Amala Ekpunobi
Is There Darkness Behind The Ballerina Farm Brand?
Feminist outrage over Ballerina Farms Instagram “trad wife” influencer Hannah Neelman is going viral on TikTok after a new profile about her was published by The Times. Let’s talk about it.
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- Duration:
- 1h 21m
- Broadcast on:
- 24 Jul 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
This episode is brought to you by Snapple. Want to know another Snapple fact? The first hot air balloon passengers were a sheep, a duck, and a rooster. Ridiculous! Check out Snapple.com to find ridiculously flavored Snapple near you. Hello, everybody, and happy Wednesday. Welcome to the show. Before we get into today's topic, I have to say thank you, guys, for 2 million subscribers. Yay! What a crazy, crazy milestone to have met on this channel. Thank you so much to each and every one of you who isn't listening right now. We'll be listening in the future. I cannot thank you enough. It is so crazy to think where this channel started and where we're at now. So thank you so much for that. You know what? One day, this channel might come under scrutiny, and somebody might come to profile me and see what we're doing behind the scenes here, and they might accuse Taylor or John or somebody behind the scenes of forcing me to do this work. I have to say now, nobody's holding a gun in my head. I'm not being forced to say anything that is being said on this channel, and if you're wondering why I'm saying that, it's because today we're going to be talking about ballerina farm, Hannah and Daniel Neelman, who are this couple, this Trad wife brand that exists online. They have their own business ballerina farm where they sell products from their farm. They show the raising of their eight children on this lush homestead landscape, and it's been called into question as the Times has done a recent profile on Hannah and Daniel Neelman, and they've sort of painted them in a certain light, which we're going to get into in just a moment. But of course, before we get into all this, we have Taylor in Nashville, holding all the strings and forcing you, I'm like, watching you like this, and says John, right off the camera, forcing you to do all of this hard labor. Now, I just jumped in and choked on my words, and congratulations on two million. Can't believe we're here. Yeah. We'll talk to you now before it shows. We don't want anybody dying on the show today, guys, we have very important stuff to talk about. So for those of you who are unaware of what ballerina farm is, I'll go ahead and give you a little bit of the low down. Okay. I'll show you their Instagram. This is ballerina farm. It's got 9.1 million followers on Instagram, these two and their entire family on every single platform. I think they have over a million followers. So they really just show their sort of homestead life as ranchers, Hannah Neoman, who is the wife of this relationship, is a former ballerina, Juilliard-trained ballerina, who like left a city life in New York to go and run ballerina farm, which is why it's called ballerina farm. We can figure that out. If you look at some of their content here, you can see it's the kids taking care of goats and cows and working on vegetables in the farm. And they talk about the raw milk that they drink and they cook with. And she shows cooking recipes. Here's some small clips and as you go through it, it's like it's sourdough starter and fresh bread and they make pizza from scratch at home and everything is farmed to table and you can have farmed a table too when you order from ballerina farm. That's basically the brand. It's what's going on in this family and it is the life that they lead. They've come into question so many times and of course, living that trad wife lifestyle, one of the main questions that people really bring up is, is this even real? Are you really leading this life? Nobody's telling you how much money they make behind the scenes. She probably has nannies for those eight children. There's no way she's farming and taking care of eight kids and doing all of this and maintaining this very lush, beautiful lifestyle that people get to see. So that was the main point of controversy for ballerina farm for quite some time. And then earlier in this year, she was pregnant, ended up having a baby. And two weeks later, performed in a pageant and did a whole pageant circuit. And everybody was saying, this is so unrealistic. How dare you do something like this? You're just boasting this sort of mommy bounce back lifestyle that women sort of pressure themselves into needing after having a child and you're setting an unrealistic expectation for what women can do. So they find themselves constantly in the limelight. Most recently, they have this article that was featuring them, a profile in the times, which we can look at here. It says, meet the queen of the trad wives and her eight children. And of course, we've all been talking about trad wives, right? Nara Smith. We featured on this channel earlier because she was being called into question with her trad wife lifestyle of women saying it's unrealistic. You're wearing couture and making your husband blueberry muffins and your both models and your kids are beautiful and your life is perfect and you have nannies and da da da da. Trad wives are constantly getting heat on the internet. This comes in a new form as the times actually set one of their writers to meet Hannah and Daniel Neelman out on their farm and to have a discussion with them about their lifestyle. She specifically went to the farm to speak with Hannah and we're going to read through this article because many of feminist is now posting this article and saying the Neelmans have been exposed. He's an abusive husband. He stalked her. He's essentially sort of through marriage holding her hostage on the farm and making her lead this life that she doesn't want to lead when she should have been a ballerina and should have been able to stay in the city. We'll read through this and see what we find. If you guys are ballerina farm fans, this will may or may not be telling. If you're not, it's going to bring up an interesting conversation about modern day feminism, about the view of trad wives and we'll question whether or not some of the things in this article are actually true. Is Daniel Neelman actually an impressive force on Hannah Neelman? I guess we'll stay tuned and find out. We'll start reading, Hannah Neelman, known to her nine million followers as ballerina farm, milks cows, gifts birth without pain relief, and breastfeeds beauty pageants. Is this an empowering new model of womanhood or a hammer blow for feminism? And there's a photo of the family and all their kids, mind you, this is a Mormon family, which explains the rapid rate of reproduction. I feel like all the Mormon families I know, you guys have a hell of kids and they're so happy. There's two things that I noticed about the Mormon lifestyle, but there's the family. Again, this was written by Meghan Agnew. We'll talk about her in just a moment. It says Hannah Neelman was pregnant with her eighth child and she had two due dates. The first was for a baby, obviously. The second just under two weeks later was for a beauty pageant. She goes on to talk about the fact that Hannah Neelman was crowned Miss American in August of 2023 at a Las Vegas mega casino in resort and she was then invited to compete in Mrs. World and she was not going to miss the Mrs. World pageant. Hannah says, quote, I had known it was coming 34 sitting in her kitchen in rural Utah, two of her children literally swinging off her long golden hair, quote. So I had prepared during the pregnancy, it took brute strength guts and bravery to make sure she could eventually look so perfectly pretty. She kept fit weightlifting before her children woke up. She had ice baths, lowering herself into the irrigation ditches on the farm and she took iron supplements to speed up the healing. On January 2nd, this year, Flora was born in the upstairs bedroom without pain relief, a one push baby, Neelman said on Instagram and they decided after this baby, even with all the things going on with her health and having to take care of a child, that she was going to compete in the pageant and here she is behind the scenes breastfeeding little baby Flora. Now on the seventh day, she rose from bed, did her bar exercises in the bathroom, a former ballerina. She trained at a Juilliard school in New York. By day nine, she was trying on outfits, zipping herself into a pair of leather trousers and skin tight white ball gown, day 10 spray tan, day 11, a two hour flight with a newborn to Las Vegas, her husband and seven children following behind, along with other members of her family. And by day 12, she was on stage. Luckily, she says she had stopped bleeding. She's already were trying to paint a picture. And this is what's really important, I think, about media literacy is when you are reading an article, oftentimes we read it and we just take everything as fact and we don't necessarily see the way things are worded is trying to paint you a particular story. It's very interesting that in this triumph of her own choice, she decided to have the child and compete in this pageant, she ends this sort of story with luckily, she says, she had stopped bleeding as if this is some sort of woman who's like forced into this performative lifestyle, where she's bleeding behind the scenes, but chooses to go out and do this pageantry, when in fact, it seems like this was very much Hannah Neumann's choice. Either way, we're going to keep going through. Now after this whole pageant controversy, of course, the ballerina farm went through like another explosion of followers because this story became super big. She was receiving a lot of criticism as a trad wife that was pushing this unrealistic lifestyle. But through the maelstrom, she says, she had remained publicly at least steadfast. She never, she never explained. She never complained a silence I had interpreted as defiance. But is it? Well, I've flown across the breath of America and driven through the mountains to rural Utah to ask her if that is I can get her alone. Again, Hannah Neumann has her husband, Daniel, where they work on this farm and eight children. So I imagine she would be a tough woman to get alone. The Neomans and their children, Henry 