’t love it more.”
A lot of netizens saw this as an appeasement in response to multiple allegations that she was unhappy and in desperate need of rescue.
But then, a plot twist.
Netizens started to call the article biassed and opinionated, highlighting Agnew’s unwillingness to assess Neeleman by her own standards, rather than the author’s progressive feminist ones.
Then, Evie magazine delivered a real bombshell when it published a feature with original quotes from a recording that did not make it into Agnew’s story!
The writer, Nicole Dominique, accused The Times of depicting Hannah as a helpless victim by leaving out material that made it clear that the farm life came together through her own choices.
“We were open to anything, but I knew deep down that I wanted to raise my babies,” the recording reportedly reveals.
Of course, this viral article intensified an already heated debate about the nature of Hannah’s relationship with her husband and what is really hiding behind the picture-perfect Ballerina Farm brand.
However, it also reveals the skewed lenses through which Hannah and her family are viewed. She is either the pinnacle of motherhood and traditional femininity (aka queen of the traditional wives), or a remnant of a better-forgotten past and a hammer blow for feminism.
Pretty much everyone has an opinion on the Neelemans now. But at this point, when the conversation is driven more by opinion and less by fact, it’s probably best to step back and let the family speak for themselves.
