While Ballerina Farm has long been a popular – albeit controversial – social media account, the woman behind the internet persona, Hannah Neeleman, has recently made headlines after she invited a newspaper crew to her home in Utah.
Though she herself doesn’t necessarily identify with the ‘trad wife’ label that the internet has branded her with, many have compared Hannah to the likes of Nara Smith, who, likewise, shuns the title and has repeatedly gone viral for making things like chewing gum and ice cream completely ‘from scratch’ for her husband Lucky Blue and their two toddlers.
Just as Smith does, Neeleman shares videos of her preparing food in her kitchen (usually with at least one child propped on her hip as she beats eggs or stretches curd until it becomes mozzarella), or dancing barefoot in the middle of a field on their remote farm.
Much of her content centres around her seemingly cosy, family-centric life and their pared-back lifestyle – which has proven a hit with many, as she has so far garnered over 9.4 million followers on Instagram and 9 million on TikTok.
But there’s perhaps a darker side to this picture-perfect image – and the narrative has switched somewhat since the publication of an exclusive interview with The Times’ Megan Agnew this weekend.
Alongside her husband Daniel and their eight children, aged between 1 and 12 years old, Hannah donned a blue, floor-length gown, while detailing home life to the journalist. She also spoke at some length about her former dance career, which has been a hot topic online ever since.
Here, we unpick the controversy surrounding Ballerina Farm, Hannah and Daniel Neeleman, and that explosive Q&A.
Hannah Neeleman, 34, is the face of the @BallerinaFarm account on both Instagram and TikTok, the inspiration for which came from Hannah’s background as a former ballerina.
After being accepted into the elite Julliard School in New York City, she left home at 17 to train to be a dancer – a career she left behind when she became a wife and mother.
She was raised a devout Mormon in Utah, a faith which she now incorporates into her family life with Daniel, and took home the title of Mrs America in August 2023 and competed in Mrs World a mere 12 days after giving birth.
Daniel Neeleman, 35, is the son of David Neeleman, the founder of various commercial airlines including Morris Air, WestJet, JetBlue Airways, Azul Brazilian Airlines, and Breeze Airways.
Daniel and Hannah first met at a college basketball game when she was 23 years old, and the pair later started dating about six months after they first met.
Today, they’re parents to 12-year-old Henry, 10-year-old Charles, 9-year-old George, 7-year-old Frances, 5-year-old Lois, 3-year-old Martha, 2-year-old Mabel, and 1-year-old Flora.
Ballerina Farm is the social media handle behind which Hannah operates, and is the name they’ve given to the farm they live on in Kamas, Utah.
They’ve also made a business out of it, with various products including sourdough and flour, salt and spices and apparel available to purchase on their website.
They first became ‘fascinated’ with farm life while living abroad in Brazil for four years, where they ventured ‘inland’ and marvelled ‘at the country’s productive farming community.’
‘From that point on all we could think about was raising pigs and cattle on pasture,’ the Ballerina Farm website reads. ‘So after four years in Brazil, we came back to the states, bought land and Ballerina Farm was born.’
The couple have always been surrounded by ‘trad wife’ allegations – though in an exclusive interview with The Times published earlier this month, Hannah refuted such claims.
‘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,’ Hannah said in the interview.
‘So for me to have the label of a traditional woman, I’m kinda like, ‘I don’t know if I identify with that.’
However, the publication of said interview has intensified criticism towards the couple, igniting concerns that Hannah may not have as much agency over her life – and may not be as happy – as her social media account suggests.
‘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,’ Megan Agnew wrote in The Times interview.
Similar concerns were raised around her access to pain relief while giving birth. Though Hannah said that she’d ‘never loved taking it,’ she added ‘except with Martha – I was two weeks overdue, and she was 10lb and Daniel wasn’t with me…so I got an epidural.’ This conversation allegedly happened while Daniel was out of the room, on a phone call.
There are also aspects of the interview that reference the remnants of Hannah’s life before as a ballerina – namely the sequined gowns that used to live in her bedroom cupboard but were moved ‘to the garage’ by Daniel after it became too full with ‘stuff.’
Online commentators were quick to sympathise with this side of the argument, with @bigdybbukenergy writing on X, formerly Twitter: ‘Everything about it has this deeply sad emptiness at its core. Don’t want to absolve a grown woman of agency in her decisions or (harmful) beliefs but all trad wife culture seems driven by this brainwashing/manipulation that results in a complete void of personality of personhood.’
‘I don’t think people understand just how insane it is that Ballerina Farm left Julliard to start a family,’ @Paris1452509 added. ‘They chose 12 female dancers a year to be accepted into that program. She would’ve gone so far.’
Elsewhere, though, there are critics who believe that Hannah chose this life – and that she willingly gave up her career as a ballerina to start a family with Daniel.
‘Hannah wasn’t some naive sheltered girl who never saw anything of the world,’ @mashkawolfe reflected in a TikTok video.
‘She chose to marry her husband and she chose to give up her dream of being a ballerina, and now she chooses to glamourise her lifestyle and influence young women all over the world through her social media profiles. She is a willing participant in all of these things.’
But for ex-Mormon @hayleyrawle, there’s something missing in the discourse surrounding Ballerina Farm – and that’s how Hannah’s identity as a Mormon woman fits in.
‘As an ex-Morman woman is that the dynamic… between herself and her husband Daniel was incredibly unsurprising and deeply, deeply familiar,’ Hayley said in a TikTok video in which she unpacked the Mormon expectation to place being a wife and mother above all.
‘Whether or not Hannah Neeleman really had a choice or she was pressured into it by the patriarchal powers that be, the Mormon messaging, the messaging from her husband, we don’t know. I know that I felt immense pressure that I still work against to this day…I am still unpacking the layers of that inside of myself.’
While Hannah didn’t explicitly acknowledge the concern prompted by the feature, in a new video posted Sunday to promote their dairy products, she and Daniel spoke of the ‘beauty of learning’ and concluded: ‘It’s the world we created, and I couldn’t love it more.’
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