Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - September 18, 2023


A Very Mrs. American Ballerina Farm

Topics
Ballerina Farm Mrs. American pageant and domestic trad wives trad wives content concerns
Quick and Dirty Ruby Franke Update Even More Ballerina Farm

Episode Stats


Length

33 minutes

Words per minute

140.25

Word count

4,729

Sentence count

366

Harmful content

Misogyny

60

sentences flagged

Toxicity

45

sentences flagged

Hate speech

19

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
00:00:01.000 Hungry now.
00:00:04.000 Now.
00:00:07.000 What about now?
00:00:09.000 Whenever it hits you, wherever you are,
00:00:11.000 grab an O'Henry bar to satisfy your hunger.
00:00:15.000 With its delicious combination of big, crunchy, salty peanuts
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00:00:24.000 Swing by a gas station and get an O'Henry today.
00:00:27.000 O'Hungry O'Henry.
00:00:30.000 When have you felt the most empowered?
00:00:36.000 I have felt this feeling seven times now as I bring these sacred souls to the earth.
00:00:46.220 After I hold that newborn baby in my arms, the feeling of motherhood and bringing them
00:00:52.340 to the earth is the most empowering feeling I have felt. 0.61
00:00:56.320 Meet Mrs. American. Or rather, the winner of the Mrs. American pageant, Mrs. South Dakota.
00:01:04.800 Better known to some of you as Hannah Nealman, and even better known by her Instagram and TikTok 0.52
00:01:10.700 handle, Ballerina Farm. Now, if you couldn't quite make out what was happening in that clip
00:01:17.180 from the recent Mrs. American pageant, Hannah is asked when she felt the most empowered in her life.
00:01:24.920 Her response is that she felt empowered seven times,
00:01:28.880 each time she gave birth to one of her babies.
00:01:32.060 The crowd went wild. 1.00
00:01:34.080 They fucking loved it. 0.99
00:01:36.500 Now, Hannah documented the whole process of winning Mrs. South Dakota 0.99
00:01:40.120 and going on to the Mrs. American pageant on her Instagram and TikToks,
00:01:45.520 including a segment where she asks her millions of followers
00:01:49.100 to vote for her in a contest called the Best Face section of the competition.
00:01:57.020 Winners of Best Face get into the top 15.
00:02:00.600 I shouldn't be surprised by Best Face.
00:02:03.940 This is a beauty pageant, after all.
00:02:07.820 And you might be asking,
00:02:09.700 why are we even talking about a beauty pageant today on this podcast?
00:02:15.720 Why are we talking about Mrs. American at all? 0.83
00:02:20.440 Well, this is a topic for UTI because Hannah Nealman, as Ballerina Farm, is a mom influencer. 0.91
00:02:27.820 And she isn't just a mom influencer.
00:02:30.860 She's one of the most successful mom influencers in the world with 6.4 million followers on Instagram.
00:02:39.900 Now, that is an insane number of followers for someone, for anyone,
00:02:43.840 but really for someone who was not a celebrity prior to joining social media.
00:02:49.620 She's also skyrocketed to this level of influence in a very short period of time,
00:02:54.380 going from about 100,000 followers to 6.4 million in a little over two years.
00:03:01.860 Now, Hannah Nealman's response to the question of when she felt the most empowered
00:03:07.280 on that stage in Las Vegas, has since gone viral amongst many pro-life groups.
00:03:14.040 Her saying that she felt the most empowered as a woman when she gave birth to her babies
00:03:18.360 is becoming something like propaganda for a lot of pro-life groups. 0.82
00:03:25.220 They're using it as proof that motherhood is destiny for the quote, right kind of woman.
00:03:33.040 Now, Nielman may not have anticipated this, or maybe she did. I don't know. She hasn't responded 0.97
00:03:39.500 to my requests for an interview. Regardless, we're talking about it, and I think it's important to
00:03:45.300 talk about it, because anything an influencer of this caliber says can be used in any way
00:03:50.920 that certain groups want it to be used. Now, I have not been a Ballerina Farm follower since the
