00:02:36.860so the second that any kind of ballerina farm news breaks there's only one person i want to
00:02:45.260talk to there's only there's only one person who i text and i gotta tell you overnight i got
00:02:53.980probably hundreds of messages about this new ballerina farm profile and interview and i think
00:03:00.540it's very interesting because hannah nealman the human behind the ballerina farm brand
00:03:06.760does not do a lot of interviews so this is a big deal in fact we rarely we rarely hear her speak
00:03:16.280about this business and this story broke and i immediately had to send it to you for expert
00:03:23.560commentary and then get get you on the horn to to to chat to chat through this you are fresh off
00:03:31.840reading this and as yes as our ballerina farm brand expert and guru the creator of the wonderful
00:03:41.960substack in pursuit of clean countertops that everyone should be following tell me your initial
00:03:48.160reaction to this interview i mean i was really sort of floored at how much access um the reporter
00:03:56.980got um that was my first you know reaction was wow she spent like a significant amount of time
00:04:05.120that there she was on the ranch um she spoke to both daniel and hannah um and then my second
00:04:13.480reaction was really just a little bit shock and awe that she managed to be so
00:04:21.460smartly critical in a profile. I mean, I think you and I talked about the New York Times profile
00:04:29.760and how it was very innocuous and really avoided any criticism. And I think it left a lot of people
00:04:36.960who've been following ballerina farm sort of unsatisfied absolutely absolutely but this really
00:04:43.400poked at gender roles at the idea of trad wives in general particularly daniel's role in everything
00:04:51.300um yeah i was i felt very validated in my just long-term sort of i don't know red flags that
00:05:00.760I'm waving when I when I think about Daniel Nealman. I mean, she doesn't directly say he's controlling, but they give her enough in the interview for the reader to make their own assessment, which I thought was really smart.
00:05:19.940A hundred percent. And so let's back up. Let's give the bird's eye view here for people. This is in the Times of London, which I actually think just has a better maybe distance from this and from American politics and American culture in order to do this correctly.
00:05:42.500because the Times, the New York Times, did shit the bed when it came to doing a profile of the
00:05:49.580Ballerina Farm brand. I don't think that, you know, they were nearly critical enough of the0.93
00:05:54.920influence this brand has. I don't think they recognized the power and the money here. They
00:06:01.800did really write Hannah Nielman off as a housewife and homemaker, ignoring the fact that she is the
00:06:10.000CEO of this brand, and I think the Times UK did a better job. This is a profile. The headline of it
00:06:16.940is Meet the Queen of the Trad Wives. Trad Wives is in quotations. The subhead is Hannah Nealman,
00:06:23.820known to her 9 million followers as Ballerina Farm, milks cows, gives birth without pain relief,1.00
00:06:30.580and breastfeeds at beauty pageants. Is this an empowering new model of womanhood1.00
00:06:36.660or a hammer blow for feminism? Two questions, two questions that we have been trying to answer
00:06:43.540for two years now. And frankly, I mean, I did, I just, I just told you that I'm, you know,
00:06:49.840still diligently, diligently plucking away at this Chadwife murder mystery. And I do feel psychic0.99
00:06:55.760sometimes, I swear to freaking God, because sometimes things pop up in fiction that I am
00:07:01.540writing. And then you find out that they are, in fact, reality. And you're just blown away. And
00:07:07.480you're like, stop being such a Sicilian freaking witch, Piazza. Okay. Okay. Stop. Stop knowing1.00
00:07:13.860things. Stop knowing things. Now, I want to go through this piece, this profile, and see what
00:07:21.780we learned what are some things that are revealed in this piece yeah i mean she the reporter
00:07:31.860directly asks hannah about feminism and she quotes hannah as saying i think she gets the word
00:07:39.540feminist like half out of her mouth and then interrupts herself and i think sort of back
00:07:45.020petals and says i don't even know what feminism means anymore um i thought it was interesting1.00
00:07:51.820how hannah seemed to edit and censor herself sort of throughout um you know in both the
00:08:00.920feminism question and also in the question about you know being a trad wife she very carefully
00:08:07.080says i'm not sure you know i relate to that you know citing the fact that she and daniel are both
00:08:14.540like co-ceos of the ballerina farm brand um and the other thing that was interesting about just
00:08:22.560the way hannah came through in the interview was she the reporter talks about how she you know was
00:08:28.180supposed to have at least 15 minutes alone with hannah and that never happened daniel was always
00:08:34.200there the kids were always there so she continues to feel sort of tenuous or slippery to identify
00:08:45.020in this coverage um and i just wonder how deliberate that was you know on both daniel
00:08:51.860and hannah's part and you know if if that hard to know who she is and what motivates her factor
00:08:59.480does drive her success and her followers so yeah I thought it was interesting it really was and
00:09:08.440you know I want to point out some things I as a person who has covered celebrity culture for a
00:09:14.000long long time reading this profile these are two people who have been media trained
00:09:19.300these are two people who have clearly clearly been coached on how to avoid questions on how
00:09:28.280to flip questions on their heads. This is not off the cuff. They knew exactly what they were
00:09:35.260getting into and what they wanted to say in this interview and what they wanted to accomplish.