12, Charles, Charles 10, George 9, Francis 7, Lois 5, Martha 3, Mabel 2, and Baby Flora live on a 328 acre farm just outside a small town of Camus, a pioneering, sorry, a pioneering existence, but beneath a big sky and up against the brutal elements. Welcome in says Daniel 35, opening the door baby in his arms. He is part of the family brand. At hog fathering, he has nearly half a million Instagram followers and an all-American steak of a husband, square jawed and denim clad. So we're trying to paint a picture of Daniel clearly and it is a picture that they depict themselves in in social media when you check out Hannah's Instagram page. This is a sort of all-American, farming, pioneer woman style family and that's very much a part of their brand. There's Daniel pictured there. We'll keep reading says Hannah will be out in a minute. He continues walking into the kitchen. It is photogenic chaos and antique wooden counters are stacked with lacruced pans and mismatched pottery. There is an Aga installed by the only man in the West who knows how I didn't know what an Aga was, but apparently this is a big part of the Ballerin farm brand. It's their stove. Okay, and if you look up this stove to buy it, it's like $40,000. It's a very expensive stove. I've never heard of such a thing, but this is a big thing that they get hate for on their Instagram because she's making sourdough and fresh pizza and everybody's saying, "Your stove is $50,000. This is not the real lifestyle that you need." Blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyways, they're rich. You get it. Okay. She says, "I count 28 pairs of shoes by the door. It's so good to meet you." Someone says walking in a tiny blonde beauty queen, her hair wet and she's flushed, impossibly pretty. She takes the baby from her husband. She will not leave Neoman's chest for the four hours we're together. Shocker. A woman holds her baby for an extended amount of time. That's crazy. Four hours of holding a baby. Insane. Okay. Even before pageant gate, Neoman was one of the most popular influencers in America, famous online for depicting her family's wild, earthy existence. Her followers include Jennifer Garner and Hillary Duff. She is of course a Mormon. She makes the cows. She makes sourdough. You all understand that. Living out here, it must be hard to envision all the millions of eyes watching them, quote, "I feel like we're doing what God wants," Neoman says. "We're on his errand a little bit," Daniel says. "We're on his errand a little bit," she repeats. And interesting because Taylor recognized this. She's like, "Through the article, she is referred to as Neoman and the husband is referred to as Daniel." Why do you think that it's Taylor? Taylor, why? What do you think she's trying to depict in doing that? I mean, it's hard not to assume that it's because there's this sort of feminist angle that she's trying to portray that Hannah Neumann has lost her agency and her individuality on the altar of marriage. And so we refer to the husband by his first name, but her by his last name. Right. And I think if you're a feminist writing this piece, wouldn't you refer to her as Hannah? Again, just little bits in the like media literacy landscape that I think tell a picture and point out some of the bias. What's interesting is there's a lot of very interesting claims in this article that if they are actually part of the story that this author is trying to promote, do paint a certain picture of the triadwife lifestyle and what it could be behind the scenes. But because you are able to detect the bias of the writer in the article, it leaves everything sort of up for question. I can't tell what is truly being characterized in the accurate sense or what you've sort of allowed your own biases to depict in your writing of this article, but will continue to read. How does she respond to the social media storms? There was one after she said at another pageant that she feels most empowered after she has a baby. There were others when she encouraged the use of natural remedies over traditional medicine. And another when she said Daniel had dropped kicked a cockroal across the yard after it attacked one of their children. I don't know what a cockroal is. Do you know what a cockroal is? Does anybody know what a damn cockroal is? Let's let's clear this up really quick. Cockroal. Okay. That's chicken. That's good to know. That's good to know. So he dropped kicked one after it attacked their kids. Okay. Quote Daniel is so good about that. She says looking at her husband. He says you can lean into what people are saying or the titles people are putting on you. You can't lean into what people are saying or the titles people are putting on to you. You just have to live your life and shut that out because if not, it will overtake you. It doesn't have an impact on her at all. I mean, it does. I'll hear things. It's no fun. Like she pauses looking up at Daniel who is now standing behind her. Okay. Think about the picture she's trying to paint. Okay. We go on to quote, what do you think upsets us the most? She asked him. For whatever reason, I'm kind of numb to it. He says now she's trying to sort of paint this picture like Daniel was constantly looming in the background trying to answer questions for her that I don't know whether or not it's true because of the way you are you are writing the article. Okay. But I digress. Try one. I'm just picturing Michael Scott. You know, looking through the window of his office, like that meme or whatever, exactly that. Or like when Trump was standing behind Hillary Clinton during the debate and everybody said he's like looming over her. That's what I'm picturing. Okay. Tradwives are an internet phenomenon, women who have rejected modern gender roles for the more traditional existence of wife, mother and homemaker and who then promote that life online, some to millions of followers. Their lifestyle is often though not always bound to Christianity. They film themselves cooking mad things from scratch chewing gum from corn syrup waffles from a sourdough starter. Their face is glowing in beams of sunlight. Their voice is soft and breathy, their children free range. And there's Hannah Neelman, pregnant, obviously. In order to explain Tradwives and their popularity, we need to look back 15 years or so when the fourth wave of feminism was breaking. This was the girl boss era where women were told to be bolder in the workplace and to lean further into breaking glass ceilings. The poster woman for the movement at the time was the Facebook boss, Cheryl Sandberg. But as the years went on, women realized that they'd been sold a lie. This individualistic feminism didn't resolve anything unless you were a millionaire. For normal working mothers, the girl boss era achieved virtually nothing. After years of silence, they also began a very public purging. Women talking about how mind-numbing weaning is about the isolation of maternity leave, the challenges of everyday life with irrational toddlers, paradoxically, this made it harder for women to be honest about any joys of motherhood. And those who succeeded were seen as smug or saboteurs, which is so often the criticism that ballerina farm and people like Narsmith get in their social media pages is that you guys are so smug, you think you're such great mothers, you're painting this very beautiful life and that by no means what actual life is like. And so as a reaction to both the girl boss and the frazzled mothers along came a group of women who didn't seem to care about any of it and that was the Trad wife's. They go on to detail Narsmith and what she posts on the internet. Here's another picture of Hannah, milking cows as a Trad wife only could. Now it says, "Many women I know who have and want a life that looks totally different are addicted to watching all this, though others are served by an algorithm as if it is grooming us into submission." Okay, think about that. Another bias point for this author that they think the algorithm is trying to groom them into submission into Trad wife submission by sending them these videos. Some watch it as a sort of thrilling escapism, others simply find it soothing and others still use it as a sort of rage bait taking pleasure in being annoyed by it. Trad wives are seen as counterculture against the rot of low birth rates, says Leslie Root, a behavioral scientist at the University of Colorado. Now we're going to skip forward just a bit to hear about Neil men. She is the most well-known Trad wife, despite having never attached herself to the movement or even used the term. How does she feel about it? Quote, "We were already together doing what we were doing," Daniel replies instead. And then Trad wife came along, "We can't help it. This is what we are. If we're Trad dad, Trad wife, so be it." Neil men, however, thinks otherwise, again, referring to her as Neil men, interestingly, "I don't necessarily identify with it," she says, "because we are a 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," end quote. That is the biggest paradox in selling the life of a stay-at-home mother. Neil men and the other Trad wives have created hiring jobs. They are paid to act out a fantasy, so for me to have the label of a traditional woman, she continues cautiously. I'm kind of like, "I don't know if I identify with that." And that's been a major point of controversy, because like Nara Smith and Hannah Neumann, they're working day in and day out to not only take care of their children and the farm, but also to create this content that is now being seen online to run the Ballerina Farm website, which has so much money fluctuating and circulating in and out of it as people are buying these products. You are not a Trad wife necessarily. You work multiple full-time jobs, it actually seems, once this lifestyle takes root on social media and you become a brand. So at what point do we still consider these women Trad wives when they are not stay-at-home moms with no jobs? They are working moms who take care of their children during the day whilst working. I don't know, that's up for question. Is the husband the head of the household here? No, Daniel answers. We are co-CEOs, yeah, Neumann says. We are. Is she a feminist? Quote, "I feel like I'm a feminine and she cuts herself off. There's so many different ways you could take that word. I don't even know what