00:03:57.620 beginning of the ballerina farm journey. And maybe that makes me more or less objective. I don't
00:04:03.820 know. But every time I open her account, I do get a weirdly soothing feeling. And I know that some
00:04:14.340 of you, you feel the same. I'm soothed. And then I'm also irritated. See, I can't stop staring
00:04:21.640 at her skin. She's got this flawless skin. And maybe it's flawless, or maybe it's Photoshop. 0.83
00:04:27.620 But it's the kind of skin that makes you immediately want to go to your own bathroom 0.99
00:04:31.460 and exfoliate with that old St. Ives peachy exfoliator that we all used in high school.
00:04:38.400 Because, you know, if one exfoliates enough, one can get glowy skin like that.
00:04:44.460 Right? I know.
00:04:46.060 I asked some friends who regularly consume Ballerina Farm's media why they can't look away.
00:04:51.260 one of my attorney friends told me that watching ballerina farm feels like a brain break
00:04:58.820 from her own urban life with two kids in a city that she loves where sometimes she has to step
00:05:05.400 over unhoused humans on the way to work or on the way to school drop-off even though she loves her
00:05:13.860 life here, it's nice to sometimes daydream of a picturesque world on a farm surrounded by cows and
00:05:23.400 chickens and dirt. She said she didn't know why she felt that way, but that she did know
00:05:31.120 that watching Ballerina Farm was like a quick hit of a Hallmark movie. Quiet simplicity,
00:05:37.760 easy happiness both things that you feel a little guilty about enjoying later on 1.00
00:05:44.680 but you're gonna watch it again my friend sarah peterson fucking genius fucking wizard guys 0.97
00:05:52.100 she really explained ballerina farm the best to me uh and she wrote about it in her newsletter 0.98
00:05:58.800 in pursuit of clean countertops it's on substack it's a must subscribe this is how she put it
00:06:04.740 about Hannah Nealman. Most of the people I've talked to about Ballerina Farm find themselves
00:06:10.880 compelled to consume Hannah Nealman's online persona because the math doesn't make sense.
00:06:16.960 A suspension of disbelief feels necessary when asked to consider that someone with seven young
00:06:22.340 children could take care of those children, homeschool some of those children, help attend
00:06:28.280 to a 328-acre ranch teeming with cattle, hogs, donkeys, horses, ducks, chickens, and cats, 0.92
00:06:34.740 Cook seemingly every meal from scratch, prevent her house from gobbling her hole, 0.55
00:06:40.980 find time to dance, and do it all with a smile on her face.
00:06:45.040 Ballerina Farm attracts so many eyeballs because Nealman is the embodiment of a maternal ideal
00:06:50.440 wholly impossible for most of us to attain.
00:06:54.080 She's the Gwyneth of moms, the Barbie of moms, the Martha Stewart of moms.
00:06:59.580 This is why we stumble over ourselves trying to ascertain
00:07:02.660 how many babysitters are lurking behind the scenes? Why we comb Reddit threads looking for
00:07:07.740 context clues? Why we continually ask ourselves, what is up with all things Ballerina Farm?
00:07:20.600 I'm Jo Piazza, and you are under the influence of Mrs. American.
00:07:32.660 What is up with all things Ballerina Farm, my friends?
00:07:52.420 That's what we're going to figure out.
00:07:54.180 That is why Sarah Peterson is my guest today.
00:07:56.920 Her newsletter is The Bee's Knees,
00:07:58.780 but her book on the world of momfluencing is a must-read.
00:08:03.180 It's called Momfluenced.
00:08:04.900 Catchy title, right?
00:08:06.140 And it is available wherever books are sold.
00:08:08.960 Sarah's the best person to talk to about Ballerina Farm.
00:08:12.380 She's been following the content since the early days,
00:08:15.300 and it is one of the reasons she started writing on this topic of mom influencing in the first place.
00:08:20.680 Here's a little bit of Sarah's genius on this topic.
00:08:23.780 So today I want to do a deep dive into Ballerina Farm.