00:09:40.380Again, going back to the fact that Ballerina Farm is a brand, this is a brand profile. This is not
00:09:47.440a profile of a marriage or of a couple. They accomplished what they wanted to accomplish.
00:09:52.800The Times does a good job with critique. But at the same time, I know in my soul, in my witchy soul, that there is a team of people behind this brand directing it to be what they want it to be. And I really, I swear to God, I think that they are poising themselves to move into much bigger things going forward.
00:10:16.960Ballerina Farm clearly wants to be a pioneer woman, Martha Stewart kind of situation and brand.
00:10:25.420Again, this is terrifying to me because I'm like literally writing this in fiction right now, but now I'm seeing it play out in real life.
00:10:32.200And, you know, I mean, I think that there could be some kind of political future for Daniel.
00:10:40.000But I think they are clearly setting themselves up.
00:10:43.440There are powerful forces behind them. And they just, they said what they wanted to say. Like, this is not, it feels like a lot of insight because we haven't gotten insight before. In the same way, you know, an Oprah interview with Tom Cruise feels like we're getting something special, but it was actually manufactured by Tom Cruise's team.
00:11:09.320Right, right. What did you think of Daniel saying that sometimes Hannah needs to be in bed for a week due to exhaustion?
00:11:19.800Right. Right. I mean, how do we how do we feel about that? I mean, like, why did he volunteer that information? I wonder.
00:11:29.220so strange so strange i want to read that i want to read that um for for for the for the people
00:11:35.860because daniel did come off as very controlling in this piece and so here's here's the paragraph
00:11:43.000they have a cleaner which is a revelation because you know their house looks great all the time
00:11:48.720and yet we never again invisible labor we never see cleaners we never see nannies right and so
00:11:53.920that feels like something not not an actual admission but a planned admission to be like
00:11:59.700we are authentic we can't clean our own house like okay like that was that was a that was a
00:12:05.740planned thing right then it says neilman does all the food shopping kids in tow and cooks from
00:12:11.980scratch they don't do ready meals i don't know how much of that but i believe but whatever
00:12:17.800despite more i mean that feels like it's setting her up to have a cooking show let's be honest okay
00:12:22.760meals for and and totally and a book deal like cookbooks like and these things they have not
00:12:29.020done yet with the brand but it's it's definitely coming it's definitely coming despite the more
00:12:35.760traditional aspects of their relationship daniel is a hands-on father taking the kids out to the
00:12:41.400farm and doing all the laundry not the cleaners the cleaners don't do the laundry daniel apparently
00:12:47.460doesn't work. Right, right, right, right. The children appear to look after each other quite
00:12:52.680well, too. So I'm saying that as one of my children just beamed the other in the face with
00:13:00.120a Duplo five minutes ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There are so many that they seem to
00:13:06.180have become an almost self-sustaining entity. Still, Daniel says, Neelman sometimes gets so
00:13:13.440ill from exhaustion that she can't get out of bed for a week. Daniel saying this
00:13:20.820says two things to me. Two things to me. This whole paragraph makes me think that they want
00:13:27.780to paint Daniel as a more hands-on, involved parent. Good for his image, right? Oh, she doesn't
00:13:35.540do everything. I do the laundry. And if she's in bed for a week, it's kind of intimating that he0.99
00:13:42.060picks up the slack but yeah if she cooks everything from scratch and she's in bed for a week
00:13:49.020then i don't know i mean that that's a really interesting i mean again i think it's a detail
00:13:55.880that they threw in there to try to be authentic there's a there's a right way to be authentic
00:14:00.360in this world and a wrong way to be authentic but not being able to get out of bed for a week
00:14:06.200because of exhaustion that speaks to a larger issue yeah in someone's life yeah i was really
00:14:16.820thrown off by that because that's that's not you know she sometimes needs afternoon naps
00:14:22.840like that's a really really extreme um lifestyle if you are doing so much that you're in bed for
00:14:31.740a week here and there i mean and ill with exhaustion like i don't know it was just very
00:14:37.000dark i thought it's dark it's dark it's dark and then it's like thrown in i mean it really is just
00:14:43.180just thrown in there uh what i found to be an uncomfortable way let's take a quick break here
00:14:51.760let's leave everyone with a week of sleeping off their exhaustion and when we come back we're gonna
00:14:58.260get into the rest of the article. Okay, we are back. We're back with Sarah Peterson,
00:15:13.780my soulmate, my friend, my guru, my guru when it comes to the ballerina farm brand.
