What the Internet Gets Wrong About Ballerina Farm Or, a Halfhearted Defense of Hannah Neelman

 For the people who aren’t living the life they dreamed.

Courtesy of The Sunday Times

Hannah Neelman, the pretty face of the Ballerina Farm social media accounts is a Julliard-trained ballerina and Mormon who married into the JetBlue dynasty and now lives on a farm in Utah with her eight children. 

Lately, her videos have made their way through the YouTube algorithm to my feed, and they are a vision. She kneads sourdough on an antique butcher-block countertop, out the window are rolling green hills, the warm yellow sunlight lancing artfully through the window glass. All her cooking utensils are antique replicas made of metal, ceramic, and glass – a far cry from the plastic filled drawers of my own kitchen. 

The next scene, a perfectly arranged plate of lemons nestled against three perfectly burnt pillar candles and an enamel colander filled with berries. Sometimes she’s not speaking at all and there’s inoffensive mid-century swing music playing over the video. Sometimes she waxes poetic about how much she enjoys spending time with her milk cows, the background audio either chirping songbirds or eight screaming children. 

Her videos evince a serenity and rustic rural charm that many of her viewers equate with the “simple life” – a concept often analogous to “the good life”. 

However, a recent article in the UK’s Sunday Times blew that image apart. 

Besides her hovering, overbearing husband, several details of her story stood out: lowering her voice to say that she only received an epidural for the one birth her husband did not attend, she wanted to live in New York City and be a ballerina but her husband insisted that she could not finish training at Julliard, the small building on their farm that was supposed to be her ballet studio was converted to a schoolhouse, and she often takes to her bed for a week due to “exhaustion”. The article then caused internet sleuths to uncover more. Namely, that Hannah’s name isn’t on any of the tax documents for Ballerina Farms LLC.

For the last few weeks, the internet as echoed as the article was discussed, dissected, critiqued. Is Hannah a victim? Is she just a woman who chose a rich husband over her own dreams? Is her life sad? Is this what she deserves? Is this all over blown? Is she being abused? And most importantly, does Hannah Neelman have a bad life? 

What Makes a “Good Life”

Historically, anthropologists have had little to say about how various cultures define things like “wellbeing”. Recently there has been a movement similar to positive psychology, where anthropologists are starting to ask questions about what makes societies and cultures flourish, instead of what is at the root of their dysfunction. One of the core considerations of this “positive anthropology” is what constitutes a “good life”. 

This is a difficult topic to study because, as anthropologist Edward Fischer points out, a hallmark of the definition of  “the good life” is “its semantic slipperiness and strategic ambiguity” – it’s hard to define on purpose. However, through his work with both Guatemalan coffee farmers and German grocery store shoppers, Fischer found some common themes: 

Commitment to a larger project 

Fischer discusses how both groups have a commitment to a larger project that “goes beyond one’s narrowly defined self-interest”. These larger projects give meaning to everyday experiences of struggle.

In Germany for example, there is a belief that markets should be moral, that workers should be protected, and the German shoppers Fischer spoke to frequently expressed their preferences for products that were fair-trade or humanely created. They were committed to using their money and resources to support the fair-trade arrangements they believed were making a difference. 

Sacrifice 

Commitment to a larger project often involves having to give something up in order to meet the commitment to that ideal, and the struggle to become the kind of person who meets that ideal is ongoing work. 

Anthropologist Cheryl Mattingly, who works with parents of severely disabled children in Los Angeles, found that the often long-term, burdensome care these parents provide their children often leads to fulfillment because of the kind of radical commitment these parents have to their children. They sacrifice, understood as being for the good of their child, was key to feeling like they were living a “good life”.  

Virtuosity in the eyes of a particular moral community 

Moral communities are groups of people who share similar ethical and/or moral philosophies and within which the members feel a sense of obligation. This could be religious groups, military units, or a group of people who share a vocation.

These communities give meaning to our lives and to the sacrifices we make; the bonds forged in battle, the meaning that Jews gain from a shared history of struggle, the way that labor unions bring together workers to fight for better conditions.

Having both a sense of belonging to a group and a sense of being in good standing with that group is an important aspect of human happiness.  

Aspiration, opportunity, dignity, and fairness  

The most publicized aspect of Fischer’s research is that people need to have a sense of aspiration, opportunity, dignity, and fairness. 

“Aspiration” can be understood broadly as “hope”, and “opportunity” is the ability or power to act on those aspirations. Dignity is the idea that everyone has value and holds certain rights that must be protected, and fairness is being treated equitably. 

Subsistence farmers in Guatemala don’t want their children to follow in their footsteps. Instead, they see the global coffee trade as the path through which their children can avoid the hardscrabble existence of subsistence agriculture. They see this as an opportunity to get their fair share for the spoils of their labor, and the dignity of ownership. As Fischer states: 

Yet, as they describe it, coffee represents an opportunity in a context of few opportunities, an imperfect but valued means to realizing their desires for a better life; it is tied up with hopes, dreams, and desires that go beyond mere income. What it lacks in stability, it balances with hope, hope for a brighter future.

Courtesy of the Sunday Times

The glimpses we see of Hannah Neelman’s life, through her social media pages, the Sunday Times article and subsequent fall out, it does seem that she is well on her way to achieving the “good life”:

• She has aspired to be a content creator for years, as evidenced by a blog she maintained from 2013 until 2019, their first year at the farm. In the Sunday Times’ article, Hannah’s  stated role as “co-CEO” of this venture gives her the perception of fairness and dignity in the family business (regardless of what the tax documents say). 
• She explicitly states her commitment to Mormonism and her family. Hannah was significantly more religious on the blog than she is on social media. In a blog post from 2013, she writes, “i am a mother. i am a wife. and i am honored to have those titles. i am honored that the lord would trust me with his purest, happiest, most beautiful, strong spirits to watch grow and to teach and to love.” Additionally, her 2013 blog posts often reference talks from various Mormon leaders, the children’s bedtime routine that includes reading them the Book of Mormon, and her “Beliefs” section of her header takes you straight to an LDS website.
• In that same blog post she says, “so if motherhood and wifehood means that i am packin up and moving to another country, where i can support my husband as he tries to support this family of ours, if it means probably a lot of days talking baby talk with my two boys because i don't know that language to talk to anyone else, then so be it.” In the Sunday Times article, she uses the word “sacrifice” to describe what she and her husband had to give up in creating the Ballerina Farm brand, her ballet career and his “career aspirations”. 
• She is seen as virtuous and an exemplary member of that faith due to that commitment to family and God. 

Hannah Neelman had her wings clipped by her lifetime of indoctrination to the Mormon faith. However, she can still have a “good life”, even if her choices are limited.  

Two Things Can Be True at Once

We can both simultaneously acknowledge that Hannah Neelman is a caged bird in a high-control religion and she can still achieve at least some semblance of a “good life” given her current circumstances.  

While I am encouraging us all to look for aspects of the “good life” in our current situations, I want to make sure I am not being dismissive of the regressive politics that have made their way to mainstream political discourse of late. 

American women should be wary of the Right’s desire to remove women’s access to no fault divorce, abortion, or the right to vote. 

Nor am I telling women who are victims of coercive control or domestic violence to “suck it up and find the good”.

I am instead writing this for those who didn’t have the resources to pursue their education, for those who weren’t able to have the children they wanted, for those whose life paths were irrevocably changed by a freak accident or natural disaster. 

All cultures have ideas, often overlapping ones, about what makes for a “good life”. Once we understand what underlies it, we can find a moral community, a larger project to be passionate about, and craft the life we were given into a “good life”