What Ballerina Farm gets right (gasp!)
Modern body culture demands this strategy.
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Gonna make this clear from the jump: I personally do not find it compelling, relatable, or aspirational that the popular and controversial influencer Hannah Neeleman (Ballerina Farm on socials) does beauty pageants, has eight children1, is doing the tradwife thing, or is a Mormon. I think it’s eyeroll-y that Ballerina Farm has cultivated a “humble homesteaders on the range” brand but Hannah’s husband is the son of the guy who founded JetBlue, lol.2 I doubt Hannah and I share many beliefs and I’d be blown out of my chair if our politics resided in the same solar system. Basically, I’m not a fan of most of her whole deal — some of her cooking videos are nice though, what can I say — and didn’t know she existed until I caught some of
’s essays about her late last year.But when Glamour published the piece, “Why Does Ballerina Farm Make Moms So Mad?” earlier this week, I realized that there is part of Hannah’s whole deal I think people could find useful if they let off the gas pedal of ire a little.
Much of the kerfuffle is about Hannah’s body: She’s thin, gets thin again after every kid3, and earlier this month wore a series of form-fitting ball gowns to compete in the Mrs. World competition a week and a half after giving birth. That is understandably upsetting to many women for reasons including: they’re not thin, they want to be, and trying to be thin is hard for them and seems easy for Hannah; and/or they believe Hannah is setting an unrealistic or damaging standard for womanhood and motherhood. Put a pin in that.
First: I empathize with the experience of comparing and despairing about someone else’s body4, and I am deeply worried about the future of our body culture. Not only do we see too many supernaturally hot people and it’s warping our perceptions of ourselves and others, we’re also in the so-called “Ozempic era.” The ultimate influence of weight loss drugs and the staying power of this era is unclear — as
said in ’s newsletter last week:“We know that these drugs, by the most optimistic estimates, might take off 15 percent of someone’s starting weight […] It’s going to leave many people fat, even very fat.”
But if we are moving into a protracted period in which some or many people in our lives (or on our screens) could suddenly get thinner from these drugs, many of us are going to feel incredibly upset by the ostensible implication that we should be doing the same even if we don’t have access to the drugs, fear their side effects, or are disinterested in intentional weight loss. This is especially true for women.
As
said in her newsletter earlier this month:“We have a collective habit of interpreting everything an individual woman does with her own body as reflective of women as a group. Let’s resist that strenuously.”
If this era ushers in the sensation that everyone else is getting thin and we’re not5, we’ll feel alienated in our position away from the myriad advantages, privileges, and comforts that being thin has historically offered — maybe if most people don’t have them we can relax, but if a lot of people around us suddenly have them, what then? What about us?
It makes sense that we’d have these worries, but where do we put them? What are we to do with our Big Feelings about other people’s bodies and our own?
Back to Ballerina Farm. According to Glamour:
“The most interesting thing about all of this backlash is that Neeleman has barely seemed to register any of it, or if she does, she doesn’t show it. Neeleman has never wavered. She doesn’t publicly address her haters, she doesn’t engage with the discourse [… ] She seems to be, at least online, completely unbothered and content. (Which, of course, is its own kind of privilege when you have eight kids. But on the other hand, we have no idea what her reality looks like, do we?)”
Yes, Hannah is unbothered because it’s easy to be when you’re rich and famous. But I also believe she’s unbothered because she’s identified and acts on her values about her life, body, and motherhood — different as they may be from mine or yours; I’m intentionally writing about her because I don’t feel we have the same values — and doesn’t care about the external noise around them.
That’s what I think we all have to do, especially in the Ozempic era, about our bodies.
I wrote in October about the importance of asking yourself: “How much do I care about changing anything about my body and my habits, considering what I’ll sacrifice and what I’ll gain?” Since I do not believe we will see the annihilation of the human desire for weight loss or thinness in my lifetime — and so we’ll continue to be confronted with people striving for those, attaining those, and companies selling us things for those — the only way I or any of us can find peace about our bodies is to do a values deep-dive, including about weight and thinness:
If you don’t value losing weight or being thin, you don’t have to act upon those ideas and shouldn’t feel bothered if someone else does, because their choices have absolutely nothing to do with you practically or ideologically.6 If you do value those things, consider how working toward them aligns or conflicts with any other values you have around your time, energy, resources, and mental health. Then make your choices and live with them. This is what more content about bodies and weight should be for — not for condemning people for their choices when everyone’s are influenced by an entire galaxy of circumstances, beliefs, experiences, realities, and desires, but for helping people understand the physical and mental realities around body and weight change so they can decide if it’s worth the potential sacrifices and risks.
Hannah values competing in pageants, so she does what she must to that end. If you don’t value competing in pageants, then don’t — and know that if you don’t do what it takes to look “pageant ready,” then that’s probably not how you’ll look. This is a kind of math. As much as I loathe math, the numbers don’t lie. There’s some peace in that.
Maybe Hannah values “getting her body back” more than she values resting. I don’t know. I don’t care. If I give birth one day, you’ll catch me nowhere but on the couch for as long as circumstances allow because goddamn, do I love rest. But I also love activity, and if my 10 years of weight lifting contribute to faster postpartum recovery and I could exercise again sooner than other people, it sure would be a bummer if they considered that choice of mine an indictment of any of theirs.
