Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - Ballerina Farm's Latest Flex

00:00:00.000 Hey all! Joe here and you are listening to Under the Influence. Thanks for being here.

00:00:12.120 There's a lot of other things you could be doing right now, but I'll bet you're happy

00:00:14.860 that you're not wrapping presents. Yeah. Or if you're listening to me while you're

00:00:19.400 wrapping presents, good on you for multitasking. You're a rock star.

00:00:24.920 Today we are once again talking about Ballerina Farm. This subject is just the gift that

00:00:29.960 keeps on giving, my friends. If you're very sick of Ballerina Farm, I don't blame you. We have a

00:00:35.020 lot of episodes to binge. Or there's this new Netflix holiday rom-com with Lindsay Lohan. Go

00:00:41.440 watch that instead of listening to me. I won't be offended. But if you do want to hear more about

00:00:46.280 Ballerina Farm, today we're talking about the brand's massive media blitz. Tia Levings was on

00:00:51.580 last week to talk about Hannah Nealman being on the cover of the far-right version of Cosmo,

00:00:57.560 Evie magazine. But since then, two more articles have appeared. This is better press than share,

00:01:05.500 my friends. Since the cover of Evie magazine was revealed, there was a massive profile in

00:01:11.800 the New York Times, and then another one in Glamour magazine. It looks like the Ballerina

00:01:17.360 Farm brand team is really covering all of their bases. And here to talk to us today is the one

00:01:23.340 and only Stephanie McNeil of Glamour Magazine to tell us everything about what it was like to talk

00:01:29.080 to the one and only Hannah Nealman. We're also going to get into the massive brand pivot and

00:01:34.760 whether or not Ballerina Farm as a brand can try to make nice with everybody. Can you really be on

00:01:40.660 the cover of Far Right Cosmo and then have a profile in the New York Times within days of

00:01:45.560 each other? Is that how our media ecosystem works now? Maybe. The world of influencing is the wild,

00:01:51.700 Wild West, and no one is writing the rules. Hey, Steph. Hey. So you just had a really big story

00:02:07.940 published on Glamour.com, which I deeply enjoyed. You have a new profile of Hannah Nealman,

00:02:15.000 the woman, the tycoon behind Ballerina Farm. Talk to me a little bit about how this particular

00:02:21.660 profile and this kind of switch in what hannah is talking about is different from what we've seen

00:02:27.120 from her before the sense that i've gotten from hannah is there was obviously a pretty big profile

00:02:36.200 of her over the summer in the times of london which side note no shade to the times of london

00:02:42.660 but i just thought that them having the big profile was the most random thing it was strange

00:02:48.400 Yeah. But you know what? Everywhere, everywhere is in it, I guess. But they had this big profile of her where I would say the two biggest implications, if not outright things that were said in the profile were that she was unhappy in some way behind the scenes and that all of the ballerina farm aesthetic and the company were something

00:03:18.120 that she personally didn't want or wasn't passionate about or was mainly the brainchild

00:03:25.740 of her husband.

00:03:28.140 And I think what we're seeing now is she really didn't like that.

00:03:34.780 And, you know, rightfully so. 0.95

00:03:36.820 I don't think any woman would appreciate those things being implied about her. 1.00

00:03:40.140 I mean, maybe some maybe some of the trad wives would love it.

00:03:43.100 But I think I actually I think there's some women who, even if they didn't love it, who even if they didn't love it, would like that their husbands loved it.

00:03:51.760 Yeah. Yeah, that's true. But she didn't. Hannah did not.

00:03:55.760 Um, so the first thing that we saw was she really updated her branding and her, uh, website.

00:04:05.460 And if any of her followers noticed, they updated the, you know, about me section of

00:04:11.900 the website to really give her a lot more agency and the founding of the business.

00:04:17.740 Um, and then they, she posted a video where she kind of pushed back on some of the things

00:04:24.380 that were implied to the profile and then they've embarked on i don't know if it's a press tour

00:04:31.700 um but i don't know three major profiles in a week feels like a press tour to me

00:04:39.060 yeah maybe maybe it is a press tour it feels press tory i mean it's getting and also i mean

00:04:46.220 i know everyone that i've been talking to about this is like okay they landed a profile in the

00:04:51.860 Times. They got you writing about them for Glamour. There was the cover of Evie magazine,

00:04:57.460 which is the one that I frankly find problematic. And we don't know if there's anything else coming

00:05:02.700 out, to be honest. No, we don't. I think the only thing is I'm like, well, is Evie magazine a big

00:05:10.740 but that's just that's just journalism. It's the Evie magazine of it all. No,

00:05:17.240 So it's absolutely not.

00:05:18.780 I mean, but the Evie magazine thing was so interesting to me.

00:05:22.540 And I talked about this with Tia Levings last week.

00:05:25.640 One, because no one had ever heard of it.

00:05:27.860 No one in our circles.

00:05:29.100 Okay, no one in my bubble.

00:05:30.680 No one in the media bubble that I'm a part of.

00:05:33.820 What I suppose I should call a more progressive bubble had ever heard of Evie magazine until Ballerina Farm appeared on the cover of it.

00:05:46.200 So it's a big coup.

00:05:47.240 that they got her. And it is a magazine that promotes very far-right values, you know,

00:05:53.040 that's very anti-birth control, that's anti-LBGTQ, that's anti, frankly, a lot of things, 0.88

00:06:00.820 and very pro-natalist. And you might even argue pro-trad wife in some ways. So I think seeing 0.60

00:06:09.220 her on the cover of that for a lot of people was like, oh my God, oh my gosh, she's confirming

00:06:14.820 confirming that she you know believes in all of these far-right values and then the very next day

00:06:20.880 there's a profile in the times and then the very next day your profile comes out yeah and uh i asked

00:06:29.020 her representative um once the eb magazine thing because i was um a little bts i was uh working on

00:06:37.600 the profile, but we hadn't gotten the imagery back yet when that came out. And so it was pretty

00:06:44.860 clear to me that we needed to include it. And so I went out to them and I said, hey, can you just

00:06:51.060 kind of what you say in these situations, which is we have to include it. We're going to include

00:06:56.220 it. I would like you to be able to respond to it. You know, these things that people are saying

00:07:01.460 And what they told me was they don't discriminate in terms of their where they interview, where Ballerina Farm is featured.