00:08:28.780 And Ballerina Farm is the reason that you started writing a newsletter.
00:08:33.460 And really, she was your, I'd like to call her your gateway drug into the world of mom influencing and mom influence newslettering.
00:08:43.460 But she recently won Mrs. America, which brings this whole thing to a new level.
00:08:51.760 we could say it's a new level of absurdity or it's the perfect conclusion to everything that
00:08:58.640 we've been talking about for the past three years. This is the path. This was the path we were always
00:09:02.860 on. So for people, for the three people who do not know, who would you say this human being was
00:09:08.640 if you just scrolled her pictures on Instagram? And then I want you to tell me who she really is.
00:09:15.120 Okay. So if you are one of the few people who, you know, have never seen her, you would just see
00:09:21.220 a thin white conventionally attractive um mother of seven in her very prairie chic home
00:09:32.020 uh you would see her making mozzarella cheese from milk that she you know milked herself from 1.00
00:09:40.020 one of her dairy cows. You would see her, you know, making pork chops from the pigs that are
00:09:51.340 roaming her hundreds of acres of land. It's really, it's a celebration of family, a celebration of
00:10:00.660 homesteading ranch life, and it's very much rooted in the domestic and nuclear family ideals.
00:10:10.900 Okay.
00:10:11.420 Okay, that's a really good description, actually.
00:10:13.840 Yes.
00:10:14.160 Thank you so much.
00:10:15.280 Now, that's what you get if you just scroll her Instagram feed.
00:10:19.720 Who is she actually?
00:10:21.160 Who is Hannah Nealman, separate from the account of Ballerina Farm?
00:10:25.880 Right. 0.98
00:10:26.540 One thing I didn't mention in my little summation is occasionally you will also see her dancing on her feed. 0.95
00:10:33.580 Um, maybe she's at the end of their long dirt road pirouetting and doing a bunch of other French, you know, jumps and whatever moves that I don't know the name of. 0.68
00:10:45.800 Maybe she's wearing her Carhartt overalls while doing it, but still looking like graceful and like the embodiment of traditional femininity. 0.94
00:10:54.180 So she, she's Mormon.
00:10:57.240 She's married to one of the children of the founder of JetBlue.
00:11:02.520 She's certainly married into a rich family. 0.99
00:11:05.460 It also requires an immense amount of money to buy that, 0.99
00:11:09.160 the amount of land that they have in Utah to maintain a working farm.
00:11:16.080 Yeah, and it's not a situation most working farmers share.
00:11:22.800 Like, it very much seems like it started out as pretty much a hobby farm for rich people.
00:11:28.660 And it grew into this massive, massive social media following.
00:11:34.700 Right, right.
00:11:35.220 And to be honest, we could say that her social media following really helped build this farm in some ways, right?
00:11:44.560 Yeah.
00:11:44.960 So, I mean, she was posting pictures of her and her beautiful children and their life on what was kind of a hobby farm.
00:11:52.800 But now they actually have a fairly successful meat business, right?
00:11:58.280 So I actually don't know how successful their actual shipping business is.
00:12:04.580 I wonder how successful their merch is in comparison to the actual like meat products.
00:12:11.120 Yeah.
00:12:11.360 Because now that she has 6.3 million followers, she has a massive section on the website for just Ballerina Farm merch.
00:12:21.080 Right.
00:12:21.180 So I'm really curious
00:12:23.460 if it's the meat
00:12:24.580 or if it's just the huge
00:12:27.060 social media presence
00:12:29.320 of Ballerina Farm itself
00:12:30.540 that's generating the most money.
00:12:32.880 I think that's going to be
00:12:34.060 the title of this episode.
00:12:35.220 Is it the meat
00:12:36.040 or is it the followers?
00:12:39.000 Right.
00:12:39.900 Right?
00:12:41.000 Yeah.
00:12:42.140 And so 6.3 million followers 1.00
00:12:44.840 is a lot of fucking followers. 0.99
