A woman's right to choose

Ballerina Farm, "separate but equal," and dumpster fire comments sections

Before the Times article dropped, I was only vaguely aware of Hannah Neeleman’s shtick: Little House on the Prairie meets Kardashian-level social media prowess. Simple enough. Everyone has a fantasy, and fantasy sells (and sells, and sells, and sells—in total, their business has 33 full-time employees). The Neelemans’ (Neelemen?) life embodies the ur-fantasy of America: that of pastoral bliss, of being out in the natural wilderness (but in a controlled, curated, and ultimately comfortable way, on a $2.75 million farm about 15 minutes outside of Park City, Utah).

Whether it was the discussion of no-pain-relief-during-childbirth-if-my-husband’s-around or the admission that their first date was a glorified hostage situation after six months of rejection led Daniel to calling Daddy JetBlue and scoring the seat next to hers on a five-hour flight, the feverishly dissected and widely discussed article has birthed a FREE HANNAH movement in the @ballerinafarm comments section.

It thrust a key defense of Ballerina Farm’s quasi-tradwifery (It’s her choice! Let women live!) into the limelight, but in an unsettling minor key:

We drive past the dairy cows, looking out across a river valley and the arid mountains beyond. Was this what she always wanted, I ask when we get a moment alone, while Daniel checks on the animals. “No,” she says. “I mean, I was, like —” She pauses. “My goal was New York City. I left home at 17 and I was so excited to get there, I just loved that energy. And I was going to be a ballerina. I was a good ballerina.” She pauses again. “But I knew that when I started to have kids my life would start to look different.”

We learn that, actually, this pastoral fantasy belongs to Daniel—she may be the main character, but this isn’t her story.

This person’s life, the article seems to say, is not glamorous. She never has a moment alone (unless she’s bedridden with exhaustion). She must squeeze her beautification rituals into the hours she should be sleeping (weightlifting and ice baths in ditches before her eight kids wake up). Her husband is constantly hovering, interrupting, and correcting her. There were multiple references to her children “swinging from” her hair or climbing on her body. She does not belong to herself, the article all but outright explains.

As Sara Petersen points out, it’s possible “the Neelemans are playing a game of 4D chess to deliberately paint Daniel as the villain in order to humanize Hannah and make feminists more empathetic and therefore open to her content,” but this may be giving him too much credit—and her, not enough.

The whole ordeal raises questions about Hannah’s agency and the concept of choice more broadly. Was it her choice to go on a date with this man? Not technically. She rebuffed his advances for half a year. He “pulled strings” at his father’s airline to get five hours with a captive audience, and 90 days later, she was pregnant.

One could make a good-faith argument that their entire relationship is built on that original sin of Mint Class coercion¹, and that even now, she’s living out his desires for her life (“I saw her and I was ready to go”).

Then there’s another perspective—and this is, I think, the side on which I ultimately fall—that Hannah Neeleman is a savvy, talented woman who knows exactly what she’s doing. For all the ways in which she has dispersed her autonomy amongst the other nine members of her family, it’s important to remember that she has, at nearly every juncture, chosen this for herself. She’s the face of a company large enough to support 33 full-time employees. Maybe I’m naïve, but I don’t think that happens by accident.

Despite the couple maintaining this hilarious pretense that they do not understand how she keeps getting pregnant (“I ask God if it’s time to bring another one to Earth and I’ve never been told no”), Neeleman is not stupid. Even if her original dream was to be a professional ballet dancer, at some point, I have to assume that dream changed—because in observing the business she has built while raising eight children with minimal assistance, I am confident that if this woman still wanted to become a professional ballerina, she would be one right now.

But it is, undoubtedly, complicated—the Neelemans are devout Mormons, which is a belief system that expressly centers the experiences and desires of men. Ever since Joseph Smith decided Christianity needed a rebrand that more aggressively legitimized male authority, LDS women have been cast as vehicles for fulfilling male desire. 12-year-old boys have more of a claim to power than grown women in the Mormon church. In that context, where does indoctrination end and personal agency begin? I’m not sure.

The point is, Hannah Neeleman chose (and continues to choose) to be “Ballerina Farm,” and to suggest otherwise robs her of her agency. I’m skeptical of the idea that she’s a victim in need of rescuing. But I’m almost certainly biased—this sentiment was top of mind for me because of a different comments section maelstrom I found myself in the middle of last week.

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A few days ago, I shared a carousel on the Money with Katie Instagram expressing frustration with a particular line of argument making the rounds since Kamalamania began last Sunday. Perhaps you’ve heard it: “Just because she’s a woman doesn’t mean she should be president.”

Ah, yes—a crucial reminder for a country that has never, not once, in 235 years, elected a woman for president. Historically speaking, the sentiment is completely illogical. A more reasonable revision might read: “Just because he’s a white man doesn’t mean he should be president,” and I suggested as much in the slides. With a track record of securing the presidency 98% of the time despite representing only 30% of the population, isn’t it more important to caution that white maleness should not be mistaken as a qualifying characteristic for leadership?

My intention was to interrogate whose identity functions as central to the question of their capability. In some ways, it’s a trick question: The answer is “everybody’s.” The difference is whether that identity goes unnoticed; a sort of default setting (whiteness, maleness) or becomes the foremost talking point (see also: Speaker Mike Johnson politely requesting his party stop calling Kamala a “DEI hire”).