00:07:14.060 um so you know they are kind of putting this juxtaposition that you just made which is

00:07:23.160 yeah we did do evie magazine which you know this is not something they said but this is

00:07:28.800 something that we all know is a very far-right publication but we're also doing traditional

00:07:34.600 you know traditional women's media yeah traditional women's media media and also the

00:07:41.720 New York Times, let's be honest, is left. I'm not even going to say center left, right? So yes, 0.83

00:07:50.440 it felt like a freaking PR coup. It's like, you know what? We're going to do the whole spectrum

00:07:56.300 and no one's going to question us. Well, I think the internet's definitely questioning.

00:08:02.080 Oh, the internet's questioning. The internet continues, a certain section of the internet,

00:08:06.200 Again, and one of the reasons that I wanted to talk about EV Magazine so much on this podcast is that I think it's very easy, easier than ever, to be in media echo chambers and to not know, you know, what people with differing views who live in different parts of the country are consuming in terms of media, in terms of podcasts, in terms of YouTube channels, and now in terms of actual print magazines.

00:08:36.200 The only thing that that I'll say is like, yeah, the return of print.

00:08:40.480 I feel like we've talked about the return of print before.

00:08:42.660 We're talking about it all the time.

00:08:43.800 You and I years ago, years ago, I think we were like, why don't we just start Influencer

00:08:48.800 Weekly together?

00:08:50.320 Yes.

00:08:50.880 Which frankly is still a good idea.

00:08:52.840 It's still a good idea.

00:08:53.920 So let us know if we should do it.

00:08:55.340 Yeah. 0.97

00:08:57.580 You know, it's interesting because I think that one thing about Hannah is she is kind

00:09:06.020 of straddling this line, right? Like she is someone who has a lot of influence and who

00:09:12.940 is very open with the public. She shares her life, but she is also someone who

00:09:20.860 people put a lot of their own worldview and thoughts onto her, right?

00:09:28.580 This is true. Before we actually even dive into this profile, I want to talk about a story that

00:09:34.440 you did prior to this about how a lot of the online attacks and arguments against Ballerina

00:09:42.100 Farm and Hannah Nealman often stem from our own issues. Yeah, I think that one thing, and this is

00:09:53.020 not just about Hannah, but it's something that I've noticed about influencer culture writ large

00:09:57.900 is you can often, you know, there's kind of two tiers of influencer snark, let's say.

00:10:06.240 There's, you know, when people actually do really bad things and we can sit here and list a million

00:10:11.520 things and people get mad, that's kind of the one thing. And then there's this other tier that

00:10:17.020 often reflects the anxiety and the fears and the frustrations of the snarker rather than the

00:10:24.840 Starkey. Right. So a big example of this is. Something that, you know, Hannah, I think a lot

00:10:35.580 of people feel, which is this is someone who has eight children and it's really a lot of children.

00:10:43.240 It's a lot of children. It's a lot of children. And. You know. I was watching some content

00:10:50.820 before like while i was writing the piece and i saw a couple tiktoks where they said

00:10:56.040 getting very granular granularly like i watch her tiktoks and i see her children sitting down

00:11:03.120 and eating food that she made them without complaining and that and that makes me feel

00:11:08.860 really bad and i said that's interesting because i just feel like i understand the feeling but

00:11:18.800 let's unpack it a little bit. Is it her fault if her children eat her food? Is that something we 0.98

00:11:26.840 should hold against her? I don't know. Or do we even know that they're eating her food? I mean,

00:11:32.740 that's the thing that I want to talk about. And that's the reason I continue to talk about

00:11:38.940 Ballerina Farm. There's now 22 million people tuning in to this content across platforms.

00:11:46.420 and more people that are watching almost every television show out there hannah's a celebrity

00:11:53.580 ballerina farms a brand and they're creating content that we're watching my concern is always

00:11:59.100 like for the commenter who said something like that who assumes this is just real life that this

00:12:04.720 isn't smoke and mirrors that this isn't content created for a very specific purpose because i

00:12:10.220 could take a picture of my kids eating some stuff even though my seven-year-old eats no food you

00:12:14.840 No, he eats only beige things, but I could absolutely figure out a way to get some kind

00:12:21.820 of shot of him, you know, eating some sashimi or something.

00:12:25.160 And he's not going to put it in his mouth, but it'll look like he is so that people think

00:12:29.900 that, oh, my gosh, your son has such an eclectic palate.

00:12:33.560 Right.

00:12:34.160 And I think that I think that if you're viewing any influencer and feeling something really

00:12:40.560 extreme, that's probably something that is something bigger.

00:12:44.840 You know, I think that I think the two the two extreme reactions to Hannah's content are indicative of overwhelming sentiment in our current American motherhood society. Right. So I think if you are, you know, a 19 year old aspiring trad wife who wants to be a soft girl and live like this and you're over fetishizing her life.

00:13:08.660 I think that's problematic because then you have to say, OK, well, what is it about our current system that young women are saying, wow, this is something that is seems so much better and so much easier than all of the rights everyone's been fighting for for the last since humans, since humans, since women were allowed to speak.

00:13:30.360 Yeah, since women were allowed to speak, we're allowed to speak.

00:13:33.880 So, I mean, that's a problem that we need to address.