00:12:46.400 Like that's no joke. 1.00
00:12:47.600 That has got to be up there
00:12:49.520 for someone that's not
00:12:51.180 An active celebrity, right?
00:12:53.840 Like in the celebrity sphere.
00:12:56.480 That is definitely the top 1% of Instagram.
00:13:00.720 I mean, it's definitely the top 1% mom influencers.
00:13:03.600 Yeah, for sure.
00:13:05.360 So what is very interesting to me about Hannah Nealman, Ballerina Farm, right now, is that she was recently crowned Mrs. America.
00:13:18.460 Actually, Mrs. American.
00:13:20.420 Mrs. American.
00:13:21.020 Yes, there's a Mrs. America and a Mrs. American, which is really confusing.
00:13:28.600 That's really confusing.
00:13:30.120 But I mean, this does show, much like Meryl Streep, Hannah Nealman can do it all. 1.00
00:13:34.560 She can sing, she can dance, she can make meat. 1.00
00:13:37.520 But Mrs. American, and she won very much. 0.99
00:13:41.420 Wow, I did not know.
00:13:43.600 Mrs. America and Mrs. American, is there some kind of difference between the two?
00:13:48.480 So it's run by the same organization. And I think it's really just to get more like money or more visibility and to have, you know, two different pageants. But yeah, it's run by the same company.
00:14:04.120 What are the qualifications for being Mrs. American? And what is kind of the history of this pageant in general?
00:14:15.480 Yeah, so there really aren't many qualifications other than being married. It is a fascinating history, though. There's a great piece on Jezebel that was written a few years ago, sort of highlighting, you know, the roots of the pageant and how the pageant has transitioned into modern days.
00:14:36.480 days. But yeah, it was started
00:14:38.500 in, I believe, 1938.
00:14:41.200 Mm-hmm. Really as
00:14:42.560 a way to get people
00:14:44.400 onto the boardwalk. 1.00
00:14:46.220 That was also why Miss America.
00:14:47.960 Which boardwalk? In Atlantic City?
00:14:50.440 So, no, not
00:14:52.300 Atlantic City. Hold on, let me look it up real quick.
00:14:55.340 Oh, the New Jersey
00:14:56.060 Palisade? It's another New Jersey boardwalk.
00:14:57.960 New Jersey Palisade, that's what I'm saying.
00:14:59.960 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yes.
00:15:01.820 Oh, so this is just a publicity stunt.
00:15:04.640 Yes, 100%.
00:15:06.480 Okay.
00:15:07.480 And so at first, it just completely followed the Miss America, you know, format. 0.80
00:15:12.520 Like, it was pretty women in pretty clothes strutting down catwalks.
00:15:18.320 But in the mid-century era, it turned into basically, like, the best housewife competitions.
00:15:25.280 Really?
00:15:26.000 And contestants were judged on, like, their homemaking skills explicitly,
00:15:32.580 On their cooking skills, their cleaning skills, their, you know, interior design skills, which I find really, really fascinating.
00:15:42.680 And you could make an argument that it was highlighting the invisible labor of, you know, domestic work.
00:15:49.320 mm-hmm but that's interesting actually you yeah posted you posted a video of it on on your
00:15:57.920 newsletter um in pursuit of clean countertops which everyone should subscribe to i like the 1.00
00:16:03.960 idea that we are showing that the work women do in the home is fucking work that it is labor that 1.00
00:16:12.140 As you wrote, moms don't get bonuses. 1.00
00:16:15.620 We don't get performance reviews. 0.80
00:16:17.720 We never get told that we're doing a good job.
00:16:23.140 Right.
00:16:23.660 It still strikes me as, you know,
00:16:27.320 we're still judging women on external ideals
00:16:31.100 placed upon them by, you know, men.
00:16:34.460 You know, it's primarily who are judging these pageants
00:16:38.780 and who are determining, you know,
00:16:40.780 if your kitchen counters are clean enough
00:16:43.440 or whatever it was that they were judging. 1.00
00:16:45.680 And so I think it's still holding women
00:16:47.700 to an unfair, unrealistic standard,
00:16:51.060 albeit a different one than, for example,
00:16:53.580 the bikini standard.
