Everybody, Leave Ballerina Farm Alone
A childless cat lady flies all the way to Utah just to harass and annoy a happily married woman. Why?
For days, I tried to ignore posts all over the internet talking about some random person I’d never heard of with the most unbelievable name I’ve ever heard.
“Ballerina Farm.”
Huh? A woman called “Ballerina Farm?”
What does that even mean? That’s not a name, and it doesn’t make any sense. Was that a person… a brand… a channel, or what?
Okay, so fast-forward a few days, and I get it now… kinda.
Apparently, Ballerina Farm is the name of an Instagram channel where a woman (spoiler alert: her real name is actually “Hannah Neeleman”) lives on a farm and used to be a ballerina.
Hence, “ballerina” and “farm.” Pretty simple, right? So… where’s the story?
Siiiiiigh….
The last time I saw something so idiotic on the internet was when the slacktivists who haven’t done anything with their own lives criticized a Super Bowl MVP for the crime of being a catholic man speaking to catholic women about catholic things at a catholic university. (I kid you not.)
That was exceptionally lame. I thought it would take a while before that same level of faux outrage from would-be wine moms would boil over like that… but I was wrong.
Last time, the single women who insist their lives are more fulfilling working full-time for giant corporations, spending weekends getting juiced on Moscato while swiping left and right on Tinder for the seventh year in a row, watching “Sex and the City Family” reruns and fretting about how being a married woman in America is literally living out “The Handmaid’s Tale” were angry at a man for daring to say that “a woman’s place is in the home, raising children.”
(Note: I didn’t say that. And Harrison Butker didn’t either. People said he did, but he didn’t.)
This time around, the virtual vigilantes are angry at a woman whose place is literally in the home, raising children. That’s what she actually does. And they’re mad at her.
You can’t make this stuff up: apparently, random people on the internet—many from other countries, no less—are angry at an American woman for choosing to be a stay-at-home mom, raising children, collecting eggs, and milking goats.
Why? Because she didn’t have to, she chose to.
For context, Hannah voluntarily walked away from an allegedly promising career as a dancer, choosing instead to marry at 21, leaving dance altogether, and immediately started having children.
It must be really galling to a single woman who hasn’t been swept off her feet by a manly multimillionaire who wants to marry her and make eight babies with her right away to learn that:
This is actually a thing that exists, and
The lucky woman in question who gets to live this dream might actually be happy with such a life.
This really bugs me.
(On a strange note, during the NFL player speech controversy, the online outrage was directed at a Roman Catholic family. This time, the internet’s fury burns against a “Latter Day Saint” family. I am a Mennonite. Yet, I’m bothered by the profoundly weird question: “Must I keep coming to the defense of the Catholics and Mormons?”)
So, anyway, whatever happened to “live and let live?” And why is it that the people who are most eager to ruin a perfectly happy woman’s life are women?
Like most things on the internet, it may just be that this “controversy” is the latest dance craze, and the netizens who like to be angry at happy people who aren’t bothering anybody will lose interest in a few weeks.
But while this poor family of ten smiling people remains under the burning Eye of Sauron, I do want to say a few things.
Clearly, some people are angry about rich white women living a quasi-homesteader life. They’re outraged at the “tradwife” phenomenon they find condescending or… something.
But frankly, I’m angry that they’re angry. And I’m outraged that they’re outraged.
I was never a football player, and nothing about the Butker kerfuffle meant anything personal to me. But the disrespect shown to this particular family now hits much closer to home.
Like Daniel Neeleman, I also married a ballerina.
I am also an entrepreneur; I work with computers and web software; I’m a pro-life conservative opposed to abortion, I’m a big fan of air travel, and I’m somewhat of a history buff. We have a lot in common.
Unlike Mr. Ballerina Farm, though, I am not a Mormon.
I am also not the son of a billionaire; I’m not a farmer, and I never could be. And I do not (and would not) open my family’s life to the world for all to see by inviting a hostile actor into my house to document my life.
Perhaps I’m more cynical than he is: I went to journalism school and know that, in general, reporters are wolves in wolves’ clothing. They only exist to kill, steal, and destroy.
But our minor differences aside, I have no criticism for this man: I wish him the best with his (clearly) very successful marriage and business. Men everywhere should be congratulating him with a mixture of jealousy and admiration.
I have nothing bad to say about his wife, either.
How could I?
How could you?
What kind of monster must you be to criticize this family?
My perspective, I believe, is one of compassion and experience. As the oldest of nine children who were all born via c-section, I was used to the idea that childbearing was a tremendous burden on a woman physically. A mother being bedridden after giving birth was par for the course.
After child number 7 or 8, jokes abounded, including: “Why don’t we just put a zipper on your uterus while we’re in there?” and “How about we tie your tubes while we’re looking at them?”
I even heard rumors that certain doctors refused to take my mother on as a patient. The liability of so many C-section surgeries in a row was too great, or so I heard.