00:13:37.060 and that that problem is so funny to me because i when i try to explain this to my sweet husband

00:13:41.280 nick astor he's like well no one really believes that it's reality it's a fantasy for everyone i'm

00:13:46.080 like no like people there are genuinely girls out there who are trying to decide what to do with

00:13:50.720 their futures who think who see things like this and then think i should just find myself a husband

00:13:56.160 who's gonna gonna let me cook and bake all day and having kids you know it seems so easy and so

00:14:02.800 beautiful. They don't, they don't understand what they're consuming because we have no media

00:14:06.920 literacy in this country. So I don't think, I think there is a contingent of young women who

00:14:11.480 look at this and see like, oh yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's a good reality. Instead 0.96

00:14:15.600 of looking at it and being like, she is a savvy ass business person. She's the next iteration of 1.00

00:14:20.580 Martha Stewart. Absolutely. And I think that that is something that, you know, that's the issue, 0.99

00:14:29.360 right that's the issue um so only if only after we introduce influencer magazine we can also get

00:14:37.480 my media literacy program into grade schools throughout the country then we can fix this

00:14:42.260 problem yeah because when i you know i actually did a feature um that we discussed on soft girls

00:14:49.080 and you know when i was talking to these women it was like yeah i get it because i have a toddler

00:14:58.760 and it is really hard it's really hard so that okay so that's the other so that's one side and

00:15:03.940 then let's take the other side of the coin which is it's really really hard to be a mom in america

00:15:09.700 we have no support we have no you know no social systems we have you know american mothers like

00:15:19.960 worldwide are some of the least supported mothers by state governments yeah it's the bottom of the

00:15:27.440 barrel and also then society also seems to hate us is the society hates us and you know it's hard

00:15:34.980 to be a working mother it's hard to be a stay-at-home mother um all of it is hard and

00:15:40.820 it's something that i think you can imagine if you've never had a child but once you do it

00:15:44.560 and i'm speaking from a place of you know extreme privilege you know totally i mean i pay all the

00:15:52.400 money to make it as easy as possible for myself right exactly um so i think that you know these

00:16:03.260 tiktoks that i'm seeing that people are saying i i see ballerinas farms kids eating food and it

00:16:10.900 makes me feel like a really bad mother and my heart goes out to these people because i'm like

00:16:16.540 what I understand that as well, right? Because when we have the deck stack against us,

00:16:25.480 it can be really difficult to see someone who seems to be having an easier time than you

00:16:32.140 and be like, well, what am I doing wrong? And internalize that and make it make yourself feel

00:16:36.260 bad. And I guess the way that I feel is, you know, you can feel however you want to feel

00:16:43.380 about influencers writ large, about Ballerina Farm, but I wish that more women would take

00:16:48.600 these feelings and instead of just getting really mad at Ballerina Farm or any influencer, 0.98

00:16:54.600 getting really mad at like the system.

00:16:57.180 Trying to fix the broken system.

00:16:59.240 Let's channel that energy.

00:17:00.980 That would actually be amazing.

00:17:01.980 That would be an amazing function. 1.00

00:17:04.400 I mean, Meta will never do it because it won't make money.

00:17:06.440 Oh, Meta reached out to me, by the way, to come on this show.

00:17:09.960 Really?

00:17:10.880 Uh-huh.

00:17:11.280 first time they want to talk about their guardrails for kids and i was like you're more than welcome

00:17:16.180 i hope you've listened to this show before have you listened to it no so we'll see we'll see how

00:17:23.600 that goes we'll see how that goes yeah yeah yeah um but i think it'd be really funny if there was

00:17:29.460 you know when someone does post a comment like this is making me feel bad if instead they got

00:17:34.800 a warning or or they got some kind of encouragement saying why don't you fight for equal pay or

00:17:40.760 universal childcare. Yeah. And I think that's another problem that is really difficult to watch

00:17:46.640 is that I think that women get, like, I think it's, we need to start finding solidarity in each

00:17:56.020 other and stop just fighting over influencers on the internet. Like, I don't know. I just see like 0.52

00:18:03.520 all of these people making so much content about like, you know, mommy bloggers do this and they

00:18:09.520 make me feel this way and they shouldn't be doing this. And I'm like, well, what if we like rage

00:18:13.060 against with the actual problem? What if we rage against the actual problem? Let's rage against the

00:18:18.120 actual problem. All right, let's take a quick break. And when we get back, I want to talk a

00:18:21.920 little bit about this profile and the new things that we've learned. Okay, we are back. The headline

00:18:36.140 of your piece in Glamour Stuff is Hannah Nealman, a.k.a. Ballerina Farm, is ready to reintroduce

00:18:42.720 herself. And that's exactly what this press tour, what this branding relaunch truly does

00:18:50.720 feel like. You know, she herself does not say the word trad wife ever. She doesn't like to talk 0.84

00:18:58.700 about it. It's one of those things that, you know, they say is off limits. But she wants to brand

00:19:04.960 herself as a mother and an entrepreneur. Both of those things together, again, I think we can talk

00:19:10.520 a little bit about how difficult it is to be those two things at the same time. I mean, I know

00:19:17.020 I consider myself an entrepreneur and a mother and fucking hard. But I also think that that makes 0.97

00:19:24.960 her Teflon in a way, because when she says, these are the two things that I am, then when you attack

00:19:32.040 her it's like why do you hate mothers why do you hate entrepreneurs like she's just doing doing

00:19:36.600 doing the same thing we're all trying to do so it's smart it's smart messaging and we have not

00:19:40.880 seen her talk about herself from a business standpoint before at least I don't think I have

00:19:46.960 I think that the thing I I see the whole thing as a reaction to the implication that she

00:19:56.780 didn't want to have the farm basically and she didn't want any of this um because the thing that

00:20:03.900 she was highlighting with me was and this is in the profile is she says i was the one who wanted

00:20:11.620 to start a business with daniel and he didn't want to initially and i had never seen that before

00:20:17.500 i had never seen her say this was all i want you to know this was all my idea right and um

00:20:25.740 um i think that the implication that she was essentially a travel wife really bothered her

00:20:32.740 i mean that's the implication that i that came through for me um and i think the thing that i

00:20:38.280 thought was the most well there were two things that i thought were the most interesting um

