Ballerina Farm: Everything about the controversial influencer who went from being a ballet promise to living like “The Ingalls Family”

An icon of the “tradwife” movement, internet celebrity Ballerina Farm popularized a “perfect country lifestyle” (Instagram/@ballerinafarm)

To the world, Hannah Neeleman has a fantasy life straight out of an episode of The Ingalls Family. The blonde and beautiful 33-year-old lives in a large white wooden house located on an idyllic 328-acre farm in Utah, United States. She is a full-time housewife, and dedicates her life to taking care of her eight children and husband, for whom she cooks daily from scratch, stews made from the ingredients she grows. In her home there are no cell phones, tablets or television. Except for a device that records everything, and which she uses to create content that she shares with her 7.5 million followers on TikTok under the pseudonym Ballerina Farm.

Is she a traditional wife or a businesswoman? The young people who watched her videos wondered, nostalgic for the apparent “loss” of past gender values ​​and suspicious of a reality that hyper-consumerist society denied them.

The Neeleman family lives on a farm in Utah, surrounded by nature and animals (Instagram/@ballerinafarm)

However, a quick background check led her audience to discover that her family relationship is not so humble or austere behind the scenes. Her husband, Daniel Neeleman, is one of the sons of businessman David Neeleman, founder of JetBlue and four other major airlines around the world. “So it was all a farce,” “it was a staged set,” “she’s another privileged white woman,” wrote incredulously users on social media.

But no. Hannah never pretended. And if she is to be blamed for anything, it would be for romanticizing her reality and showing a touching country life, when she had to abandon her passion for ballet for a family life so exhausting that “sometimes she gets so sick from exhaustion that she can’t get out of bed for a week,” as her own partner revealed.

Much of the activities she shows on social media include household chores such as cooking from scratch, raising farm animals and caring for her children (Instagram/@ballerinafarm)

In an article in The Times, Hannah Neeleman was described as “the queen of the tradwifes,” a movement that glorifies a lifestyle based on Christian ideals from the 1950s and 1960s, which dictate that women are born to care for the home and family. In this trope, the wife owes blind obedience to her husband and the man becomes the primary provider.

In Spain, a popular 22-year-old influencer known as Roro was the latest to be criticized under this hashtag for posting videos where she cooks “whatever he wants” for her boyfriend, while explaining her procedure in a delicate, sweet and even passive tone of voice. Like Hannah, her qualities have made her the object of idealization for several conservative men, even proclaiming her “the terror of feminists.”

Both Roro and Ballerina Farm have been accused of promoting an unrealistic lifestyle and perpetuating gender stereotypes (Instagram/@roro.bueno)

Before calling herself Ballerina Farm, however, Hannah was indeed a ballet dancer trained at the Juilliard Academy, one of the most prestigious institutions in the world that only accepts 24 students per year. “I didn’t always want this life. I left home when I was 17 and was excited to come to New York, I loved the energy of the city. And I wanted to be a dancer, I was good at it,” she told The Times.

But her future husband had other plans for her. He was 23 when he met her, and he immediately wanted them to get married. For six months, he tried to win her over by all possible means, and only succeeded when they “coincidentally” met on a flight, sitting next to each other. Hannah believed it was fate, while Daniel omitted that his father was the owner of the airline and he had arranged the meeting.

Hannah Neeleman’s husband is a historian and son of the founder of JetBlue (@ballerinafarm)

“At the time I thought we should date for a year. That way I could finish school and everything else. And Daniel was like, ‘It’s not going to work, we have to get married now,’” she said. “But I knew that when I started having kids, my life would start to look different.”

Not even two months later, the Mormon couple was married and living in a rented apartment on the Upper West Side. A year later, they welcomed their first child, and since then, every nine months since the birth of a child, she has been pregnant again.

Hannah Neeleman has given birth at home and without painkillers to six of her eight children (@ballerinafarm)

Her births are particularly painful because she doesn’t use painkillers. “I’ve never liked taking them,” she revealed. She only used an epidural once, and that was because she was two weeks late in giving birth. “It was great,” she said, smiling.

It was Daniel’s dream of living in “the great wilds of the West” that led them to settle on the prairie. He wanted to farm, wear linen, and live off the land—much like his favorite sitcom, Little House on the Prairie. The 1970s show is also the only thing his children can watch at home, using perhaps one of the few 21st-century gadgets they have access to: a computer.

Hannah and Daniel are parents to eight children, making them one of the largest families among influencers (Instagram/@ballerinafarm)

The rest of the time, the eight little ones have to invent new ways to entertain themselves, whether it’s playing cards, jumping on the trampoline or watching their mother do the housework. Because there is no nanny, just a housekeeper who helps Hannah clean the huge house.

As if being a full-time housewife wasn’t enough, Ballerina Farm still finds time to be an influencer and entrepreneur. Her content isn’t just exclusive to TikTok, as she has 9.1 million followers on Instagram and 1.6 million subscribers on YouTube.

In addition to its pseudonym, Ballerina Farm is the name of the family business, where they produce various household products and food (@ballerinafarm)

And although leaving dance “was hard” and “forced her to give up a part of herself,” she said she feels like “I’m a feminist.” Because while the public sees her on their screens cooking, baking, milking, among other household chores, and in general, being a “traditional wife,” they overlook the fact that she often promotes her personal brand, which sells everything from shoes, tablecloths, and pots, to baked goods kits and cuts of meat.

She does not see herself as a victim, and maintains that she has other personal hobbies. For example, since her childhood she has participated in beauty pageants and was crowned Mrs. Utah in 2021 and Mrs. American in 2023. She also dances in front of cameras and in private when possible. However, the Times journalist who went to her home noticed that her sequined dresses are currently perishing inside boxes in the garage, while a small barn that she tried to convert into her ballet studio ended up being used as a classroom for the children.