feminism means anymore." She absolutely feels as though she's become politicized by other people. Quote, "We try so hard to be neutral and be ourselves and people will put a label on everything. This is just our normal life." We head outside and into the truck, Daniel driving, me in the front, Neumann in the toddlers in the back. Her kids are being homeschooled in the barn, where they learn a Mormon Christian syllabus taught by a woman who lives down the track. "I am told I will sit down with Neumann one-on-one later in the afternoon." "We passed the family's minibus, a 15-seater. Is the aim to fill it?" Some day, yeah, Daniel says, "We're getting old and worn out." Neumann says, "Baby Flora strapped to her chest, sounds less sure." She says, "Sounding less sure, so we'll see." So now the husband's saying, "I want to fill a 15-seater bus with all the kids." Which, come on, it's typical for the Mormon. Let's just go ahead and put that out there. And she's saying, "I don't know, we'll see." But I also don't know that I can trust the author's characterization of how these words are being said because they can already smell the bias that is radiating off of this article, but we'll continue to read. Online, the Neumann's sell meats from their cows and pigs, as well as branded sourdough starters rock salt, copper measuring cups, and beeswax candles, they have three full-time employees on the farm, 30 at the warehouse, more than 10 in the office, and a creative director who manages the website visuals. We drive past the dairy cows, looking out across the river valley and the arid mountains behind. "Was this what she always wanted?" I asked when we get a moment alone while Daniel checks on the animals. "No," she says. I mean, I was like, "My goal was New York City. I left home at 17 and was so excited to get there. I just love that energy. I was going to be a ballerina. I was a good ballerina. But I knew that when I started to have kids, my life would start to look different." Neumann was the eighth of nine children born to Mormon parents in Springville near Salt Lake City. The family ran a florist, and the children were homeschooled. Neumann gravitated towards ballet at 14, she went to summer school at Juilliard, returning for her undergrad degree, which she paid for by competing in scholarship pageants, beauty pageants that offer academic scholarships, and sometimes tuition money to winners. Now Daniel grew up in a Mormon family as well, one out of nine in Connecticut, and was the son of David Neumann. And David Neumann owns all these different airlines, including JetBlue, or at least he was the founder of all these different airlines, including JetBlue. His upbringing was moneyed in suburban, was this what he always wanted, I asked him when he walks back. "Yes," he says. "I expected Hannah to be more at home with the kids, but she said, 'I washed my parents working together, and so whatever we do, we got to do it together.'" And that's what they ended up doing. He was 23, and she was nearly two years his junior when they were introduced by a mutual friend. Now, interesting. She was 23, and she was nearly two years his junior. Why don't you just say her age? Why don't you say she was 22, essentially, because she was nearly two years his junior, which means she was nearly 21, but like, just put her age there. Instead, she chooses to word it this way so that Hannah sounds crazily younger than Daniel was at the time. And in reality, you're talking about two people who are in their early 20s. Okay. This is how you catch bias in the way that people write things. She could have very well just put that girl's age, but she didn't do it. Okay, he was 23, and she was nearly two years his junior when they were introduced by a mutual friend at a college basketball game, quote, "I saw her, and I was ready to go," he says. "Sign me up, I was thinking, 'Let's get married,' but she wouldn't go on a date with me for six months." So maybe she wasn't that interested, maybe she was playing hard to get, maybe she was busy and had other things going on, she wouldn't go on a date with him for six months. Okay. So how do we get to their first date? One day, she mentioned to Daniel that she was getting the five hour flight from Salt Lake City to New York back to Juilliard. She didn't realize his dad owned the airline, quote, "So Daniel was like, 'I'm on the same flight,' she says. I remember checking in and them saying, 'You're 5A and you're 5B, I just thought, 'No way, that's crazy.'" Daniel smiles and says, "I made a call. He had pulled strings at JetBlue and so began their first date." Now many feminists are running and calling this stalking, that he stalked her, found out her flight, her dad he owns the airline, "I'm going to get the seat next to the woman I want to marry." Clearly she didn't interpret that way because she went on and married him, which is why when you're from the outside looking at a lifestyle that you don't want, I think you'll interpret things in a far more nefarious way than if you were living in, and ladies, be real. If you were actually interested in a guy and he pulled some strings at Daddy's airline and got the seat right next to you, you'd be fainting, okay? And in the good way. So don't even try. I'm like a part of a rom-com, honestly. It literally does. That's a very beautiful moment. He was trying. He wanted to get a date with her. He pulled some strings to get it. Now if it was the wrong guy and you didn't like him and you weren't attracted to him, this would be super weird. So it's all about the way the cookie crumbles and in this way the cookie crumbled and they ended up getting married, okay? So let's think about that. Quote, "Back then I thought we should date for a year before marriage." Hannah continues. She didn't write Hannah. She wrote she just to be clear. A quote, "So I could finish school and whatever." And Daniel was like, "It's not going to work. We've got to get married now." After a month they were engaged. Two months after that they were married. Getting into an apartment rented, the Daniel rented on the Upper West Side and three months after that she was pregnant. The first a Juilliard undergrad, an undergraduate to be expecting in modern history, okay? So we're trying to paint another picture here that she was this super successful woman in Juilliard and then she gets pregnant because this man essentially forced her to do it. And you know what? If you wanted to hold off getting married and you wanted to date for a year before you did that and the man's like, "No, we have to get married now." And it becomes this sort of ultimatum situation, "Okay, we can hear that out. It's not the coolest thing in the world. I don't know that that's what happened." It sounds like he wanted to get married now and she decided, "Okay, I will get married to you." I don't know that he was so domineering over her that he made her get married to him and that doesn't seem to be what's insinuated here. It just sounds like she wanted to wait. He didn't want to wait and so they got married. And let's not forget the element of this guy's dad owns like five airlines or founded like five airlines. I can imagine, you know, there is an element of, I'll marry that too, he's got money, you know? I feel like a lot of women would just at some point give way to whatever he wants to do on the timeline front there. But at what point can you say that that's like force or abuse? I don't know. It doesn't sound like there's too much going on there just yet. But we'll set it aside and we'll mark it. It's noted. Okay, next. Daniel got a job as the director of his father's security company moving their young family to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where before long she had three kids under four. At first she was still dancing professionally. The family eventually settled in Utah. "Our first few years of marriage were really hard. We sacrificed a lot," she says. But we did have this vision, this dream, and Daniel interrupts. We still do. And that's the end of Daniel's interruption. What kind of sacrifices I ask her? Well, I gave up dance, which was hard. You give up a piece of yourself and Daniel gave up his career ambitions. Here's a photo of her dancing. I look out at the vastness and don't totally agree is what the author writes, okay? Daniel wanted to live in the Great Western Wilds, so they did. He wanted a farm, so they have one, or so they do. He likes date nights once a week, so they go. They have a babysitter on those evenings. Notice how she slipped in, and maybe she couldn't find other examples of things that he wanted, that he's domineering and forcing on her. He likes date night once a week, so they go, as if like, "Date night is so spooky, scary." He makes me do it. He makes me get a babysitter once a week so that he can take me out on a date, okay? Whatever. Let's keep reading. He didn't want nannies in the house, so there aren't any, although we don't speak to the fact of whether or not Hannah actually wanted nannies, or if she shared the same mindset, it just says he didn't want nannies in the house, so there aren't any. The only space earmarked to be Neilman's own, meaning Hannah's own, is a small barn that she wanted to convert into a ballet studio, and that ended up becoming the kid's schoolroom. Again, I don't know who's responsible for turning the barn that was meant to be her dance studio into the schoolroom. But I imagine the two co-CEOs might have come to that decision collectively, and these people are like millionaires. They have a lot of money. I think if she wants a dance studio, she can have one, pretty sure. I can add a little bit of color on that too. I listened to an interview with her where they were talking about this, and even talking about that space, and she was asked like, "Oh, you were a dancer. You're going to want to teach your daughters to dance," and she said, "Yes, but I'm going to wait because I got into it so early that it robbed the joy out of it for me, and I didn't want to be the type of parent that pushes my kids into this to where it's not something that they do for its own sake because of the joy and the love of it, because it's something that's forced on them." So she said, "I'm going to wait several years for my younger daughters so that they're of a certain age before it." So it doesn't feel like I'm forcing it on them basically. So