00:20:42.440 one you know i didn't really ask her directly like about what we were just talking about you

00:20:49.400 know some people say um you know motherhood content can make them feel bad but what she did

00:20:56.160 say was she tries to exude the joy in motherhood because she feels like it's something that she

00:21:04.820 would have needed to see when she was first becoming a mother and I found that really

00:21:10.820 interesting because it's almost like you know it's like two it's two ways of looking at the

00:21:17.020 exact same thing, right? I love that you found that interesting because I woke up thinking about

00:21:22.320 that line this morning. Yeah, well, thank you. Because I think that you can look at, you know,

00:21:30.960 a photo or a video of kids really seeming great and happy and cheerful. And you can say, you know,

00:21:40.180 wow that really makes me feel good about motherhood or you can look at that exact same

00:21:47.000 thing and you can say wow that makes me feel bad and what she's saying is she wants to show the

00:21:56.340 good parts of being a mother because when she was pregnant with her first child she was really

00:22:01.600 scared herself and seeing moms who seemed happy and fulfilled made her feel better so it's like

00:22:08.620 what makes you feel better? What makes you well? And I think that's the question. What makes you

00:22:12.760 feel better? Yeah. Is it solidarity building or is it like show me the good parts or show me the

00:22:21.360 bad parts and one of them is going to make you feel better? But I think the question that I have

00:22:26.800 is, so if it makes you feel bad, is that her fault? And I don't really know if that is her

00:22:34.640 fault i don't know i see the arguments for both sides and i'm kind of conflicted myself well

00:22:41.240 i think that's the reason that i woke up thinking about this because i do think a lot about how

00:22:49.780 we do need to show show more of the joy in life generally um and i try i try to do that i'm very

00:22:57.660 imperfect on social media but i try to show look my house is my house is kind of messy i'm like

00:23:04.160 i'm quietly quitting christmas this year i'm trying um but i also love my kids and i talk

00:23:10.980 about that on the show all the time i fucking love being a mom like i really enjoy it i really

00:23:14.540 enjoyed them i also enjoy working i also enjoy being an author uh and i like my husband at least 0.64

00:23:22.440 half of the time like there is a lot of joy in my life and i do think in a lot of media especially

00:23:27.080 in the past 10 years a lot of joy has kind of been suctioned out of life that we don't see

00:23:31.920 as many of the joyful moments so i i appreciated that comment from her that oh i want to show that

00:23:39.300 there is joy in parenting but then i but then you know i do see the other side of it that

00:23:44.200 i can i can understand why it makes people feel badly but for me my take on that is oh you just

00:23:54.540 have to understand better what an influencer is you just have to realize this is all fake

00:23:57.780 that like she's not showing you videos of her kids tantruming. And should she have to do that? 0.87

00:24:04.420 I don't know. And I don't think anyone knows because we don't have any guidelines for how

00:24:08.420 to be in this world because it only just started to exist. Right. Totally. And it's like your

00:24:14.340 feelings about any sort of situation can change based on your own circumstances and mood. You

00:24:20.260 know, if I have a great day with my daughter and I'm like, wow, this is amazing. And then I look

00:24:26.840 and see a mommy blogger having a great day with her daughter I'm like amazing but we're all so

00:24:32.540 joyful yeah like mom life rocks but then if I see like you know if I have a day where she hasn't 0.87

00:24:39.660 stopped screaming for 13 hours and then I see some person I'm gonna be like well f you I hate you 0.97

00:24:47.180 I hate you I hate you and I hate all of this and everything about you yeah I mean it begs the 0.95

00:24:52.440 question of what our celebrities owe us and now that influencers have become celebrities they are 0.99

00:24:59.440 the new version of celebrities which is why influencer weekly is going to be the greatest

00:25:02.800 magazine of all time in print uh what they then owe us as people who influence our brains

00:25:11.340 essentially we again we don't know the answers to any of this i think it's so interesting to raise

00:25:16.280 that, you know, one of the things I was thinking when I was reading this is when it comes to our

00:25:24.000 celebrities and our brand CEOs, we do get to decide if we support them and if we give them

00:25:30.840 our money. And sometimes their values determine that. I was very into Tesla as a brand for quite

00:25:38.420 some time. You know, we were about to put a lot of Tesla solar panels on the cabin. And

00:25:46.060 And now that Elon Musk has revealed himself in so many different ways, as the leader of that brand, I don't support Tesla.

00:25:57.020 I won't buy a Tesla car.

00:25:58.300 I'm going to get a different kind of solar panel.

00:26:00.360 So I do think that values matter when it comes to the CEO of a brand.

00:26:05.420 And Hannah is the CEO of a brand.

00:26:07.740 So I think it matters to talk about those values.

00:26:10.680 Absolutely.

00:26:11.120 and i think that is a kind of brand business and media criticism uh that that is completely valid

00:26:19.760 in this day and age because they're make no mistake ballerina farm is growing the hell out

00:26:24.940 of that brand and they're they are poised to be the next chip and joanna games oh yeah absolutely

00:26:30.880 and i think too like

00:26:32.860 we talked about this a lot in 2020 like i feel like we had this conversation

00:26:39.960 you know i wrote about it a lot of the time and like you do have like this it's like your buy

00:26:47.800 power your follow power is your buying power right so like if you are following someone

00:26:52.300 and they come out and say you know i'm a huge trump supporter and you're not a trump supporter

00:26:59.140 then the thing to do is unfollow them because that's your buying power as the consumer of

00:27:04.080 content that is your buying power and it's also very it's also very simple it doesn't take a lot

00:27:10.660 of drama but i also think that if someone is really pissing you off and draining your mental

00:27:17.340 health where you're obsessing over them unfollow them like please unfollow them that is that is

00:27:24.280 also a time to unfollow exactly i i'm not on x any longer i don't i don't even want to i'm not

00:27:31.020 on Twitter. OK, I'm not going to call it X. It's so dumb. It's the dumbest name ever. I'm not on

00:27:34.940 Twitter any longer, but I'm also not on Twitter. I'm also not on Blue Sky because I don't want

00:27:38.520 another thing. So unless it's going to sell books, I'm not joining. But I don't follow Elon Musk on

00:27:46.220 any platforms and I don't follow a lot of people who run brands that make me uncomfortable. But

00:27:53.120 again, I feel very lucky that I live in this world of influencing and I understand how it works. And

00:27:58.960 I think the vast majority of people don't and that sucks and it's not necessarily their fault

00:28:03.320 because this level of content has been thrust upon us before we were equipped to understand

00:28:08.260 how to function with it. Yeah, not to derail too much, but I think the biggest... You can always

00:28:13.680 derail. I think that, and this is actually something I talked about right after the election.