00:16:55.120 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
00:16:55.800 I love the quote that you pulled out
00:16:58.860 of an AP article from 1983
00:17:01.200 where a spokesman for the pageant said,
00:17:04.320 the Mrs. America pageant's new mission
00:17:06.300 is to show you can be beautiful 0.78
00:17:08.200 and still be married.
00:17:10.400 What?
00:17:11.580 No, actually, the day that I walked down the aisle, 0.96
00:17:13.800 I turned, I grew warts and turned into a troll. 0.99
00:17:18.040 You turned into a crone. 0.99
00:17:19.420 I turned into a crone who lives under a bridge 0.98
00:17:21.220 and asks people riddles. 1.00
00:17:22.460 What the fuck? 1.00
00:17:24.880 No. 1.00
00:17:26.400 Yeah, I also interviewed for that piece Margot Mifflin,
00:17:30.180 who wrote Looking for Miss America,
00:17:32.820 and it's a history of the pageant.
00:17:35.500 And she was talking about the really strange,
00:17:38.960 You know, the Miss America pageant is very much focused on virginity, on sexual purity, on the ability of a man to project his fantasies onto, you know, this blank, this supposedly blank slate.
00:17:52.360 Whereas marriage and Mrs. America or Mrs. American,
00:17:57.740 there is this sense of if we can't value you solely for, you know,
00:18:05.560 your, you know, objectivity in the male gaze,
00:18:10.120 like what else can we judge you on?
00:18:13.080 And while the Mrs. American pageant is no longer explicitly rooted
00:18:17.880 in the domestic sphere.
00:18:19.360 I still think Hannah Neelman
00:18:21.360 being a primarily,
00:18:24.840 you know, her whole thing 1.00
00:18:26.680 is domestic aptitude. 0.95
00:18:29.160 And I can't imagine
00:18:30.840 that that didn't play into her win.
00:18:34.620 A hundred and ten percent.
00:18:37.820 Absolutely.
00:18:38.400 I mean, she is kind of like 0.95
00:18:41.960 domestic bliss personified 0.91
00:18:45.480 on Instagram. 0.78
00:18:47.240 And yeah, so of course I think that she is the perfect of Mrs. American.
00:18:55.520 I just, something about this pageant breaks my soul and my heart a little bit.
00:19:03.660 I know, I know.
00:19:06.020 Just because I don't think that there is, but maybe I'm wrong because I'm not as well-versed in beauty pageants as I should be.
00:19:14.260 but is there a beauty pageant for the awesome kick-ass mom who is just wearing sweatpants 0.98
00:19:23.540 right now and juggling 50 things and getting it all done and you know sometimes does it with her 1.00
00:19:31.560 husband once a month and has four Instagram followers is there a pageant for that lady 1.00
00:19:36.040 because I'd win. Right. I know. I know. And yeah. And I just think the idea of judging 1.00
00:19:46.820 motherhood in general is inherently icky. And I don't know. I think so many of us
00:19:54.900 were radicalized by motherhood that the idea of subjecting ourselves to any sort of external
00:20:01.440 judgment just feels so antithetical to what can be a very empowering identity.
00:20:10.280 Yeah, what should be? I mean, frankly, being a mother should be an empowering identity. And
00:20:14.880 maybe it is in circles that are not my circle, honestly. I mean, maybe in Hannah Nealman's
00:20:22.580 circles, being a mother is much more empowering. I just, I don't know. Like I said, something does
00:20:30.780 break my soul about this and um you wrote about the comments um on hannah nilman's win and so what
00:20:40.620 did some of their i'm just going to read some of them actually like these were some women um some
00:20:45.660 fans commenting on on hannah's win it says she makes everything look so amazing and easy to do
00:20:51.360 hashtag flawless another one absolutely gorgeous and humble you are the balance that women need to
00:20:58.240 emulate feminine hard-working god-loving and a full-time mother so my issue with that and again
00:21:06.180 look i'm not here to judge women should do whatever they need to do because being a woman in the world
00:21:10.780 is fucking hard but yeah this commenter said you are the balance that women need to emulate