I am aware of the complications of childbirth and the alleged increase in risk with each subsequent birth, especially as a woman ages into the laughably named “geriatric pregnancy” stage. (I say “laughably” because there are likely more single women at the “geriatric” age of 35 who have no children at all than there are women still giving birth at that age.)
But I’m not just annoyed by the blizzard of hateful comments that surrounded my family growing up: I’m also a husband and father have experienced this myself.
My wife and I got married very young: she was 19, and I was 20. We had five kids in six years.
We still only have five children, almost two decades later though, because we chose to stop. And that was one of the most intensely personal, private decisions we ever made.
I was raised in an extremely conservative, homeschooled family where we were taught that birth control was a sin. “The Lord opens and closes the womb” was a phrase I heard often in our social circle.
Well, as it turned out, in the case of my own marriage, The Lord never “closed the womb,” and after barely five years of marriage, with five pregnancies, we were looking at one baby per year, and my wife decided that was enough.
I was staring down the barrel of a terrible quandary: could I accept that my rigid belief that birth control was bad might result in my becoming a single father, either due to becoming a widower or through divorce?
For years, I tried to follow my parents’ teaching on contraception (the vestigial remains of my father’s former Roman Catholic upbringing, if I had to guess). My wife and I even attended Natural Family Planning classes at the local diocese.
(Side note: learning about sexual reproduction from unmarried, celibate priests in black robes is quite a trip.)
Yet, even in my own small family—after just five kids—I found out that having any more was likely going to kill my marriage, and I had to take action. Either I would have to break my own reproductive system or break my wife.
I made the only obvious choice.
Here we are now, still married and still with just five kids, with the grace of God.
My point is that this was only our decision.
Never once did I ever listen to the rude comments from outsiders who had an opinion on my life, my marriage, or the number of kids I had.
My parents, similarly, never listened to the naysayers who “tut-tutted” when they found out we were a family of 11.
And neither should the Neeleman family.
It will always be an astonishing mystery to me why some people feel it’s their right, job, or duty to comment otherwise.
The irony of being “pro-choice” is that a lot of people aren’t in favor of “choice” at all when a woman actually wants to have (and keep) her child or have multiple children.
So, to the woman who wrote the original article and all the other people who have subsequently written harsh words about this family, I ask the following:
Why did you do it? What did you hope to accomplish? Do you think you left this family better off than you found them? Are you proud of what you’ve done? What was the point of all this?
That last question has me mystified the most. What on earth is the point of hateful, jealous criticism of a polite family living out their dream on the beautiful plains of Utah?
Are they terrified that people might see these videos and think, “I can live like this; I can become a tradwife too,” and that this would be somehow harmful because it’s unrealistic for most people?
Because they can’t afford it? Spare me from such lunacy.
What do they want, anyway? A disclaimer on every post saying: “Don’t try this at home, kids?”
Do they say the same thing to the world-champion-level masters of cringe like “Mr. Beast” who inspires children to believe that they too, if they try really hard, can make a living by uploading videos to YouTube called: “Would you sit in a tub of snakes for $10,000?”
Good grief.
Oh, yes, I’m sure it all comes from a good place. “They’re only thinking of the women.” And Janet Reno was “only thinking of the children” during the ATF’s siege at Waco.
My message to all the people criticizing this family:
Their choices have nothing to do with you.
Her choices have nothing to do with you.
Leave them alone.
Leave her alone.
Don’t pretend this is about “women’s rights” or anything like that.
It isn’t.
You’re just terrified that somewhere, somehow, there might be a woman who chose a different path than you did, and she ended up happy. …and you can’t stand that.
Stop poking your nose into a family living out their dream life. Leave them alone and mind your own business.
From what I can tell, the author of the original article in The Times (that’s The London Times, lest we forget) is unmarried and is not a mother.
Unless I’m wrong (and correct me if I am), the writer is a single woman who lives in the United Kingdom. She knows nothing of marriage, or children, or America, or Utah, or homesteading.
There’s nothing wrong with being single… that’s not my point. My point is: what’s her deal? Is she jealous? Did she think she was doing something brave? Was she hoping to rescue a poor woman held hostage against her will?
Blink twice if you’re in danger, Ballerina Farm!
Do I really need to point out that a woman who made it all the way through the Juilliard School (which has the lowest acceptance rate of all schools in the entire USA), who nearly had a professional dance career, who chose instead to marry the multimillionaire heir of the JetBlue Airlines fortune… does not need to be rescued?
How could anybody be that condescending? How could a woman do that to another woman?
Fear not, Mrs. Neeleman: a single woman from way, way, way across the pond in jolly old England is coming to save you, and she’ll do so by telling the world just how weird she thinks you are.
Please, everyone in the world: LEAVE BALLERINA FARM ALONE.
At a minimum, now that you know about her, at least buy some of her merch. I have half a mind to buy some of her sourdough starter or an denim apron for my own ballerina at home because my wife loves sourdough bread and looks beautiful in an apron.
And I like supporting good causes.