00:28:18.120 I think the biggest thing that scares me and that I really, really, really do not like is

00:28:26.740 the proliferation of these blind item tea account drama accounts on tiktok especially but on reels

00:28:37.160 where people just will say anything anything i'm terrified of them and as a person who used to

00:28:47.080 write celebrity gossip who i mean i i still consider myself you know one of the ogs of that

00:28:54.700 because I was writing celebrity gossip in print for the New York Daily News

00:28:58.300 before the internet took off, right?

00:29:00.960 Before Perez Hilton.

00:29:02.160 And that was something.

00:29:03.120 It really was.

00:29:04.300 And then I ran, you know, a couple of really trashy magazines.

00:29:07.680 But the level of, like, the legalities we had to go through to print anything,

00:29:15.120 and you know this from being in a magazine, are so huge.

00:29:19.100 The number of checks and balances, the number of phone calls I had to make,

00:29:22.820 the number of stories that i killed over the years which makes me so much fun when i get a

00:29:27.520 little drunk at cocktail parties because i'll just tell you anything oh yeah it is so intense and the

00:29:34.880 fact that these blind item accounts exist now is terrifying to me it's really really scary and i

00:29:42.880 think the thing that is freaks me out the most is you know i'm very blessed that most every single

00:29:50.880 person in my social circle, who is not just like someone random from high school that I follow,

00:29:56.760 like people I actually talk to, like never fell into any of the like weird, like conspiracy

00:30:01.740 theories, like everyone's very like media literate. But they will be like, and they always ask me,

00:30:10.820 you know, always, which I don't mind. I love it. And they'll say, have you heard of this thing?

00:30:17.940 And I like I went down a rabbit hole on X, Y, Z, and they'll like repeat these things that I'm just like, that is not true.

00:30:25.440 Like, where are you hearing this?

00:30:27.560 And it's really, really scary.

00:30:30.980 And I think that the way that very smart, educated people, I mean, across the board, just will take anything on a T account about a celebrity and believe it is really not good for media literacy.

00:30:45.920 and no I think that you know but it's like really hard to combat as well because like

00:30:55.740 craziness and conspiracy theory and drama is what builds accounts so accounts yeah it's like

00:31:02.180 absolutely I think I said this on Instagram the other day but I was like you know I have like

00:31:08.060 what 45,000 followers on Instagram I I could I I always say like the two things I could do

00:31:14.020 i could have you know when i was 25 come out and been like i'm super maga or whatever

00:31:21.700 and i could be famous right now you could be famous it was not that hard to be a grifter

00:31:26.900 um i'm sometimes i wonder if i should just turn into a grifter i'm like would i sell more copies

00:31:31.820 of the sicilian inheritance i don't maybe right and that's the thing like i could come on and be

00:31:36.620 like just start spouting random gossip about anyone hailey hailey and selena you know like

00:31:44.960 all this random stuff that people glom onto and i could build my i could triple my following

00:31:49.560 easily easily but the reason i don't do that is because you have integrity

00:31:54.300 yeah i'm not just like i don't know i care about things like journalistic journalistic integrity

00:32:03.360 um and i mean i think that's the scariest also why you're never going to be a billionaire stuff

00:32:08.080 i know never well maybe i should reconsider everything maybe you should consider maybe

00:32:13.860 you should reconsider that yeah um all right let's take one more quick break when we get back

00:32:18.540 i want to talk about the entrepreneurial ship of it all and also five marys actually

00:32:25.320 okay we're back i was really interested that uh hannah when she was talking to you

00:32:40.260 talked about five marys um her for me the origin story of how she came to create this farm

00:32:49.300 was very very cohesive i mean it was it was very well thought out it was like i had this idea

00:32:55.320 I reached out to this other very successful influencer at Five Marys who, frankly, I had

00:33:00.180 followed a long time ago. Me too. Me too. I followed her a really long time ago. A really

00:33:08.440 long time ago. Yeah. Yes. And for people who don't know Five Marys, it is a woman, Mary Heffernan,

00:33:16.560 and her husband who left their lives in Silicon Valley to start a ranch in rural California and

00:33:21.440 turn it into a business. With the help of social media, they, you know, put the whole process out

00:33:26.760 there and gained a lot of followers. And because they were a direct-to-consumer business, as

00:33:31.340 Bellarina Farm is currently, Hannah thought that it was a good business model. And she told you

00:33:37.720 that she reached out. Tell me a little bit about that. Yeah. So Hannah said that she had followed

00:33:43.100 Five Marys probably around the same time that we all followed Five Marys. And so they, I mean,

00:33:51.880 I think if you know Ballerina Farm lore, this is retreading, but they had moved to Brazil so

00:33:57.320 her husband could take a job in a security startup down there. And they lived there for a couple of

00:34:02.700 years. And I guess she had said that the main reason that she wanted them to start a business

00:34:08.240 together was one, it was something that her parents have done. You know, again, if you're

00:34:12.220 up on Ballerina Farm floor, you know, that her parents owned a flower shop together for many

00:34:15.920 years. And when they were still living in New York, she was she came to her husband and she

00:34:21.880 said, I want to start a business together. And he was reticent. He didn't really want to do it.