00:21:17.920 and also the hashtag flawless oh god just the thought i know saying that we have to be flawless 0.98
00:21:26.580 I know
00:21:28.460 it hurts me and I also
00:21:31.280 think a lot of her
00:21:33.020 posting like many influencers
00:21:35.480 is 1.00
00:21:37.060 bullshit I mean she's posting 1.00
00:21:39.420 a very 1.00
00:21:40.880 idealized version of her life
00:21:43.360 it's clearly I mean it's aspects
00:21:45.340 of her real life but these are professional
00:21:47.180 photos most of the time
00:21:48.880 she has a brand
00:21:50.260 and I think I would
00:21:52.260 go as far to say that the brand
00:21:55.140 one, Mrs. American, maybe not Hannah Nealman herself. Yeah, no, I think that's a good point.
00:22:02.100 I mean, and even in looking at what one of her, like there's question and answer, whatever,
00:22:09.740 with the judges and on her, you'll see it on her social media. One of the questions was when was,
00:22:16.680 you know, when did you feel most empowered? And she, you know, tears up and says every time she
00:22:21.440 gave birth. And what strikes me about that comment is like, I get it. I felt really empowered during
00:22:30.240 my birth. That is not the case for everybody. And that should not be the defining feature of
00:22:36.500 everybody's sense of motherhood. But I think it's also what we want mothers to say. We don't want
00:22:45.540 them to say the most empowered I felt was when I got a promotion at work. Or when I got divorced
00:22:51.600 and bought my own house. Or when I did a complete career shift and found something that really,
00:22:57.780 you know, filled me up with passion. Like, we don't want that answer. We want motherhood.
00:23:02.760 Motherhood, motherhood, motherhood comes first and foremost.
00:23:06.520 I did not feel empowered during the birth of my children. It was, I mean, whatever. Again,
00:23:11.940 I love my kids, love them, they're the best, but when they're not the worst.
00:23:15.560 Of course, of course.
00:23:16.940 I don't know.
00:23:18.120 I didn't like giving birth.
00:23:19.920 I didn't feel particularly empowered. 1.00
00:23:21.500 Also, the last one fell out of my body because my vagina is a grand canyon at this point. 1.00
00:23:27.140 So she literally just slithered out. 0.99
00:23:29.480 Nick looked down and goes, oh my God, there's a baby in the bed.
00:23:33.280 There's nothing empowering about that.
00:23:35.080 I was like, okay, there you are. 0.99
00:23:37.520 So it just feels like a bullshit response. 0.99
00:23:39.940 response. I mean, I think you are completely justified to not feel empowered by birth. I 0.98
00:23:44.980 mean, other people are completely justified to feel empowered by birth. Sure. I just think
00:23:49.760 the framing, you know, of the thousands of followers was, yes, this should be every mother's
00:23:57.040 answer. Like, yes, this is the right answer. And that's what I sort of object to. Same, same. And
00:24:03.760 And it just, yeah, to me, it feels like a performance of motherhood that is a very antiquated mid-century maternal ideal, much like we're seeing also with the rise of hashtag tradwives on social media.
00:24:19.720 We're going to be doing a lot more on tradwives.
00:24:22.700 We're talking to Anne Helen Peterson about them next month.
00:24:25.720 I know you just talked to her about tradwives, but I just want to give our listeners a little taste of what are tradwives?
00:24:33.120 What is this world?
00:24:34.580 And because I see a lot of crossovers with Ballerina Farm and the Trad Wife movement. 0.81
00:24:38.520 Oh, yeah. 0.99
00:24:39.440 For sure.
00:24:40.640 So there's different iterations. 1.00
00:24:42.560 A Trad Wife could be someone who shops at Target, drives a minivan, but prioritizes having the house clean, a sandwich made, and her children quiet for when her husband gets home from work.
00:24:55.140 um a trad wife can be someone like ballerina farm who is very rooted in the you know quote
00:25:02.200 unquote natural domestic sphere um a trad wife can be an evangelical christian who homeschools