00:15:21.280So the Times of UK profile, after we find out that sometimes Hannah takes to her bed,
00:15:32.140We also talk a little bit about childbirth.
00:15:36.560We talk about the bedroom, the bedroom where she had her children, with the exception of two of them who were born in a hospital.
00:15:45.140But if you follow the Ballerina Farm brand, you know that they have had a lot of home births without pain medication.
00:15:58.340And this profile kind of dives into it.
00:16:02.720And then the reporter inserts themselves into this story in a very interesting way.
00:16:08.740And I think it's because they knew that there was so much obfuscation here.
00:16:13.920So the reporter says, I want to ask her about birth control, but we are surrounded by so many of her children and Daniel is back in the room now, too.
00:16:24.620Do you, I pause and look at her fixedly, plan pregnancies?
00:16:31.640It's very interesting to me that the reporter felt like they couldn't mention birth control as if birth control is a dirty word.
00:16:41.500Because we are living in a country right now where certain political forces are trying to take away our right to birth control.
00:16:50.340And this reporter felt like they couldn't even say the word.
00:16:53.980They couldn't even say the word in front of Daniel and these children.
00:16:58.200I mean, see, I see that less of, you know, less as the reporter being squeamish and more her wanting to actually get an answer.
00:17:07.640And I think if she had used the phrase birth control, I can see walls going up faster than if it's, you know, a more benign phrasing of the question.
00:17:18.540Yeah, yeah, it is. It's benign. I mean, and yes, as a person who just loves the idea of birth control, who wants to talk about it and scream it from the rooftops, I get that it may be more sensitive in some sections of the country.
00:17:36.800that said it shouldn't be i think that we should be telling all children male and female about
00:17:40.980birth control and you know from from birth essentially from birth i do um for sure and so
00:17:48.460let's go to daniel's daniel answers not not hannah here yep he says no he says no they don't plan
00:17:57.080pregnancies and when he says no then hannah interjects and says it's very much a matter
00:18:04.040of prayer for me i'm like god is it time to bring another one to the earth and i've never been told
00:18:11.880no yeah yeah i mean their mormonism was really front and center i thought in this piece um more
00:18:23.420so than the top the new york times profile um i think doesn't daniel directly say or they both
00:18:33.500say um you know they oppose abortion yeah right don't they yes isn't that doesn't it come right
00:18:41.880after i don't they don't say it in those words but it says here here's the paragraph and i've
00:18:47.740got some thoughts on this i do does neilman agree with the stance on abortion the mormon church's
00:18:55.520stance on on abortion which opposes what they call elective abortions um daniel again answers
00:19:04.780this first the church is a lot more lenient than a lot of states in the u.s which it's not saying
00:19:12.340anything well no but you know what what i do want to say here is the timing of this is very
00:19:19.940Very interesting. And we talk a lot on here about how influencers and quote unquote traditional influencers are being used by conservative forces in this country, by, you know, very heavily patriarchal Christian forces in this country to try to shape our country right now, to try to shape the politics of our country right now.