00:34:26.500 But he was like, let's think about it. But they didn't know what sort of business they wanted to

00:34:30.940 start. And what she told me was when they were in Brazil, they started going to these things called

00:34:38.880 farm hotels which kind of seems like a b&b here in the states where yeah you go we don't have them

00:34:45.380 in the states actually yeah a lot of them in the states they have them in like europe and stuff

00:34:50.140 yeah yeah i go to agro i mean i mostly stay in agro turismo is when i'm in sicily that's cool

00:34:54.840 yeah it's oh they are fantastic i mean then you know they cook you a meal you get to go you know

00:35:00.100 pet some freaking goats and pick it pick an olive yeah yeah it's super nice um so that was something

00:35:08.600 that oops sorry um i didn't turn off like no i think you're still going i think you're still

00:35:15.520 going oh i just i got a slack notification let me pause i didn't turn off my union slack

00:35:20.820 we turned off my normal slack uh okay okay um so they really liked these farm hotels and you know

00:35:32.500 various parts of the business and that was when she and they together had this light bulb moment

00:35:38.400 up. What if we did a ranch? And that was our and did a direct consumer farming company doing like

00:35:46.520 houseware and meat and baked goods and all that kind of stuff. So after they had this idea is when

00:35:52.480 she followed Five Marys and saw essentially a blueprint for how she could do this business

00:35:58.060 because Five Marys had already started doing it, was already really successful marketing primarily

00:36:03.640 through social media um and so she said she reached out to mary and mary essentially wrote

00:36:11.880 a course that she now teaches to other people for hannah and hannah was kind of her first student

00:36:20.340 and you can go on five mary's farm um website and they sell a lot of courses on various things

00:36:26.020 including social media because courses are the new way that influencers make money okay oh yeah

00:36:30.760 definitely yeah um and she hannah said that she's been out to their ranch actually multiple times

00:36:38.960 to kind of see how they do things i want to i want to go to the ranch they've got ranch camp

00:36:43.580 oh yeah yeah and so i thought that was really interesting i i because i i hadn't thought of

00:36:51.220 five marys in a really long time and i was like wow i hadn't either that i know yeah no i was

00:36:55.140 i was actually psyched to see the five marys shout out and the thing that i thought was really

00:36:58.880 interesting is like yeah i guess she really did follow the five marys model but five marys

00:37:06.180 while very successful is nowhere as big as ballerina farm no no and uh is nowhere as

00:37:15.600 controversial as ballerina farm which i would posit to you and your listeners why that is

00:37:23.780 Because if you look at their bio, let's take the Evie magazine thing out of it.

00:37:28.000 Let's do before Evie magazine.

00:37:29.340 Yeah, let's do the before Evie.

00:37:31.760 And then I just want five minutes on Evie.

00:37:33.720 Yeah. 0.99

00:37:34.300 Five hot minutes on Evie.

00:37:36.360 So their bios are actually really similar.

00:37:41.120 I believe the Heffernins are Catholic.

00:37:43.700 They don't really talk about their faith, though.

00:37:45.720 They don't talk about their faith.

00:37:46.880 Yeah.

00:37:47.320 But it is, you know, it's a very Catholic thing to have, you know, a lot of daughters marry

00:37:52.560 and then call them by their middle name um and you know mary doesn't have quite as many kids

00:37:59.600 they have four four yeah which still seems like a lot of children to me yeah me too yeah um yeah

00:38:06.220 they're they're just not that different they do a lot of they post a lot of the same content

00:38:09.980 um they post they do a lot of the same things and so you know you can kind of quibble like oh why

00:38:15.640 does one person blow up on social media versus another and um hot blondes yeah i mean that 0.96

00:38:21.500 definitely weighs into it and this is i also think mary is hot generally it's totally smoke show okay 0.99

00:38:27.380 but um hot bonds do really well on the internet yeah yeah but also and also i think that hannah 0.92

00:38:33.220 had more pregnant bellies and i think that pregnancy and baby content does much better

00:38:37.160 oh absolutely absolutely um but no one's ever called mary a trad wife no no and i i guess i

00:38:48.280 my question to you and your listeners is why is that and i don't know because i think that mary

00:38:54.760 for it's so interesting do you think mary's like how did i get pulled into all of this

00:38:59.660 yeah mary's like this is not a yeah you know from the very beginning has said i'm a business owner

00:39:05.520 and that my husband and i are equal partners in this business owner whereas for a long time

00:39:09.800 hannah was saying i'm just a mom just i'm just a housewife and she did call herself a housewife

00:39:15.280 many times early on, which is what I'm like, why I'm saying this is a big brand pivot. The New York

00:39:21.400 Times in the first story they did about her called her a housewife. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 1.00

00:39:28.140 That definitely could be. That definitely could be. I think that is. And, you know, Mary, I think

00:39:32.580 from the very beginning, she said, look, I went to this college. I went to William & Mary. I majored

00:39:37.620 in this. I was going to become a doctor. You know, I and then I started I started this business with

00:39:42.720 my husband I think the business it's been very business forward from the very beginning and

00:39:47.960 Hannah has it has led with wife and mother and now she's admitting that this is a business

00:39:55.620 which is what I've wanted to hear from the brand for quite some time I'm like can you just say

00:39:59.680 that you're the CEO of this brand like you're not just a wife and mom because if you admit that

00:40:04.060 you're that you're that you're the CEO of this I think everyone can swallow it a little bit easier

00:40:08.620 yeah that makes me want to bring up what i thought was the second most interesting point

00:40:15.340 that she made which she doesn't see herself as following a traditional path 1.00

00:40:21.640 so that's why it's like i mean again they you know i didn't ask about trad wives that was

00:40:26.840 something that they declined to answer so yeah they did did they say trad wives is off limits

00:40:30.940 were they like if you mentioned trad wives no they were very polite about it but you know i i

00:40:36.020 kind of sent um you know we kind of talked about what the parameters would be and that was something

00:40:40.740 that they they asked me not to ask about it you know I usually say yes um but you know we talked