‘DEI hire’ with a hard R

It felt important to make this observation explicit on a platform about women, money, and power, though I felt apprehensive—not because I knew some people would react poorly (boy, did they!), but because I didn’t want it to be perceived as a unilateral stamp of approval on the Democratic party. (For example, it’s still not clear how Harris intends to adjust course, if at all, on the US’s support of the genocide in Gaza, and it remains to be seen how she’ll respond to thinly veiled bribes from billionaires to curtail the Biden administration’s antitrust policies.)

Still, none of this changes the fact that the realistic alternative is a Republican ticket in which the two men at the forefront (a reality television star-turned-convicted felon with regrettably undeniable star power, and a junior senator with 18 months under his belt but the charisma of a moist towelette) espouse right-wing populist messaging while quietly (or not so quietly, if you read the labor policy section of their 922-page screed²) giving corporations more power and limiting collective bargaining by eliminating public-sector unions. This is an obvious choice.

The resulting dumpster fire in my notifications was predictable, but somehow, that didn’t make it less frustrating. It was a brazen parade of internalized misogyny. One woman wrote—without a hint of irony—that she’d “wait for a better woman” who was “more qualified” (bold of you to assume you’ll still have voting rights in four years from now!) implying that despite having three times as much political experience as Trump and Vance combined, Harris is somehow insufficient.

Another jeered that we “should’ve picked a better woman” who didn’t “act like the single, lonely, unhinged drunk aunt at the dinner table,” before landing her final, smooth-brained blow that this was “most of [my] demographic.” (Hilariously, one man praised her for being a “female” who “gets it.” An SNL writers’ room on medical-grade amphetamines couldn’t have scripted a more poetic response.)

“So disappointed in you for pushing this narrative,” another woman wrote, reprimanding me for suggesting the Republicans’ disapproval was “about her gender and race” on a post wherein I shared screenshots of Republican pundits and politicians explicitly making it about her gender and race.³

“Don’t make me lose respect for you,” another woman wrote, “I follow you for money advice, not to hear your political beliefs. You’re smarter than this.” This is plainly ignorant of reality—every element of personal finance, from how much housing costs to how much you’re paid, is directly impacted by the decisions of our policymakers. Plus, I’m clearly not smarter than that, because here I am, talking about it again.

We barely needed men to lob the sexist rhetoric in the comments! The women did it for them. (Except for one dentist posting from his professional account who wrote, “If you’re going to pick a woman, at least pick one who’s done things.” I re-read that line—if you’re going to pick a woman—three times. The subtext! It burns!) The fact that the post pointed out how unfair it is to filter her legitimacy through the lens of “woman” and people’s primary pushback was that she wasn’t the “right woman” made me want to set my phone on fire.

There are, of course, women who earnestly hold your standard fare conservative beliefs (small government, deregulation of corporations, strong military) and are, for whatever reason, not bothered by the modern GOP’s open hostility toward their gender, and they disagree with Harris’s platform on the sole basis of its liberalism. Fine. I’m not claiming that all women who possess conservative values share these views—but measured old-school moderates were not the women in my comments baiting me into engagement. (Jokes on you—you wanted a comment back, but instead you got a 2,000-word diatribe. Be careful what you wish for.)

I sulked around for the next two days, concocting explanations: Maybe these women are parroting their Fox News Husbands’ odious talking points (“She slept her way to the top”)! Maybe they don’t know about Project 2025’s laundry list of policies intended to surveil and control their bodies! Maybe they haven’t spent much time examining why they feel inclined to mock her laugh or lack of biological children!

But this, I realize, is to make the very same mistake I’m admonishing. Women are just as capable of holding bigoted, half-baked views as men are. These women have made the self-serving and rational choice to align themselves with grab-her-by-the-pussy politics. They riff on Vance’s disdain for “childless cat ladies” (“drunk, single aunt”) and alt-right-YouTube-pilled talking points, implying that they are not single and childless (the horror), but chosen, favored, and free of felines.

imagine disparaging this face

They have decided—perhaps accurately, perhaps subconsciously—that accepting their role as second-fiddle to white, male power will net better personal outcomes than questioning it. They have chosen to embrace benevolent patriarchy: the belief system that keeps them in good standing when they fulfill their “natural” role as submissive foot soldiers, marching into comments sections and fighting for their right to be underestimated and disrespected. It’s a small price to pay to be protected, even if the protection is conditional and introduces a new kind of risk.

the patron saint of benevolent patriarchy

It will always be more comfortable and safe (at least, until you have an ectopic pregnancy in one of the 14 states that has already fully banned abortion) to cozy up to power than to challenge it. When you’re a “female who gets it,” you are rewarded—not with actual equality, but with some facsimile of it. You may be chained to an appliance, but at least it’s a $30,000 oven! Theirs is a politics of “natural order”; of “separate but equal,” which, as even the most casual students of history know, is not equal at all.

1. I’ve flown it once. It really was fabulous. I’d probably marry the airline’s heir after experiencing transcontinental lie-flat seats for the first time, too.

2. If you want to read a labor reporter’s analysis of Project 2025’s goals for labor policy, check out Hamilton Nolan’s.

3. It probably goes without saying, but yes, based on their tiny profile pictures, all of these women were white.