A Mormon mother of eight who rose to fame thanks to her captivating “traditional wife” content has now become the subject of intense scrutiny following a recent article that gave an insight into the reality of her ultra-traditional lifestyle.
Hannah Neeleman, or Ballerina Farm as she is known online, made headlines earlier this year after competing in Mrs. World just 12 days after giving birth without painkillers.
This week, fans of the Utah-based content creator have expressed concern following a Article from the Times of Londonwho described her as “the queen of traditional wives,” portraying a life less idyllic than her social media presence suggests.
Readers were shocked by the in-depth article, which showed Hannah, who is married to JetBlue heir Daniel Neeleman, 35, being frequently interrupted by her husband and noted that she was so exhausted by her hectic lifestyle that she was bedridden for days.
Fans took to social media to share their thoughts, with many declaring they needed to “save her.”
Hannah Neeleman, or Ballerina Farm as she is known online, made headlines earlier this year after competing in Mrs. World just 12 days after giving birth without painkillers.
“This article reveals why the traditional wife phenomenon is so dangerous. It encourages young women to become wives and mothers before they have the chance to learn and explore their own ambitions and desires,” one fan posted on X.
“And now I have to dive into the whole ballerina farm thing. I’m so behind! She quit Juilliard for this guy? And he gave her an apron instead of flying her to Greece? His dad literally owns Jet Blue,” one user wrote on X, referring to a recent video in which Hannah was given an apron as a gift for collecting chicken eggs after milking them. I want to travel to Greece repeatedly.
“We have to SAVE HER,” added another.
“She’s last every day. She considers herself last. Her family considers her last,” says TikTok creator Rhody Ray He said in a video“What she was as a person before she was a wife and a mother, that part of her is gone.”
‘The real deception that’s going on with the (Ballerina Farm) account is the appearance that everything is easy, relaxed, beautiful, when in reality it looks like Hannah Neeleman is slowly working herself to death doing multiple jobs, taking care of these kids, acting as an online influencer, without any extra help,’ another creator said. Dear Claire Burke he raged in a video that has now gone viral.
The article, written by Megan Agnew, also noted that Daniel, whom Hannah married at 21, often dominated the conversation, even insisting on showing her around the farm, despite Hannah calling them back to the house and Megan wanting to talk to her alone.
“I look at my watch and I feel nervous,” Megan recalls in the article as Daniel takes her on a tour of the farm. “I want to talk to Neeleman.”
The article also said that the only time Hannah had received medication during labor was when Daniel wasn’t present, and she told Megan about it when her husband was on a phone call and admitted that “it was great.”
The 34-year-old has amassed millions of followers on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube thanks to her “traditional wife” content — a shortened term for “traditional wife” — which describes a woman who trades modern femininity for domestic duties, including cooking, cleaning and having children.
An aspiring dancer, Hannah moved to New York City at 17 to study at Juilliard, but met her current husband soon after, and her life changed dramatically.
Hannah left New York City and her dreams of being a dancer behind to live on a farm in Utah.
Hannah’s social media feeds consist of snaps showing the blonde beauty baking fresh sourdough, tending to livestock or dancing in her rustic kitchen with her kids.
“My goal was New York City. I left home when I was 17 and I was so excited to get there, I loved that energy. And I wanted to be a dancer. I was a good dancer,” Hannah told the Times.
“But I knew that when I started having children my life would start to be different,” she added.
Her social media accounts tell the story of a city girl who thrives while living the simple life of a farm, and a self-taught entrepreneur who became a social media sensation and started her successful company from scratch.
However, Megan sometimes expressed skepticism about her happiness.
“I look at the vastness and I don’t fully agree. Daniel wanted to live in the great wilds of the West, so they did; he wanted to farm, so they do; he likes date nights once a week, so they go (they have a babysitter on those nights); he didn’t want babysitters in the house, so there aren’t any,” she wrote.
‘The only space Neeleman intended to own — a small barn he wanted to convert into a ballet studio — ended up becoming the children’s classroom.’
Although Daniel told The Times they are “co-chief executives,” he admitted that his wife, who gets no help from nanny with their eight children, sometimes “gets so sick from exhaustion she can’t get out of bed for a week.”
The couple now live with their eight children, Henry, 12; Charles, 10; George, nine; Frances, seven; Lois, five; Martha, three; Mabel, three; and Flora, six months, on a 328-acre farm in Utah, and the article makes several comments about how it was not the life Hannah initially wanted.
In the article, Daniel tells the reporter that Hannah initially refused to date him for six months after they met through mutual friends at a college basketball game.
In order to spend some uninterrupted time with Hannah, she pulled some strings with her father’s airline to not only get on his flight from Salt Lake City to New York, but to sit next to him.
Hannah is a Juilliard-trained dancer, successful businesswoman, beauty queen, homemaker and mother of eight, but fans are now concerned about her home life.
Daniel proposed to her just a month after they started dating, and they married just two months later, despite Hannah still studying at the prestigious school and wanting to finish her education.
The ballet dancer became pregnant three months after getting married while still a student, becoming the “first Juilliard student to become pregnant in modern history.”
Hannah has gained international fame on social media as the face behind the Ballerina Farm accounts, which boast nearly 20 million followers across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
While she is one of the most famous so-called traditional wives, Hannah told The Times of London that she doesn’t “identify” with the traditional wife label, as she worked as a content creator while raising her family.
“We are traditional in the sense that we are a man and a woman, we have children, but I feel like we are breaking a lot of ground that hasn’t been paved before,” she explained.
After graduating from Juilliard, the budding dancer put her career on the back burner to focus on starting a family.
He moved to Brazil after Daniel was offered a position at one of his father’s startups, which was based in South America, and it was there that the self-proclaimed “urbanite” discovered his passion for agriculture.
In 2017, she, her husband and children moved back to the US and to a farm in Utah, where Hannah began documenting the ups and downs of running the ranch while also caring for her many children on her Instagram.
Hannah and Daniel launched their company, Ballerina Farm, in 2019, which now sells a variety of products made from their livestock, including ground beef and pork, as well as desserts and fresh produce.
Hannah, who is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, recently returned to beauty pageants and competed in the coveted Mrs. World contest just two weeks after giving birth to her eighth child in January.
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