00:40:47.280 about um we talked we talked about other things and there's one of the answers she gave was she

00:40:57.840 doesn't see herself as traditional she sees herself as like kind of bucking tradition because

00:41:04.760 in her tradition women didn't work right and she has always worked so she sees herself

00:41:15.500 as kind of a trailblazer and i thought that was really interesting because by any measure you

00:41:23.980 know me sitting here in brooklyn she seems very traditional to me but that's that's my world view

00:41:29.780 you know yes it is exactly so i don't know i just thought that was an interesting point

00:41:34.940 it is it is interesting that that is actually the great segue into the evie magazine of it all

00:41:41.260 because had i read your profile and then also the new york times puff piece in the cooking section

00:41:48.940 uh i would have been like you know this is a really big turnaround this is a big moment

00:41:53.600 She's really she's owning owning herself as a business owner. And then for me, for me, the waters get totally muddied with being a cover girl on this intensely far right conservative magazine that, you know, promotes things like they're they're very against birth control.

00:42:15.720 They're very pro-natalist. They're very anti-LGBTQ. And, you know, I don't know. My question is, can you have it all? If the answer to, oh, well, we don't discriminate, can you appear on Fox News and also MSNBC?

00:42:35.240 You know, can you can you live in both worlds? Because being on the cover of Evie magazine, it did feel like it told me some things about their traditional values. But then she goes and tells the New York Times, I don't consider myself traditional, especially the headline of the Evie magazine of the new American dream.

00:42:55.380 um it's interesting i don't have the answers to any of this i'm not an expert in anything anymore

00:43:02.420 i just i think they're all questions that beg asking absolutely and i think that again it's

00:43:10.280 kind of more of a macro question as well you know i don't want to get too into politics but like

00:43:16.420 that's kind of a question we're asking across the board you know where we're an extremely divided

00:43:20.680 country where people are only consuming media that goes to their worldview. Can anyone do both?

00:43:29.980 Can anyone do both? I don't know. I don't know. The answer is, you know, I was thinking the other

00:43:36.640 day. I did a Broadway doubleheader the other day, which was delightful and wonderful and also kind

00:43:43.560 of intense because I finished it up with a night at Marie's crisis. And I'm like, wow, I'm really

00:43:48.400 to end this to win it. And, you know, so many Broadway stars and celebrities are so outspoken

00:43:54.580 about their progressive values and their hatred of Trump and Red America. And yet people that go 0.91

00:44:01.040 see Broadway shows, you know, the lifeblood of tourists visiting Broadway must come from these

00:44:06.120 red states and hold these red values. So how do you reconcile consuming this media with these

00:44:12.000 people that say they actually hate you and hate your values? I don't know. What did you see?

00:44:18.400 Oh, I saw the new Romeo and Juliet, which is, oh yes. So, I mean, it's so good. It is a Gen Z

00:44:27.040 re-imagining of Romeo and Juliet at the round theater. So you're like, it's very, very immersive.

00:44:33.640 You feel like you're in a freaking nightclub. Yeah. I've heard that. I've heard that. It's 0.94

00:44:37.160 so much fun and it's a limited run. So if anyone, if anyone wants to go see it, you should buy your

00:44:42.560 tickets right now uh because yeah it was it was a vibe and a half i really enjoyed it and then i

00:44:50.600 saw suffs which is is closing um and you know then i just you know started i don't think anyone from

00:44:58.300 red states was in the audience of suffs but i i do think that they were there to see romeo and

00:45:02.300 juliet because it was starring rachel zegler and kit connor right so um and who both of whom were

00:45:08.320 wonderful in it. But stuff just makes you ball. I had Nikki James on the podcast this week and

00:45:17.240 you're like, wow, yeah, this hits differently now. Also, why am I so ignorant about what actually

00:45:21.800 happened in the women's suffragist movement? That sounds like something that I would just 1.00

00:45:25.440 be Googling for like the rest of the week. Have you seen the show You Have to Go?

00:45:29.000 No, I was actually just going to say that I... I need you to go immediately.

00:45:33.440 I've seen, like, no Broadway shows since July of 2022 when I had a baby.

00:45:39.980 I've currently tried to figure out when I can solo go to Wicked because we switch off.

00:45:46.140 I don't know if you and your husband do this, but we, like, switch off going to movies because I don't want to pay for a babysitter for a movie.

00:45:52.020 No, no, I'm not paying for a babysitter to go see a movie.

00:45:53.960 And also, I love the movie theater alone.

00:45:56.060 Yeah, it's way better.

00:45:57.140 Love it.

00:45:58.420 So, yeah, we're trying to figure out, like, when he can see it, when I can see it.

00:46:03.440 Or if just, I should see it and he should wait. 0.70

00:46:05.840 You should just go see Suf's.

00:46:07.580 I want you to go see Suf's before this closes.

00:46:09.980 All right, all right.

00:46:11.100 And go do a matinee, actually.

00:46:14.020 Oh, that sounds really nice.

00:46:16.240 Right?

00:46:16.680 Because the music is so good.

00:46:18.500 It's a bop.

00:46:19.220 And then afterwards, I'm still Googling all of this history that was in there. 0.99

00:46:23.060 And I'm like, holy shit. 0.98

00:46:25.600 Wow. 1.00

00:46:26.300 Yeah. 0.97

00:46:26.560 I mean, I'm like a walking, talking advertisement for Suf's and Romeo and Juliet right now.

00:46:29.740 Also, and Juliet.

00:46:30.800 If you haven't seen And Juliet, you got to see that one because that one is a delight.

00:46:35.760 Yeah, I actually have seen that one.

00:46:37.360 That's probably the only Broadway show that I have seen in the past three years.

00:46:44.000 I went when I was about to go into labor with Eliza.

00:46:47.600 So I was like, I should see it now because I'm not going to go for another two years.

00:46:50.260 Yeah.

00:46:50.900 Yeah.

