Ballerina Farm, Trad Wives, and Living in Denial
What are trad wives actually trying to sell us?
If you are terminally online like myself, you may have heard that Hannah Neeleman (more popularly known as @ballerinafarm on Instagram) had her eighth baby and within two weeks was was walking the stage of Mrs. World in a form fitting ball gown. Her comment section exploded.
Now I am not a Ballerina Farm expert, having only occasionally lurked on her content from a far. If you want an in-depth discussion about Ballerina Farm check out Anne Helen Petersen and Sara Petersen. But what I’m interested in is the allure of accounts like Ballerina Farm and what trad wife content is really about.
Ballerina Farm is the top representative of the trad wife genre, a type of wife/mother who emulates a return to ‘traditional values’. These accounts are more often than not Mormon or Christian. Neeleman is Mormon, and though she never talks about her Mormonism, it would be pretty easy to guess after just a cursory glance at her page (eight children, lives on a sprawling farm in Utah, etc.). We tend to think of trad wives as these moms who homeschool, bake their own sourdough bread, show their kids gleefully sweeping dust from hardwood floors with homemade cinnamon brooms. I could go on. It presents as idyllic. Like the cottage-core aesthetic for grownups. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t appeal to me in some ways. But the trad wife existence hinges on one critical element: denial.
And I think in some twisted way, this is what appeals to us most of all. Because I would LOVE to live in denial. Imagine not knowing what’s going on in the news. Imagine not caring about the Dobbs decision. Imagine a complete and deliberate ignorance of the threat of climate change. Think about how much space I would have in my brain for apple pie recipes! And it’s not just a life free of politics and current events. It’s also a life where all the big decisions are made by someone else (your woodworking farmer husband). And isn’t there something a little bit freeing about letting another person make all the decisions?
The sell is simplicity. The sell is uncomplicated bliss. It’s ~living in the present~ and wholly dedicating oneself to one's family. But of course, OF COURSE, it’s really not that simple. That’s what I think the Ballerina Farm postpartum posts made her followers keenly aware of. It cut through the idyllic and demonstrated the reality of what a return to “traditional values” really means. And it’s not idyllic. It’s harrowing. If you’ve ever had a baby or known someone who has had a baby, you know that not only is competing in a beauty pageant two weeks postpartum unrealistic, it’s also THE FARTHEST THING FROM IDEAL. You know what is ideal two weeks postpartum? Laying on the couch in your ugliest pajamas with your baby asleep on top of you while you eat handfuls of pre-shredded cheese straight from the bag and binge watch Vanderpump Rules.
So when Hannah Neeleman posts a reel of herself breastfeeding her baby while getting her hair and makeup done, most of us look at that with horror, because it looks fucking miserable! And that’s the truth about the womanhood and motherhood that these accounts are selling.
In order to engage fully as a trad wife it’s not just about a denial of the realities of the world around you, it’s also a denial of self. And this is an expectation that exists beyond the world of trad wives. It’s an expectation that all mothers (and women!) feel whether it’s said explicitly or not. Of course as mothers we are expected to sacrifice our own wants and needs on the altar of parenthood — what is pregnancy and childbirth if not the ultimate denial of self — but also as women we are expected to mold ourselves into an ideal. An ideal that could wear a size two ball gown at a beauty pageant two weeks after having a baby.
Trad wife content on the surface may be earthy homes, expansive gardens, linen dresses, wooden baby toys, and meals completely from scratch cooked in cast iron skillets. Those things are mostly innocuous, they don’t mean anything nefarious, until they do — until they begin to represent a good mother, an ideal woman.
And maybe a “good” mother does spend lots of time outside with her children, it’s certainly not a bad thing, but look closer and it’s not just that a good mother homeschools, or even that a good mother doesn’t engage in politics. Hannah Neeleman poses in a ball gown with a Mrs. American sash on and in doing so tells us that a good mother is pretty, a good mother is thin, a good mother is wealthy, a good mother is straight, a good mother is white.
And if you’re all those things then maybe you don’t have to pay attention. Maybe you can live in denial, but even then it’ll cost you.
What I read this week
Domestic Inequality Starts in Childhood
“Daughters of dads who talked a good talk about gender equality — but who nevertheless didn’t do as much as their partners in terms of domestic labor — had lower career aspirations than daughters of dads who pulled their weight around the house.”
Beauty Pageants and Cracked Tailbones
“Looming large over my analysis of BF and Mrs. American and eagle costumes is a consideration of postpartum bodies.”
“What has been a surprise and a relief, and what I do think is related to the strengths of my partnership and the work I did on myself before getting pregnant, is how easy my relationship with my child has been. I really feared the version of postpartum depression where you struggle to connect or bond with the baby, but I had an opposite experience, where the love was so instant and intense that it felt like it was consuming me. I have always loved her in a full and uncomplicated way, and even in the hardest moments when I am losing my shit I feel a sense of camaraderie with her, a sense that we both got dropped into a complicated and sometimes shitty reality but we are working our way through together.”