00:25:08.960 her children and you know espouses explicit or implicit white supremacy um and you'll also see 0.99
00:25:19.180 a lot of trad wives 1.00
00:25:19.980 cross over into 1.00
00:25:21.300 QAnon conspiracy theories,
00:25:23.800 into like essential oil peddling, 0.90
00:25:27.340 into sunscreen
00:25:29.060 as toxic territory.
00:25:31.740 So there's lots of crossovers,
00:25:33.520 but the one unifying feature
00:25:35.420 is that they adhere
00:25:36.740 to traditional gender roles. 0.95
00:25:40.260 Right, right. 1.00
00:25:40.900 Traditional gender roles. 1.00
00:25:42.160 That's the big part of it. 0.99
00:25:43.540 And we see a lot of women 1.00
00:25:45.260 dressed up like Betty Draper,
00:25:48.660 which is hilarious because I don't think that that many, 0.83
00:25:51.760 I mean, the majority of women did not actually dress like that. 0.69
00:25:54.680 It's this idealized version that we have now in the 2020s
00:26:00.520 of what the 1950s looked like.
00:26:03.520 And if you ask any of our grandmothers who lived through the 1950s, 0.99
00:26:08.980 I think they'd tell you it was pretty goddamn wretched to be a woman. 0.91
00:26:12.280 You could not, I mean, you couldn't have your own credit card. 0.98
00:26:15.060 You couldn't really do anything unless your husband said you could do it.
00:26:20.400 Like, can you, I can't personally imagine being, not being in the house all day and being with the kids all day and, you know, cleaning the house all day.
00:26:29.840 Again, good on you if that's what you want to do.
00:26:32.260 But being told that was all I could do, right?
00:26:35.280 Like not having the choice.
00:26:36.580 And I think the beauty of things now is that we have the choice. 0.99
00:26:40.100 If you want to be a domestic goddess, fucking good for you. 1.00
00:26:43.280 but my concern with trad wives is that they're saying this is what women should be doing we 0.99
00:26:50.100 should be going back in time to what was quote unquote a better time when that's a false nostalgia 0.89
00:26:56.140 that was not a good ass time for women no and particularly you know working class women uh 0.83
00:27:02.200 women of color queer women i have a chapter on trad wives and one in particular i do a deep dive 1.00
00:27:08.660 on her and she really if you look at her photos she looks like she lives in the 1800s and she
00:27:14.820 very much espouses a you'll see a lot of this it's my choice to be led rhetoric um anti-feminism
00:27:23.160 pro-femininity and that's just a heady it's an interesting co-opting of feminist language
00:27:31.260 to espouse a distinctly anti-feminist message.
00:27:37.560 But they're always very much promising simplicity
00:27:41.400 and comfort in living life the way it quote unquote should be.
00:27:46.320 And of course, this is according to, you know, gender essentialist norms.
00:27:50.580 Right. I gotta, I mean, I gotta say,
00:27:52.320 what I really would like to do is I do want to have 1.00
00:27:56.100 a couple of the tradwives on the show because 0.98
00:27:59.440 yeah, I don't want to take anyone down. I want to hear their point of view. I want to hear why
00:28:05.000 not only do they want to live this life, but why they want to broadcast it and also why they think
00:28:11.660 that it's getting so popular. I think what concerns me is that this is getting very popular.
00:28:17.640 We have so many young girls consuming social media. Is this what we want our teenage daughters 0.68
00:28:24.040 to see as content?
00:28:26.540 And for me, the answer is no.
00:28:29.100 And it's not just that I'm like, 0.93
00:28:30.700 you're a feminist, you will work, 0.98
00:28:32.140 you will do exactly what I did. 0.92
00:28:35.280 I'm just, what I'm most concerned about
00:28:37.800 is the idea of, you know,
00:28:41.240 being led by a man
00:28:42.840 and being ruled by a man.
00:28:45.940 And that, to me, is problematic.
00:28:49.500 And that content becomes problematic to me.