00:46:51.560 That was a digression.

00:46:53.320 But, again, all of these questions around how much do the values of the people whose lives we consume, of these celebrities, how much do their values matter? Do we want to be giving them our money if they disagree with our values?

00:47:09.980 I think from here on out, Hannah and anyone associated with Ballerina Farm will likely be very careful about talking about their values if they want to move into the mainstream realm of getting, you know, the kinds of television and magazine exposure that we saw with Chip and Joanna Gaines.

00:47:29.060 yeah yeah um they won't talk about it anymore um but i will say you know up until now

00:47:37.800 their their portrayal of homesteading homeschooling this back to the earth ethos

00:47:46.140 all of which is only only possible if you have a shit ton of money because farms are so expensive

00:47:51.580 and the failure rate is so high um i uh i was in uh scotland i did a a 10-day hiking trip with

00:48:01.760 my mom and my sister-in-law and so it was a lot of farms and it was like you know you're basically

00:48:08.640 just walking through hike hiking through farms for six seven days and um it was like definitely

00:48:16.360 I was like wow this is amazing and then I kept thinking to myself like I bet I'm I'm like very

00:48:22.700 type a very like clean freak too and I bet owning something like a sheep would just absolutely drive

00:48:28.400 the insane and I would be continuously disgusted so like they're filthy yeah I don't think it's

00:48:33.940 for me like you know when everyone was getting chickens I was like that's the last thing I want

00:48:38.780 no chickens chickens are mean and I think you know again looking at you know the ballerina

00:48:45.940 farm account it does look clean and beautiful and pristine as do all of these accounts and they do

00:48:51.820 make homesteading and farming and homeschooling and child rearing look very clean very clean and

00:48:58.560 very beautiful in a way that is absolutely not reality and i do think that that is something we

00:49:03.560 can continue holding them to task i don't blame them they're creating a media company uh but if

00:49:09.960 people think that they're looking at this person's reality it's a media literacy problem it's a media

00:49:15.520 literacy problem and i think it's okay to feel feels feel very uncomfortable with that i mean i

00:49:21.160 wrote i should send you the trad wife murder mystery oh yeah i want to read the galley um we

00:49:27.460 don't we actually we don't even have printed galleys yet because i wrote it so fast but

00:49:30.740 the the unbelievable things that i wrote it you know earlier this summer i wrote it in july

00:49:37.200 and so much of what i wrote is now coming true and i'm like i'm i'm just a sicilian witch i'm

00:49:43.380 just so psychic oh my god yeah no send me i'll send it to him i'll send it to him yeah it's a

00:49:48.440 you're gonna laugh laugh out loud in a lot of parts it's a romp it's very good fun but now

00:49:53.500 weirdly prescient in a way that i did not expect is there anything else that i'm not asking you

00:49:58.640 about this story i don't think so but i did want to say that the article from evie hasn't even come

00:50:05.720 out yet because it's print only which is print it's print only i subscribed to it i ordered it

00:50:12.580 wow yeah well you know i do a lot for my listeners i do i do i give i give and i give i mean

00:50:19.340 i don't know i'm like problematic views recurrence of print like what if they sell out this magazine

00:50:27.440 that'd be insane they're gonna sell out this magazine i what i'm dying to get and i put in

00:50:33.020 a request for this i want to know their numbers because for for selling print issues of this

00:50:37.200 magazine because i think that will allow us to have data of the ballerina farm effect

00:50:42.160 yeah for sure for sure because i mean the i i had no idea who the people were on their past

00:50:49.420 i think they've only had three issues their past two covers but if all of a sudden they sell

00:50:54.220 a million copies of this that is like a direct data point of her impact yeah yeah yeah so we'll

00:51:01.120 see we'll see if they'll share that um i know their traffic spiked like crazy uh when when

00:51:06.440 they when they posted uh the cover so there there already is is a you know way way to quantify this

00:51:13.980 in a way that i think is fascinating um i am super bullish on print so well we're gonna start

00:51:21.320 influencer influencer weekly tell everyone where they can find you and all of your stuff

00:51:25.640 and your wonderful book which makes an excellent christmas present oh yeah hell yeah it does why

00:51:30.360 we do a why don't we do a little bundle oh you know what oh let's do a giveaway bundle that'd be

00:51:35.200 fun yeah done easy okay done okay um i am at steffy big neil on instagram now twitter i actually just

00:51:45.580 made a a little twitter for myself how fun for you not not a twitter sorry a tiktok you use a

00:51:50.860 tiktok oh i'm trying i'm trying okay i'm yeah i dabble um it's mostly just to respond on glamour's

00:51:59.440 tiktoks because people make funny jokes about things i write and i go in there and i'm like

00:52:03.400 lol um yeah stephie mcneil instagram tiktok um glamour magazine that's where you can find me

00:52:11.200 and you're writing so much great stuff on glamour i love glamour my first my first magazine story

00:52:15.320 ever was in glamour oh yeah i know it's a good place it's a good place it's good vibe

00:52:19.520 that is all we have for today thanks for being here thanks for tolerating another episode on

00:52:26.440 Ballerina Farm. You're the best. The absolute best. Go pre-order. Everyone is lying to you,

00:52:32.480 because it's really the Tradwife murder mystery that we have all been dying to read. And I'll 0.99

00:52:37.980 keep making that pun until we hit the bestseller list. Also, go do something nice for yourself.

00:52:43.660 Wrap yourself a present, and then unwrap it, and then watch the new Lindsay Lohan rom-com

00:52:49.080 on Netflix. It looks really good. Also, she looks fantastic. So here, so here, for the Lindsay

00:52:55.960 Lohan reboot. Oh, by the way, I'm heading to Iceland later this week, so send me all of your

00:53:01.900 Iceland recommendations, and the wonderful Casey Cheska and I are going to be getting tipsy on

00:53:08.280 some Viking grog, and I'll be podcasting for you from there. Bye!

00:53:25.960 Thank you.

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - December 10, 2024

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