00:19:46.080that is a thing that is actually happening. And I don't think that this is coming after the
00:19:53.200Republican National Convention and also parroting a lot of their messages, because when abortion
00:20:00.220was mentioned at the Republican Convention, what they said was, oh, we didn't outlaw it. We turned
00:20:05.980it over to the states. Daniel was saying exactly that. The church is lenient than a lot of states.
00:20:13.060It's up to the states to decide. So the echoing of these conservative phrases, to me, is telling. It truly, it truly is. And the fact that they're being so much more open about their Christian beliefs after we just saw a Republican convention that was very, very permissive and open in expressing Christian ideology.
00:20:39.920these two things feel very linked in my mind yeah yeah yeah for sure i mean
00:20:46.680yeah yeah i i mean i just fully agree with that i'm looking for there with another piece
00:20:54.940well his view his views here on abortion are very very clear you know he says the church
00:21:02.060is against i'm going to get an abortion because i'm not happy i'm pregnant we see the joy of
00:21:07.640having kids. The fact that anyone believes that is the reason that women get abortions. I'm not0.94
00:21:16.400happy. Not the fact that I can't afford a child. Not the fact that this child could be in danger
00:21:25.140if I have it because I'm in an abusive relationship, because I'm living in extreme poverty.
00:21:31.540that they're pinning it on a woman not being happy.
00:21:35.540Frank, I mean, it just, it makes me despise him in a very, very visceral way.
00:22:24.160Um, I thought photography was fascinating, especially if we compare it to the New York Times profile.
00:22:35.200Describe it. Describe it to people who haven't read this yet.
00:22:38.020Okay. So the New York Times profile, the photography is very, um, it really emphasizes the Vegas of it all, um, because the interview took place during the Mrs. World pageant.
00:22:49.440And it's very like harsh lighting. You see sort of like the artificial trappings of Vegas. You see like lots of plastic, lots of makeup. It's it's stark. It's not nothing is softly lit. It's really in contrast to Hannah's or whoever's taking the photographs for her Instagram, which is, you know, and these photographs I thought were absolutely stunning.
00:23:57.520There is one photo that I want to want to call out with Hannah leading a cow through through a pasture with a baby attached to her belly in a in a forward in a forward carry.
00:24:12.200Beautiful linen carrier. Do you know what brand of carrier that is? I've been looking for a label. I can't find one.
00:24:24.240I'm wondering if she's about to start her own brand of baby carrier or if someone could identify that brand of baby carrier and it's going to sell out.0.95
00:24:31.200I mean, it looks like I wouldn't put an actual baby in it because a real baby would shit all over that thing.
00:24:39.580But, you know, you could put a baby in it for a picture.0.98
00:26:01.080I'm hoping that by the time this airs, someone is going to tell me what brand this top is and who made this beautiful, beautiful baby carrier.
00:26:10.220But you were so right about the imagery. And I'm wondering, I'm thinking maybe we should have the reporter on the show. I think we should reach out and have the reporter and the photographer on to talk about, you know, who was controlling this interview.
00:26:30.420They do say in this that they're very used to having Hollywood publicists everywhere controlling everything. I don't believe that this is just the two of them. I do think that there is a whole team behind them. But maybe it was out of view in the same way that the majority of their actual life is out of view.
00:26:50.060So if you think about it, and I've been thinking about it as I've been writing on this subject, we only ever see two rooms of their house.
00:26:57.740I mean, we're seeing essentially a soundstage is what we're seeing.
00:27:02.880And this reporter, you know, got the tour of this soundstage.
00:27:07.280I'm not going to say they were hoodwinked, but I do think they did exactly what the ballerina farm brand wanted them to be doing.
00:27:15.040At the same time. Well, you know what? It's interesting because I guess. I was going to say at the same time, we come away with a critical viewpoint of Daniel. And as much as they say, you know, it's a partnership of equals. They don't say that explicitly, but, you know, they're co-CEOs.
00:27:34.860you still really come away um considering gender roles in trad marriages and even if he's doing
00:27:45.200the laundry even if he's helping with the kids while she's in bed for a week he still really
00:27:51.520comes across as the controller um the story of how they got married she had wanted to date for a year
00:27:58.540and he said no we got to do like they got married within a couple months because he wouldn't wait
00:28:03.460It's just, I think it does leave, it should at least leave most readers critical of, you know, trad partnerships and power imbalances, which is something.