it could be that that space or another space with their millions of dollars to your point could be used for the purposes of letting their kids do that, but instead it's portrayed in this way because, of course, it is. Right. And you'll find out even in this article that she sends her kids to ballet class. So it's like, do we think for some reason her kids are getting ballet and she's not dancing? And once we get into the feminist responses to this article, you will understand how far people are running with what is written here. Anyways, let's keep reading. Daniel wants to take me to see the new dairy farm buildings while Neil Minne goes back into the house to make lunch for the kiddos. We stop at an irrigation ditch which he explains, the offices which he explains, the milking stations which he explains, and mind you, when she's writing this, what she really wants to say is which he mansplains to me. You can tell in the way she's writing it that's what she wants to say, but what we can maybe shift this and interpret it as is he is choosing to give you a very in-depth tour of the farm explaining every facet of it so that you have enough information to go and write an article that was, I guess, presumably supposed to be about ballerina farm, or else why would he be showing you the farm? So I'm also wondering what pretense she sort of got this interview under and what she told them the article was actually going to be about because if I invited somebody into my home and then, like, months later, this is the piece that comes out out of it, I would be pissed, I would be pissed, and you know they'll handle it with grace because they're Mormons. Mormons are typically pretty nice and they just seem like pretty normal people, so they'll probably handle this very well. But anyways, let's keep reading, I check my watch feeling edgy, I want to talk to Neil Minne. Oh my gosh, okay. Just one more stop, he says, Neil Minne calls him, okay, he says to her, we're just heading your way, he adds, driving in the opposite direction out into the fields to show me another ditch, so this woman writes, what? A B-I-T-C-H, actually, and he says, you know, we're heading your way, and she's trying to write this as like, oh, he's lying to Hannah, saying that we're headed in her direction when, in reality, he's going to show me another ditch and explain it to me, could you imagine maybe in a man's mind how they're like, okay, this is the end of the tour, I'm going to show you this one more spot, I'm going to head in the other direction, and we'll head back. What would you say to your wife? Yeah, we're just heading your way, but no, we're going to re-characterize it as if he's like holding her hostage to explain this farm to her, to mansplain it to her. Anyways, okay, continue. Finally, we get back into the kitchen, sitting at the table, surrounded by an ever-changing number of children, you can tell she's super annoyed by Hannah's kids, that's abundantly clear. What's the swinging off the hair, the kids interrupting, the ever-changing number of children that are entering the room, this girl does not like the children. Okay, one is clattering a pan open next to my tape recorder, another is pulling a whole roast chicken from the aga, three more gather around it with forks, eating it from the pan, another spills the pail of milk over the floor, we have half an hour to talk before Neilman has to take some to the ballet class. So this woman, I don't, if I had to guess, I would guess this woman does not have kids, I do not know that for sure, but you can tell she's very irritated by the natural activity of children, spilling things, running around, answering questions, they're not supposed to answer, and she just wants to talk to Hannah and it's just not going to exactly work out for her in a house with eight children, okay? I noticed there's no TV. We watched some stuff on the computer, one of her daughter says, YouTube videos, no, just a little house on the prairie, how about iPads, no, another little girl says, except we play a ring around a roses and jump on the tramp and play lacrosse and that's everything. How about phones, no, says eight year old George, one of the older kids, sometimes if we go to our cousins, we play on a phone, then we're like addicted to them. Okay, so they sound like very smart kids. I don't know why she had to ask multiple times about whether or not they have access to technology or what she was trying to paint there, but there was something there, I just don't know what. They have a cleaner, but no child care. Neilman does all the food shopping, kids in tow and cooks from scratch. They don't do ready meals. Despite the more traditional aspects of their relationship, note this, Daniel is a hands-on father, taking the kids out to the farm and doing all the laundry. The children appear to look after each other quite well too. There are so many that they seem to have become an almost self-sustaining entity. Still, Daniel says, Neilman sometimes gets so ill from exhaustion that she can't get out of bed for a week. Okay. And that's the sentence, that last sentence there, she gets so ill from exhaustion that she can't get out of bed for a week. That's something that all the feminists who are covering this are really hanging on every detail. They seem to skip over the part where it says Daniel is a very hands-on father taking care of the kids and the farm and doing all the laundry, which would not be typical of a very traditional trad wifey in relationship, the wife would be left to do all of those things. Meanwhile, he's a hands-on father who is doing those things with her. They make no note of Daniel's level of exhaustion. Just Hannah's, as if it is something that she is burdened with alone and that they do not share in tow as a husband and a wife. But we will never know because clearly, the story is, has written itself. The story was written before this woman went to the farm. That's what I'm trying to tell you guys. She went to the farm to plug in the details of the story that she already wanted to write. In my opinion. Also, it's not the dozens of employees that she has to manage in the multi-million dollar business and the influencer fame that's exhausting her. Of course, it's the demands of children and the oppressive lifestyle that she's living. At least that's how we're meant to understand that. Right. 100%. That's what's really weighing her down here. Okay. Since the bedroom is also where she had her children with the exception of Henry and Martha who are born in a hospital, a fact that did not escape some of the followers. After that, I was like, I'm ready to go back home. She says, I just love having them at home. It's so quiet. We also gave birth. She also gave birth to them without pain relief, none at all. She shakes her head. Why? I don't know. I just have never loved taking it. She stops herself, except with Martha. I was two weeks overdue and she was 10 pounds and Daniel wasn't with me. She lowers her voice. Daniel is currently out of the room taking a phone call. So I got an epidural and it was an amazing experience. Where was Daniel that day? It was shipping day for the meat boxes and he was manning the crew. But the epidural was kind of great. She pauses and smiles. It was kind of great. Okay. Another bit here says she lowers her voice and this insinuates in the article that she's whispering to the writer that I got an epidural and Daniel wasn't there because Daniel was working as if this is somehow information that he's not privy to. It's some sort of secret. But think about it this way. She lowers her voice because Daniel is currently out of the room taking the phone call. It might just be that she's trying to be quiet because her husband is working on business on the phone. But all these feminists are running and saying she had to whisper to the writer that she got an epidural because her husband was away working and a lot of people are saying her husband wasn't there for the baby. I'm sorry. If your husband is bringing in millions of dollars and they have a very important like shipping day that's taking place, he might just need to be there for the shipping day. And I'm sure it was something that they agreed on and it was not something that she just had to deal with alone and then was just like, give me the epidural, Daniel's not here. Same thing. But we'll let her clarify it. I'm just saying there are many ways that this could be interpreted. Okay. I want to ask her about birth control, but we're surrounded by so many of her children and Daniel is back in the room now too. Do you? I pause and look at her fixedly planned pregnancies. No, Daniel says when he, when he says no, uh, Neoman responds gently, it's very much a matter of prayer for me. I'm like, God, is it time to bring another one on to the earth and I'm never, I've never been told no than Daniel says, but for whatever reason, it's exactly nine months after a baby that she's ready for the next one. It's definitely a matter of prayer, she says. It's a matter of prayer, but somehow it's exactly nine months, he says. And then this is meant to be like, Oh, Daniel's correcting her. What an asshole. How dare he say these things when, you know, if every nine months, she says she wants a new baby. It's kind of like a funny haha thing. Like it's a matter of prayer, but yeah, every nine months, she finally perks up and wants to have another child, but this is meant to be painted as like Daniel is this domineering corrector of everything she says. We'll keep writing. The Neomans have strongly held Mormon beliefs, which they mentioned far more in person than they do online. The Mormon church emphasizes heterosexual unions and sexual purity. It opposes elective abortions, allowing for exceptions only in pregnancies that result from rape or incest and where there's a threat to life, the mothers or the fetus. Does Neoman agree with the stance on abortion? The church is a lot more lenient than a lot of the states in the US, Daniel says. The church is against, I'm going to get an abortion just because I'm not happy I'm pregnant. We see the joys of having children. The sanctity of life, Neoman says, absolutely he continues. And that's probably why the church tells you don't have sexual relations, get married. Because if not, you might have a child or you might have a kid that you regret and you regret having and all