Dr. Christine Sterling said in the Glamour article that she spoke out against the criticism of Hannah’s postpartum pageantry because, “There is not one universal postpartum experience.” It’s true — yes, it might be unrealistic or near impossible for many or most women to do what she’s done, but Hannah did do it, and she’s as much a postpartum mother and “real woman” as any other. Per Dr. Sterling:
“Hannah’s experience and circumstances are quite unique,” she says. “The problem is not that she’s setting unrealistic expectations of postpartum but rather that we are expecting her to set expectations at all. I would ask those criticizing why it isn’t okay for her to make this decision for herself. I believe she, just like every other woman, has the right to make decisions about her own body.”
It’s true. Our body culture does not become more accepting for all people if we don’t accept the choices of the people whose bodies piss us off or give us Big Feelings for some reason. Unless Hannah is selling weight loss products, actively telling people to lose weight, or posting to her socials the kind of content that promotes eating disorders or is harmful to people with them, she’s not doing anything wrong. She’s just some lady with a charmed life. She’s not a symbol of every woman or the “right” kind of woman. She’s not influencing anyone who has decided she doesn’t speak for them or about them.
Let’s consider what’s true when it comes to social media accounts like Ballerina Farm. People get fired up, I think, because they feel Hannah is saying, “You should/must do all of this to be a good mother and woman.” OK, a blech idea, and one I’m not convinced she believes, but is that even true? Ask yourself how many women and mothers you know who don’t do any of that. Are they still good? There’s your answer.
What influencers’ posts might suggest that does have a crumb more truth in our money- and status-obsessed society: “If you did all this, you might have what I have.” If some woman out there did whatever it took to get slender and blonde and younger-looking and found the time to record her children peacefully helping her make homemade mozzarella and bought a gorgeous house in the country and quit her job and enrolled in pageants and was in the right place at the right time and was smiled on by the universe, sure, maybe she’d be Ballerina Farm 2. Maybe, probably not; the influencer space is too crowded. “Whatever it took” is the thing, though — do you even want to do all that? If you do but you can’t, I’ll grant you that it’s not fair. She has the money and the genetics and the time and the heavenly fortunes and we don’t. Not fair! But what now?
When everything’s unfair and toxic and stupid, I don’t know what else to do but take inventory of what I care about and what I have at my disposal and then build the best life I can. Like it or not, unfair or not, that’s what Hannah did about her body, her parenting style, and her whole life, and she doesn’t apologize, engage, or care what people think. I can hear you yelling: Easy to do when her life’s so great and she reaps countless rewards for her choices! Glamour said it, though: “We have no idea what her reality looks like, do we?”7 And even if it’s practically perfect in every way, well, them’s the breaks. Her having a “better” life than you does not somehow prohibit you from acting upon your own values to the best of your ability or looking at your abilities and building values around them8. Every second spent writing all-caps screeds she’ll never read in her Instagram comments is a second spent away from the stuff of your own life.
If our worst nightmares come to pass and over the next decade most people we know are dropping 10 pounds a week and we hate it for any number of reasons, the only choice you have, if you don’t value doing the same, is to be more resilient. Make decisions about your own body, try to be content with them, and try be unbothered by the discourse. That won’t always be easy and sometimes you’ll fail, but if you keep coming back to you — and get the hell off Instagram once in a while, probably — it will get easier. Your values, desires, and habits will be a safe place to land in a hostile world.
After all, bleak as it may sound: You can’t stop influencers who are “better” than you from existing, you can’t stop these drugs from existing, you cannot stop someone from pursuing thinness if they really want to, and you cannot change the culture overnight by yourself, so what else are you going to do?
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Eight. Eight? EIGHT. EIGHT!!!
This is also entirely unsurprising; if someone seems to have it all and do it all while looking unfussed and gorgeous, I assume she has money. Save yourself the “How does she do it and I can’t?!” angst and assume she has money. Be free.
EIGHT? EIGHT!!!!!
That’s like … part of the whole reason I write this newsletter, lol.
Let’s keep our heads on, though — only 4% of adults say they are currently taking a prescription drug to lose weight.
If someone is actively pressuring you to lose weight, that’s a different story I’m not getting into here.
Of course, this is the case for bodies, too. Unless they explicitly show us, we have no idea what influencers or anyone has to do to lose weight or be thin; we don’t know the realities of their health, etc.
Maybe you have very little time to exercise. OK, so your value becomes something like, “I take and enjoy the 10 minutes a day I have for a little walk because it makes me feel better in body and mind.” Work with what you got.
"Our body culture does not become more accepting for all people if we don’t accept the choices of the people whose bodies piss us off or give us Big Feelings for some reason."
The subtext of this powerful statement is that we pay too much attention to everyone else and not enough to ourselves. The only job we have is to "befriend our bodies" and treat them accordingly. Surely, we can look to others for inspiration. But looking to others and experiencing desperation is merely that – desperation. I used to teach workshops called "Befriend Your Body" and this practice really does work. I believe our bodies will tell us what they want, if we tune out the noise and listen.
🔥🔥🔥 This was excellent.
I see comments on insta about other women’s bodies/choices/faces and I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. If they spent less time thinking about other women they would be so much happier. I get our society makes that very hard AND let’s practice some self control. Celebrate ourselves and our choices and let other women be. I had no idea about Ballerina Farm until some catty women on here kept writing obsessive posts about her. It felt icky and said more about the women than Hannah.