00:28:17.340But at this, but interestingly, if you've been critical of Daniel, like throughout.
00:30:33.620Do we have to continue to perpetuate to young girls that a man has to be a dick to you or that you have to hate him before you two finally fall in love?1.00
00:30:40.820Because once a dick, always a dick.1.00
00:30:58.680And I'd like to call that out for what it is.
00:31:02.260Yeah, I mean, if you think about the countless rom-coms where the dude shows up at the girl's house, she shows up at her place of employment.
00:31:46.100I mean, I don't think he thinks that there's anything wrong with it.
00:31:48.320And I think this is also the first time, and I think this is very calculated, I think someone advised them on this, because they're addressing some of the biggest criticisms they get.
00:31:58.840One of the criticisms is that they are cosplaying poverty and they finally own up to the money, to the legacy of JetBlue in this piece, really, for one of the very first times.
00:32:08.940Someone is trying to, like, clear the playing field a little bit.
00:32:11.840Someone's trying to be like, oh, no, I mean, stop saying that, like, we've never addressed this.
00:32:24.500Like, you know, now you can't take us down because we've addressed this already.
00:32:28.220We've talked about this already. I want to dive into one more section of this before I let you go and before I go to my weight training class to combat my lack of muscle control in my body.
00:32:42.280The reporter says, again, injecting themselves into the story in an interesting way, I notice there's no TV. We watch some stuff on the computer, one of her daughter says. YouTube videos? No, just Little House on the Prairie.
00:32:58.220it's just too good it's just too good yeah as as a self-described expert on laura ingalls wilder
00:33:08.100after creating the wilder podcast with glenis mcnichols everyone really really really really
00:33:15.000need to listen to i love it so much it's so good it's so good well we know i mean little house on
00:33:21.880the prairie is beloved for a reason we also know it was a false nostalgia when laura ingalls wilder
00:33:28.120created it it was a false nostalgia when michael landon created the tv show it is a false nostalgia
00:33:34.880now and the fact that they are hearkening back to that to link their brand to that that's very
00:33:42.460telling to me that's very very telling to me yeah i mean it's almost just like too on the nose to be
00:33:50.140like believed um yeah and it really was and then you know the kids go on and on about
00:33:58.880all the wholesome things that they do um you know none of them involve screens
00:34:05.520it's yeah that also felt i don't know was sort of just like a uh way for them to
00:34:15.320talk about their superior parenting choices yes like it was just like an open door for that
00:34:21.800absolutely absolutely and continued brand building right continued brand building
00:34:27.140i'm like i'm now seeing a brand extension extension of more like wooden child toys and
00:34:32.860the fact that they that they called out a little house on the prairie and i'm saying all this out
00:34:37.060loud so that everyone then realizes how psychic i'm being that they called that out um i do think
00:34:42.120that their media brand is likely going to expand,
00:34:44.440that we are going to see a television program
00:34:46.040and a magazine and a full-on media platform
00:35:09.100They have given them permission to do this.
00:35:10.880And this is just going to get bigger and bigger and bigger, and they're going to get richer and richer and richer. And that is why we're talking about this. You know, for all of the criticism that I often get on social media, you're jealous. You're saying this because you don't like her. It has nothing to do with her. We are dissecting a brand that has more than 9 million, 9 million followers. They're influencing people on a daily basis. This deserves this level of media critique.
00:35:37.940Like, and I will fully admit the things that I am jealous of.
00:36:03.540um and and yeah i mean i i love doing this with you i gotta go do my weights now i'm gonna do my
00:36:09.800weights go do your weight we do my weights uh but you know if you are interested in these kinds of
00:36:14.800things in these kind of topics you have to have to subscribe to in pursuit of clean countertops
00:36:19.900and also read sarah's genius book mom fluenced which i mean i just think it is more important
00:36:26.700And now, as we as we enter this this new new political era that we are in, it's it's it's more it's more imperative that people read this, that people understand this world than ever before.
00:36:40.860So get mom fluenced. Subscribe to the newsletter. You know, do do do all the things, you know. Also, there's lots and lots of Ballerina Farm content in both the book and newsletter. So, yeah, there is indeed.
00:36:52.820And someone find out where that top is from, okay?