of a sudden you'll get an abortion, and that's not good, okay? And they would see that as a sinful act. Yes, Daniel says, you need Jesus, Neoman adds, mom, mom, mom, mom, a little girl, little girl cries, I want to go to ballet class now. I can't, it seems, get an answer out of Neoman without being corrected, without her being corrected, interrupted, or answered for by either her husband or a child. Clearly I'm doing battle with steely Hollywood publicists. Today, I am up against an army of toddlers who all want their mom and a husband who thinks he knows better, ooh, ooh, little slip there, little slip. How do you know the husband that thinks he knows better? I think you just came in with that characterization of him and now you're writing it in this article. Why I ask before I leave, does she do those pageants in between babies? Quote, well, my sister called me and said, there's a Mrs. Utah, let's do it together. Just two, she gestures at the children around her, break things up. And the sequin gowns, well, they used to be in her bedroom covered. But with all of her stuff and Daniels and Henry's and Charles and Georges and Francis and Lois's and Martha's and Mables and Flores, notice how she could have just said, with all of Daniel's stuff and all of her children's stuff, but she chose to mention every single one of them to have them in this huge succession of you reading it and feeling overwhelmed by her lifestyle. She ends it with the cover got so full that there wasn't any room. So Daniel put them in the garage. And that is meant to close out the article with a very negative depiction of Daniel that he took something that Hannah really loved her sequin gowns and threw them in the garage because his lifestyle and his dreams took up too much space and they had to throw hers out. Could it also be? Like, you know, they were in the cupboard. Our kids use this every day though. I use it every day for like my normal clothings. We figure the sequin gowns that are probably not being worn every single day as you're taking care of a farm should be moved out to the garage if if somebody came to learn about my lifestyle and wrote this ass of an article, I'd be pissed. I'd be pissed. I'd be ready to strongly word it letters to the times there'd be a YouTube video out the next day analyzing this. My goodness, it was this a botched job. But now everybody's running with it and saying like, oh my gosh, this is such a dark profile from the times that we're ballerina farm and they have this lovely beautiful Instagram that boasts millions of followers and shows this pristine farm life. And behind it, Hannah is just suffering, suffering with the care of her children and her husband who's also a hands-on father and does all the laundry, I don't understand it. We're going to get into some of the responses though and read. So here is Hannah dancing on TikTok. Now people are going through all of her old videos and leaving comments. This one says never stop dancing, Hannah because they presumably think that she's been forced to stop dancing by her husband. So it says, you've got a whole world of women behind you, Hannah. Don't give up on yourself, sweet girl. This next one says, and now it's a school room for her kids' sad face. Where is the space just for Hannah? You are our ballerina. Don't ever stop. So now all of these people are hopping on her social media to really pound in this message that she is some oppressed woman who doesn't get any time for herself. Here's one. This has 60,000 likes nearly. Hi, I'm Saul Goodman. Did you know that you have rights, the Constitution says you do. And that says me to ballerina farm after reading the Sunday Times article on her. Do you know that you have rights as if she is some like lobotomized trad wife who is being constantly told what to do? Here's another one. This has nearly 35,000 likes. The way that I ran to read the Times article on ballerina farms, the article is called Meet the Queen of the Tradwives and her eight children. But what I'm really most interested in is the commentary on this trad wife thing and whether it's actually an empowering new model of womanhood or hammer below for feminism because a lot of the proponents for trad wives say that there is really something so subversive about a woman performing domestic labor and making six plus figures because of it. That is something very subversive. I can get down with that. It really actually is a hammer blow to feminism because the one is clear is that it is not a marriage of equals. Her husband says that they have to sacrifice a lot. He interrupts her the entire time. She says that one of the things that she gave up for this dream that they had of homesteading or I don't even know what the terminology is was dance. And as someone who also moved on gave up dance to become a regular person, it really is just part of you. And also goes on to talk about how she doesn't have any child care. So in a lot of the conversations around trad wives, people are saying that there is like gaggle of nannies that have to be helping behind the scenes. These people actually don't have that. And pause. Remember when I told you one of the main bits of controversy that ballerina farm got was like, this is not a realistic lifestyle. You're not actually doing the work for this children. You're not a real trad wife who's like taking care of eight kids and your husband all at once. And the huge thing was like, we know you have nannies behind the scenes. Tell us about your nannies. We know you have nannies. Your husband is in air to billions and billions of airline money and how is it possible that you're doing this. You don't have nannies. And then this article, you have an author go behind the scenes and she actually doesn't have nannies. And now they're like, you don't have nannies, that's abuse. Your husband is abusing you. You don't have somebody to help you take care of your kids. That is so awful. Eight children and you do it all on your own. So it's like, what do you want from this woman? There is nothing that she can possibly do to satiate your desire to crush the lifestyle of trad wifeism, even though she's not even a trad wife and doesn't identify with the term. So there's nothing that she can do to be in anybody's good graces. And it's because there's a fundamental dislike of the lifestyle itself, of the idea of being a woman who is married, who loves her husband, who is taking care of eight children. Well, fundamentally dislike the idea of that and then we'll find anything they can to criticize no matter how much information comes out. Now, I can't tell whether or not this woman is totally happy with her relationship and doesn't miss being a ballerina in New York City and wants, you know, I don't know how many more kids, five more kids or seven more kids to fill the 15-seater bus, I don't know what she wants. I do know that this writer of this article was extremely biased and had you sent in somebody who could dial back that bias a little bit and really reel it in, we'd have more clarity on the situation that's actually taking place behind the scenes. But instead, I know how the author feels about ballerina farm. I don't know how ballerina farm feels about ballerina farm. And her husband, Danielle, says that often Hannah is run completely ragged, trying to maintain the household and be this influencer and create content. She gets so ill from exhaustion that she can't get out of bed for a week. Does that sound healthy? I don't think so. When she talks about how she had an unmedicated birth for almost all of her pregnancies, she waits until her husband leaves the room and then she talks about how with her one child, Martha, she actually was living in a hospital and she had an epidural. Dude, my eye is twitching, you see how people interpret things because of a lack of media literacy. It really is a lack of media literacy because had you read that and truly read it with your brain on and the biases off, you would find, you would find that's not like she waited until the husband was at the room. If anything, the writer explicitly tells you that she waits to broach certain topics when the husband is out of the room and then that gets projected onto Hannah as if she's sharing secrets with this one woman, this one other grown woman she's able to talk to in the house as it was an author. So it's like a girl boss finally comes to visit Hannah and she feels like she can share these like dark moments in her life to her. That's not all what happened. She says it like it is a secret. This is the greatest article on ballerina farm and the trad wife thing. It just goes to show that Hannah Neelman is being corrected, interrupted, or answered for by her husband or a child literally all the time. If that sounds like a wonderful existence to you, great but not to me. There was the little Freudian slip there at the end. This person doesn't like the lifestyle that she leads and it's just happy to have an article that now confirms that the lifestyle is an unhappy one because a big part of the ballerina farm brand is that not only is it a depiction of really, really hard work and taking care of a lot of people but it's a depiction of happiness and fulfillment through those pursuits and people cannot stand the idea of it. So her little does that sound like a happy life to you with a huge smile on her face? Not to me. If you truly thought this was like a really dark piece out of the times where a woman is being abused by her husband and forced it and subjugated into this lifestyle, would you be smiling and saying, does that sound like a happy life to you? Not to me. No, you'd probably feel for her. You would feel for this like hands made tale story that you just read, but you know that this is probably not the case. I feel like deep down you understand or you're just angry at her and that's why you're smiling. I just am struck by the sort of closed feedback loop of angry feminism where you have this author who's writing this article with this bias and then you have the target audience of people like the TikToker that we just saw who's eating up every single one of those biased little cues that you picked up on as evidence of reasons not to take the journalist at her word and to be skeptical of the intentions of the piece and to be skeptical as to whether what you're getting is really a accurate depiction of Hannah Neelman or what