A former Juilliard-trained ballerina and beauty pageant queen dances in the Utah sun while her gaggle of children pirouette in the hay. Hanna Neeleman is my age, 33. She is white, blonde, slim and Mormon. A few years ago, she left town with her husband to start Ballerina Farm, a hog and cattle farm. This mother of seven children has more than 6.5 million followers on Instagram and Tiktok. But what kind of dream is she selling us? And above all, why?
On YouTube, I watch her twirl with the grace of a dew-covered flower. The video is bucolic, full of wind and sunsets. Almost too good to be true.1 When my twin sister, and mother of two young boys, found herself in front of her Instagram page for the first time, she felt loser. “A side of me was amazed… How does Hannah have so much energy? To stay relaxed and looking great? […] How does she film when her seven children are around her? I have so many content creation ideas, too, but just having the time to attach my camera to a tripod is a project in itself. »
Behind each publication on social networks there is often a titanic amount of work. However, we tend to make this work invisible, because admitting it would undermine the impression of spontaneity and authenticity that we promote on the platforms. We thus force ourselves to work and then disavow it, as if we refused to recognize all of the forces and resources that made possible the content that we produce and consume daily. And access to these resources (time, money, technical means) is not the same for everyone.
PHOTO TAKEN FROM THE INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT
Hanna Neeleman with her husband and their seven children
Like other mother influencers or “momfluencers”, Hannah Neeleman uses her identity as a mother on social networks. In his book Momfluencedauthor Sara Petersen argues that the performance of online maternity constitutes a very lucrative business, in that it is particularly aimed at women, who are mainly responsible for domestic purchases.
However, you don’t need to be a mother to be momfluenced. The single nulliparous that I am sometimes wastes hours watching moms cook, like Christa Corriveau, this self-proclaimed “trailer park mom” who prepares meals for her four children in front of the camera.
The depiction of her domestic work calms me down. Indirectly, I feel like someone takes care of me.
Hannah Neeleman also cooks, and divinely. She makes her own bread, her own butter, her own cheese, uses fresh ingredients which she places on her raw wooden table or on simple plates. The mother of seven children also reappropriates the modest lifestyle of the working class, going so far as to stage herself in the act of pinball pancakes in a mobile home.
However, unlike the “trailer park moms” who dot my TikTok feed, the simplicity of the ex-ballerina is a choice. Moreover, it would be more appropriate to speak of an “aesthetics of simplicity”, in that Hannah’s frugality is a media construction. Because if the ex-ballerina willingly shares her bagel recipes on the networks, she avoids saying that she is married to the heir of one of the richest men in the world, David Neeleman, who founded several airlines , including JetBlue. Just his AGA cast iron cooker is worth more than my gross annual income!
So, by portraying an idealized rurality without revealing its privileges, the influencer unfortunately obliterates the less rosy reality of many farmers. In Quebec, for example, the Union of Agricultural Producers revealed this year that nearly one in four farmers is in bad or very bad financial position.2. For farmers, it is sometimes difficult to earn a viable income. But why is Hannah selling us a dream?
The ex-ballerina is part of the informal movement of tradwiveswomen who, on social networks, promote a return to a traditional way of life, particularly with regard to gender roles, motivated by religious beliefs or political convictions.
Nutrition, for example, is a favorite subject of tradwives, because they consider food to be a guarantor of the health of their family, as well as a reflection of their maternal value and their identity. But Ballerina Farm’s real products aren’t the meat, cooking tools or even sourdough cultures that her company advertises; These are the conservative values and ideas that run through its content, such as its “pro-life” speech or its Mormonism.
The aesthetics of tradwives draws on a form of nostalgia, a fantasized time when life was “simpler”. However, this idealized past never really existed. One only has to dig into American history to see how the lives of pioneer women were arduous, grim, and marked by a poverty that was anything but aesthetic. What needs to be realized is that the traditional lifestyle that Ballerina Farm advertises is about privilege. Yes, it is a choice. But many women like my sister simply don’t have the opportunity to do this.