00:28:52.100 It also, you know, it is often inherently transphobic in this endorsement of, you know, innately feminine virtues and women are supposedly biologically meant to bear children and raise children, which, of course, we know is nonsense.
00:29:13.340 But it does put forth this agenda that's really in keeping with the attack on, you know, reproductive justice that we're experiencing right now.
00:29:24.020 Yeah, we're only going to see a rise in TradWife content as we get further and further into the political election season. And I genuinely think that we're going to see some people even being swayed by some TradWife content, especially because so many people are burnt out by traditional news sources and traditional content.
00:29:48.020 So, it's something that we should be talking about.
00:29:51.220 It's something that we should all be aware of, especially as we're thinking about who is voting, how they are voting, and why they are voting.
00:29:59.460 So, so much more to come.
00:30:02.320 So much more to come.
00:30:03.300 You know what we left out when we were talking about Hannah and Ballerina Farm?
00:30:07.320 What?
00:30:08.520 I think, you know, I think you can guess.
00:30:10.320 My favorite fact about her, the fact that her sourdough has a name, her sourdough starter.
00:30:16.600 Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. 0.97
00:30:17.960 Willa, Willa, Willa, her sourdough has the same name as the hooker on Succession. 0.98
00:30:26.320 Do you think that she named it after the prostitute on Succession? 0.98
00:30:34.260 I really don't think so.
00:30:36.000 I don't think so either.
00:30:37.100 But now I really don't know that I said it out loud.
00:30:40.020 Like maybe maybe she'll think about that because she's definitely going to listen to this podcast.
00:30:45.520 Yeah, for sure.
00:30:46.580 For sure.
00:30:46.920 So I first started researching Hannah in 2021 for a piece I wrote for Harper's Bazaar.
00:30:53.000 And at that point, this is only two years ago, she had 145,000 followers.
00:30:59.680 She now has 6.3 million.
00:31:03.840 Like that alone is just, I think, just really communicates a lot about the massive rise of trad.
00:31:12.260 But that is totally, totally.
00:31:14.160 And that, I mean, that is bananas, good zanas, right?
00:31:16.920 Like, it's nutty.
00:31:17.980 Yes.
00:31:18.520 How do you think, how do you think that she got so many followers in two years?
00:31:25.780 I mean, I think there is something like, you know, shock and awe in her presentation of maternal joy.
00:31:36.640 Like, she has seven kids.
00:31:40.340 And, you know, there's never any talk about child care.
00:31:44.020 They're always pictured, you know.
00:31:46.920 going with her and doing her chores or whatever,
00:31:48.980 they're always there.
00:31:50.500 And so to see her cleaning up the kitchen
00:31:53.640 after feeding her family of nine 0.95
00:31:56.220 and like thumbs upping the camera,
00:31:58.680 like I think so many of us are watching
00:32:02.120 because we're looking for like a crack in the facade,
00:32:05.280 you know?
00:32:06.120 Yeah.
00:32:06.980 Yeah.
00:32:07.640 No, that's fair.
00:32:08.800 I will say,
00:32:10.300 I mean, I have three kids
00:32:12.780 and I have a lot of help.
00:32:14.720 We have full-time child care.
00:32:19.240 Two of them are in school.
00:32:20.680 My mom lives nearby.
00:32:22.160 I have a very devoted husband. 1.00
00:32:24.540 And my house is a goddamn mess. 1.00
00:32:27.100 It is a goddamn mess. 1.00
00:32:28.880 And I have all of the help that a human can have. 0.99
00:32:31.600 And I still can't clean my own house.
00:32:34.720 I hear you. 1.00
00:32:37.640 There has to be a pageant for that, Sarah. 1.00
00:32:41.940 You should start one.
00:32:43.060 Look, I desperately want to gain more social media followers, if only to sell more books.
00:32:49.580 And so if that means I need to clean my house and dye my hair blonde before my new book comes out in April, maybe you guys are going to see a hashtag tradwife transformation.
00:33:04.820 Get your better turnout.
00:33:07.620 Come here, Willa.
00:33:13.060 Thank you.