the author is trying to portray. And of course, the target audience of that author though is people like this TikToker who love to relish in the idea that anyone promoting a lifestyle in which family and homesteading and traditional values and such is something that would be fulfilling. They're really being controlled or they have false motives or they've actually lost their true self and their independence and they're not really happy. It's just telling that there's two sides of this ecosystem that we're seeing and they don't need any outside perspective to maintain this depiction of the world. Right. It's not some rarity too. She mentions there in rural Utah, Utah would be a hellscape for these women. If you meet the women who are living in Utah and you see the relationships that they're in and the marriages and the families that they build, it's very similar to everything you're reading about in this article and a lot of them, I guess it's just a claim. They're lying. They're very happy within these situations and love the life that they've set up for themselves and you know, it's not all darkness. Here's another response. Let's go ahead and hear this one. Okay. If you have at any point been interested in this tribe life conversation, then run, don't walk to the new profile of Valerina farm that was posted in the times. This is a brilliant profile. This was a really great example of taking a premise and taking a topic and really interrogating it and offering a brutally accurate depiction of what's taking place behind the scenes on this ranch. Brutally accurate, she said, brilliance, brilliance depiction of this topic, brutally accurate. Oh, goodness. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Lights for me in this profile were the writer asking Hannah Neilman if she's a feminist. She gives her answer in the piece. The couple acknowledging that they are the heirs to a billionaire fortune, Hannah Neilman saying that she wanted to date Daniel for longer before they got married and him saying, no, we have to get married now. And seeing how many times Daniel interrupts Hannah or answers questions on her behalf. Another highlight was at the end of a paragraph highlighting how Daniel is deeply involved in the house care, he acknowledged that his wife sometimes gets so ill from exhaustion. I'm quoting the article there that she sometimes can't get out of bed for a week. This is a particular wrinkle in this whole perception of Valerina farm because there has always been a belief that they have childcare behind the scenes and the writer confirmed that they don't have childcare. They do have a cleaner who comes once a week apparently, but there are no additional nannies. So yeah, it feels like a kind of ironic twist that there are no nannies and the real deception that's taking place with this account is the appearance of everything being easy breezy beautiful when in fact it seems like Hannah Neilman is slowly working herself to death to do multiple jobs, take care of these children, perform as an influencer online without any additional help. So you see how quickly it switches like we know there's deception behind this account. We just have to figure out what the deception is. Is it nannies? Is it that you're happy? Where? What is the actual deception? Because I know it because I feel it in my hatred of the content that I'm watching that something is deceiving me here when in reality does Hannah Neilman have the choice to work or not? Absolutely. Could she probably scale back the stuff that she does? She could if she wanted to, but she is the type of woman who decided two weeks after having a baby to go be in a pageant. Do you think somebody forced her? Did Daniel Neilman force her to go be a part of that pageant? Doesn't sound like it. So maybe that is just the type of work ethic that her personality gives way to or maybe she's going to decide one day that she wants to slow down and really settle into life and just do the mom role or maybe get some nannies or whatever. It sounds like she has full autonomy over those discussions, options, choices and I have nowhere in this article identified a point where she does not have choice. Oh, not exactly a win for anyone there. This is by far the best profile that we have seen on any topic related to tradwives. The writer also points out that the Neilman's talk much more about their strict Mormon conservative beliefs in person than they do online. I wonder why that is. I wonder why that is. Maybe because like proselytizing your religion and packaged in your content is not the most popular thing in the world to do. Maybe it's because to them, maybe their religion is really personal to them as fast for many people. Maybe their prayer and their guidance as far as how they observe their religion is something that's personal to them. They don't feel the need to put that on the internet, which is funny because had Mormonism really been baked into the product of ballerina farm, they'd be criticizing them for doing that. So again, there's no winning. Yes. The Neilman's are pro-life and again, specifically, I'm quoting the profile. Here they view abortion as a sinful act. People need Jesus. My favorite line of this whole profile is, and I quote, "I can't, it seems, get an answer out of Neilman without her being corrected, interrupted, or answered for by either her husband or a child." This is fucking incredible journalism. Bravo to the writer who pulled this off. Go read the article if you can. Incredible journalism, guys. Okay. I admit I'm extremely biased in talking about this subject matter because I just know the general cultural sentiments surrounding this lifestyle choice. So I would probably not be the best one to write this article, but you better believe if I was writing this article, it wouldn't be as biased as what this woman put out to the public. And the fact that this is being called brilliant journalism is crazy. Now she also slipped in her video by saying, guess what? The Neilman's are pro-life, which you can tell. They dislike the Neilman's. They dislike the lifestyle. They dislike the things that they can insinuate are beliefs held by people with this lifestyle, something like being pro-life. And because she feels that family is anti-women's rights, anti-reproductive rights, they must be taken down. There must be something deceptive happening behind the scenes for this family. Shocker, religious family that lives on farm with eight children in homesteads is pro-life. Ooh. Scary. This is such scary stuff. Here's another one. And I can't play the music behind this one because they're using the Billie Eilish Barbie. What was I made for a song that every feminist who ever makes a sad video ever now uses in their TikToks? This one reads, "This profile was brilliant. Please read it and see how utterly exhausting it is to be a woman. I wish she could dance again and be free and I fear her beliefs and being under his thumb will keep her point shoes on the shelf indefinitely." Oh my gosh. I fear her beliefs and being under his thumb will keep her point shoes on the shelf indefinitely. They thought they ate with that one. They thought this was, yes, so poetic. What a poetic demonstration of the ballerina and ballerina farms having to take her shoes off and having them taken away from her by her domineering husband who puts them on a shelf that's just too high for her small, dainty, feminine figure to reach. I can't. It's interesting because she gets interrupted at the end of this article as she's so often interrupted by her husband and by her kids to take her kids to ballet class. It means the ballet is very much still a prominent part of her life. The farm itself is called Ballerina Farm. Do you think they named it that so that her husband could dangle a carrot in front of her and remind her of the ballerina lifestyle that she left behind for her family or is it maybe an ode to who she is as a person, that their brand is literally Ballerina Farm? It's like a good article would kind of leave us with the tension that she lives in between like the sacrifices that she's made because there is this tension between your individuality and your freedom and building a family, taking on responsibility, getting married, et cetera. It's fascinating in her case because she's had this massive amount of success in her influence her career and in her family life and yet she did have to leave behind some degree of independence and whatnot. It's clear to the author and her feminist ilk that the independence is the thing that is sacrosanct. It's a thing that cannot be sacrificed, a thing that truly makes you who you are and it's a thing that is the primary and for many of them probably only source of fulfillment and self-realization and her life is testimony too. It's not that simple and that you can have fulfillment in making sometimes sacrifices of your individuality. We were talking about before, like I, similar to Hannah, could have stayed in the big city a little bit longer before I got married and my wife was ready to leave a little bit before I was but that was, we looked at the lay of the land, we looked at our life and it was a decision that we made together but I needed to understand where she was at and we had to get on the same page about that and that's just a reality of life that married couples have to figure out what are we going to do, where are we going to go and sometimes the page is not 100% on the same but you figure it out and you communicate and you make a choice and she has made choices in her life that have turned out pretty well for her and I don't think if you asked her do you actually regret this and you had an honest intent in asking her that question that you would get any regret and listening to her on the podcast interviews that she did, she doesn't strike me as somebody who is living over the shadow of her past, the hubbers over her and she's filled with this regret of what could have been or anything like that. She seems like she has a very rich and full life and yeah, there were certain things that weren't compatible with the lifestyle that she's living and that she's chosen but that comes with the territory and I think she's probably doing just fine. Yeah, it does sort of seem like that and again, you know, there could be sinister things happening behind the scenes in this family. You'd never know based on this article because of how biased the writer is, I can't emphasize that enough. I don't know what the true story is because I can smell the bias on this person before even confirming and figuring out who they are. I read the article without knowing who wrote this article and was like, okay, this is not to be trusted. I'm sorry. You send somebody else, the times need to redo this again with somebody with a different background like put somebody who doesn't typically report on stories like this and put them out there. Okay, let me look into Megan Agnew for just a quick second because typically for these writers, they have a profile on whatever publication they work for. So here she is, Megan Agnew, she's a senior features writer based in the US and she talks about a lot of different things. She mainly covers crime, culture, social affairs and violence against women. So it's like maybe if you're typically covering stories that are like violence against women, you might come into things with a particular mindset about women, about the oppressive forces on them, about patriarchy and that might color what could be very neutral situations that you're walking into and then when you go to write your column, you might have already made your decision about what that column's about and about how you're going to characterize the people that you are profiling. And I just, something about it tells me that that's what happened here. Something about the many little Easter eggs that were dropped as to this girl's personal ideology tells me that's what she did with this story. So I wonder how this is going because they're making TikTok after TikTok. My four-year page is filled with people analyzing this ballerian farm thing and I don't even follow ballerian farm. So I met the families having a fun time today reading through this and hearing all of the responses as the husband in their household is being painted as a king, like a very evil and just, I don't know, brutal, just ruler of the household, even though it seems in this article that he also does plenty of work alongside his wife and refers to them as co-CEOs, which is probably the most feminist thing you could possibly say when talking about your relationship with your wife or co-CEOs of a multi-million dollar brand. I think that's pretty, pretty feminist. That's not very trad at all, in fact. So yeah, I mean, you're going to see people talk about this, especially if you are followers of ballerian farm and you enjoy their content. How much of this is true? How domineering really is Daniel Neilman? I don't know. And we'll never know as long as the time's discovering it. That's all I have to say, guys, we're going to get into your superchats. That man does, somebody said he does all the laundry in the chat down below. He does all the laundry for 10 people. I must say, that's a lot of laundry. That's a lot of laundry. Plus all the farm stuff that they probably use for like cooking and cleaning and chores every morning. So you could like talk about like muddy clothes and jeans and... Oh gosh. Dude, I hate laundry. Out of all the cleaning things that get done in a household, laundry is the worst. And he's doing all the laundry for 10 kids. I mean, for 10 people, that's a lot. A lot of laundry. He's just doing it so because the laundry machine is in a prominent place in the house and he can keep an eye on Hannah to make sure that she's doing all the tasks that he's demanding her. That's like when she was criticizing him for like explaining things to her on the farm. It's like, if he didn't explain things to you, you probably would have been like, he thinks I'm not capable of understanding because I'm a woman and he's just... Exactly right. You know, so like there's literally nothing you can do. And then that whole point that everybody's emphasizing, oh, she gets so exhausted that she stays in bed for a week. I wonder who takes care of the eight kids in the farm and the whole business when that's happening and she is exhausted to where she has to rest for a week. Who exactly is doing it? Is it like we make the female children do it. We make our four girls do all the work while the women's work while Hannah's sleeping it off. I'm like, what if she was single living in the city and still working herself to death and had to stay in bed for a week and be on SSRIs? Would that be something that you'd be celebrating or something? I could see you celebrating it if she was working herself to death, but it was in a context that you approved of. But because it's in this context, you're like, oh, now it's up back. We can. We can. Okay, let's see what you guys thought. Celtic Blacksmith was the first one today. He said, just poking my head in to say, hey, y'all are going to be the soundtrack to my gardening work in laundry. Life-maxing trademark has always loved y'all gardening work in laundry. The Hannah Neoman. That's what we'll call that is somebody forcing you to do it. You're a man doing that. Yeah. It's got to be something going on. It's like the trat husband. Alex Lesher says, off topic, just thought I'd share. I have a job interview on Friday, video content and social media intern. I'm super nervous. Any tips? Oh, my gosh. Tips for a job interview. Ask questions. Be curious. Like actually have questions when they ask, do you have any questions? I'm trying to think of what else. I just think just having the energy of hopefully bringing in some knowledge in regard to the job, but in places where you don't have knowledge, just emphasize your willingness to learn and to think on your feet and to figure out and problem solve for areas where you might not have the most expertise. Yeah, and I would go look at their social media, whatever this company is, and analyze it as best you can and compare it to maybe some other brands in their space and look at the kind of content that they're putting out there and see if it's up to par or if you have suggestions for improvements or anything, it's not that you need to come in with this like I'm an expert. Let me tell you all that, but you'll be informed and maybe if you can get it across in the right way that it's like, if you hired me, I could help make this better. And that's the kind of the point that you want to get across, then I think that that would really help you have confidence too, like you don't need to leave with that, but keep it in your back pocket and at the right point in the interview, you can be like, yeah, I was looking at this and I thought maybe if you guys do this a little differently, that can be something that you thought about or I noticed that this other brands doing this, I think we could incorporate elements like that, like stuff like that shows that you're attentive, that you actually understand what the assignment is going to be and that you actually have something to offer in terms of like initiative and expertise. Yes. So that would be my advice. Yes. Like when Daryl goes to the job interview for Athlete in the office and he brings a little packet of things that he would change, you need to, you need to channel your Daryl energy. The bar is so low right now with, you know, just being an honest person who will show up on time is like 90% of the battle. And then if you demonstrate any kind of like initiative and competence beyond that, you should be light years ahead of anyone else. And especially in this day and age, I feel like people will care less about like education and having a certain degree or anything like that and it's more like, do you come off as somebody who would be a good addition to the team? Yeah. So anyway, good luck. Good luck. Timothy W. says Mormon Canadians are the ultimate polite combo. I guess so. Were they Canadians? I thought she's from Utah and he's from Connecticut. I don't know. But maybe he's saying you should say independent of that. The Mormon Canadians probably take the cake of niceness and politeness. But Timothy also says, also congrats on 2 million. You should get a cake. Oh, thank you. We did. We did. We did do a cake at 1 million. Yeah. Yeah. We should get our YouTube plaques that YouTube has never sent us for any of the milestones that we've ever reached on this channel ever. I don't know if we're like blacklisted behind the scenes at YouTube, but if you can hear us. Yeah, we're supposed to get 100K and a million and get either of those. And it's also just like it's kind of aimed to throw yourself a party, you know? Yes. Whatever. Exactly. We'll just thank you guys for being here. We'll keep going. Yeah. Erroland Danielle says, "Have you heard of or talked about the shooter being in a black rock commercial in 2023?" First super chat, by the way, my brother says, "I talk like you. Love this show." Oh, that's so cool. We're talking doppelgangers. No, I didn't talk about that because I feel like it's very much irrelevant. Like if you, I don't understand what people are running with on the conspiracy front on there because I know everybody thinks like black rock is evil and I'm right there with you in a lot of different ways. But what is the conspiracy there that black rock set him up as this sort of like MK ultra shooter or whatever? If you did, would you want him in a commercial with your company? When you not want the kid to be in a commercial, people can go and find on the internet later. This doesn't quite make sense, so I'm not getting the link between the conspiracy with the commercial and the shooting. It sounds like the exact opposite of what you would do if you were a black rock actually. But maybe that's the point. Yeah, there are two steps ahead. Right, right. They would think that we wouldn't want him in the commercial because that would be obvious. So we're going to put him in the commercial. We could have been in the commercial. We could have been in the commercial. Yeah, right, yeah, I think it's unrelated, I'm going to be honest. I think it's totally unrelated. It's sketchy, though, anything with black rock, you're like, it could be a giant massive conspiracy. And someone said they own the building of the company that had, who's building that he was on top. Yeah, but then it's like, they own everything, they own the rifle that you used to. Exactly. The blade of grass that you spit on this morning, they own that. So it's like, I don't know what I can tell you about that. The range finder, they own the rifles that shot him back and the ones that he shot with. Literally, literally. Yeah. All right. Maggie Eit says, I live in Utah and have lots of Mormon family. This is just how so many Mormon families are, especially the women to never miss an episode. Every time I go to Utah, which is very seldom, there's the nicest Mormon family there that I get to hang out with and they're just so nice and everybody around them is so nice. Everybody like who lives in Utah is just so nice. And obviously, there are people who grew up within the Mormon church who had very poor experiences. I'm not going to paint the whole thing. It's like this beautiful, awesome thing. I'm not like, you know, out there, reppin for Mormonism or whatever. But those that I've met thus far, those are some nice fulfilled people. That's all I'll say. Mirren Rhodes says, I wanted a drugless birth. My husband tried to convince me to get an epidural because he saw my pain, but I didn't want it. I must be brainwashed BFFR. Oh, interesting. There must be some other patriarchal forces outside of your husband that are working on you to have you have unmedicated births. That is my plan as well. I plan to have a home birth unmedicated for as many kids as I have. And here's hoping that that is something that I'll be capable of doing at the time. It's not some like crazy thing, but we do live in this era of Western medicine and like ultra medicated. So a lot of people when they hear that, they just cannot fathom it. Like you must be in some sort of hands-made tale of relationship. If you're doing unmedicated births and when in reality, it's a very, I think it's going to continue to rise in popularity and sort of swing back in that direction. Yeah. And something else I learned listening to that podcast that she did was for her first or second child that she had when they lived in Brazil. Apparently in that country, the C section rate is extremely high. And basically, if you wanted to have a regular traditional birth, you'd have to do it from a home birth is what she learned. So that's why she had a home birth the first time and said that once you do that, she never wanted to go back, basically. So it's not necessarily some patriarchal thing that it seems sounds very much like she chose it. And she even said like she's just fascinated with the birthing process and thinks it's like this magical thing, even on their farm with animals and stuff, she tries to be present with those and even said she would maybe want to be a doula or something at a later point in her life. So once you actually, again, listen to the person, which if the writer had taken time, she was able to do these podcasts and Zoom calls and sit down for an hour with these other podcasters and journalists. And you get much more information, but instead it's like, "Oh, no, I didn't even have 30 minutes because there were children hanging around and her husband will bawse like, okay, let's chill." Anyways, Alex Daly says, "Hey, Amala and Taylor, Alex and my Bartner Brody here again in CBD Sydney. Thank you for, thank you guys for everything that you do. It's 7 a.m. Thursday here. Just wanted to say thank you for starting the morning. Very cool. That's so fun. What's CBD Sydney? I don't know. I don't know. It's CBD Sydney. Wait, you're in the state or something? Where's John? John? What is CBD? Yeah. CBD is the central business district, I guess. Makes sense. Okay. So you're in the heart of the city. Is that near the Opera House? Because I've been there. And it was so beautiful. Hello to you guys over there on Thursday morning. Thanks for waking up with us. Is that back open yet? Did you get a blooming onion? Wow. Shrimp on the bobby. A little bit. Just kidding. Sorry, guys. Australia is great. We apologize. Brett Cormier says if she is exhausted, stop being an influencer. She does not need the money, right? She was in on the decision to have kids. When you do that, your dreams go on hold. Sorry, that is how this works. Right. I mean, they are the heirs to like billions of dollars with a B. So I don't know that they have to be doing anything. If there's still this $50,000, like I don't know how much money they need. This seems like a want, a purposeful thing that they're doing. And I imagine she could slow down content and still generate tons of money. I can't even imagine what a brand deal, the type of money it would look like for a brand deal for them. The speculations on the amount of money Nara Smith makes on a brand deal, it could be like, it's like upwards of like $200,000 for a single, single brand deal. So like think about that on pages like this. And I don't know that they do brand deals or if they're very smartly just using their page to promote their own brand, ballerina farm, but it's money, they're making money. I don't think they work just because like they have to, I think they have a drive for it. They have a lifestyle choice and they're making hella bands, hella bands. Anisha says, all I see is a bunch of green monster women. What an ugly thing. They are better off focusing on their own life. Just go try therapy or something. Yeah. The underlying condition that these women have is like, I, I need to know that this woman is not happy. They will paint it as like, oh, I feel for this woman so bad, Hannah Neumann has such a horrible life and the time's covered it. And I'm so glad that we know that this is happening behind the scenes. What in their mind, they're like doing cartwheels of like, Oh my God, yeah, it's actually not happy. And this is not a fulfilling lifestyle. And I'm so glad that it's finally been confirmed for me by this other feminist who wrote an article because she agrees with what I agree with. There's no sadness for this woman anywhere in any of these people's videos. Although they will deny that upon hearing me say that because it's a subconscious drive that they have. They don't, they're not conscious of the fact that what they're actually saying is I'm so happy this woman is not happy. Yeah. Yeah. You feel so bad for her that you have to make angry, take talk videos about her life and talk to your therapist about it as you pop SSR eyes. Yeah. Life is so bad. It goes so great. Yeah. Tragic. Not buying it. Nope. Let's see. Will asks, are you going to talk about Sonia Massey? Oh, I mean, I can. Maybe we can talk about her on, on Friday. The interesting thing is though, yeah, I have tweeted about it. I don't know what there really is to say about it. It's not a Black Lives Matter thing. I don't think she was targeted because she was black, even though that's part of the narrative that we're getting. We're already getting to say her name thing. It seems like the cops that were involved in the cops specifically involved in this is no longer on the force and is, you know, going through an entire investigation and is going to be prosecuted for her death. So I'm not sure what really there is to say about it other than the fact that what a heinous just abuse of power, a heinous murder, and anybody who watches that video, I'm not sure how you could come to any other conclusion. It is just abundantly clear that that woman should not have been shot and should not have been killed and the callousness with which that police officer did it and his actions afterwards were just astounding. I could not believe it could not believe it. One more from Timothy says the writer of the article just needs to be unburdened by what has been. Yeah. I guess so, man, I don't know what to tell you. It's what scares me more than like the way the article was written or whatever is the lack of acknowledgement of the blatant bias in the article, which means that this person is sort of like flying under the radar as being objective in the way that they're covering this family. And it's not objective at all. The fact that we could have all read the same article and come to these very different conclusions is the concerning parts. But hey, that's where we're at these days. Shock therapy says happy two million. Thank you. Appreciate that. We can get a button for that big day this Gabe Morgan says I've decided to donate you a nickel every time I say BFF are I always look forward to your streams. Keep up the good work. Love you both. Thank you for that. I appreciate that. That was a $5 super shot. So how many of you have been using a lot of BFF are so yeah. Sorry, guys. I may have implemented that. And I believe that was our last one for today. Okay. Beautiful guys. Thank you so much for watching as we've gone through this profile. From the times what is the title of this one again so we can just all remember that we were in this moment. Queen of something. Yes. Meet the queen of the trad wives and her eight children in parentheses. Even the title itself just tells me so clearly how this author feels. But I digress guys. Thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah. Real quick. Kelby says the writer frames it as compassion when that's clearly not the motive. If you have to drag someone down to win, you lose misery loves company lives. Yeah. That is the vibe that I'm getting. It was her vibe was definitely not compassion for Hannah Neelman. It was annoyance. Annoyance is what I get from like a nagging in this article is what I really read. Anyways, guys. Thank you so much for watching. Please like, subscribe, click the notification bell to be notified every single time we're live. That's Monday, Wednesday, Friday 1 p.m. Pacific 3 p.m. Central 4 p.m. Eastern Plus we post videos for you guys every single day. Tomorrow's video is about Elon Musk and the fact he is a trans kid and he says his son is dead. What's that? What's that all about? I think all the trans folk for saying that his son is dead. So we're going to go through that and talk about that story, give you a little bit of the background to talk about Elon moving forward. Guys, be on the lookout for that video. Drop your thoughts in the comments down below. As always, if you just agree with anything I said in this video, do get out in the comments down below, but do so respectfully. And with that, I'm going to bid you guys the due. We'll see you tomorrow and hope you have a fantastic rest of your day. Bye guys.
Feminist outrage over Ballerina Farms Instagram “trad wife” influencer Hannah Neelman is going viral on TikTok after a new profile about her was published by The Times. Let’s talk about it.
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