Ballerina Farm influencer Hannah Neeleman says she doesn’t ‘identify’ as a traditional wife

Hannah Neeleman best known for her social media account @BallerinaFarm and her January 2024 appearance on the Mrs. World pageant—just 12 days after birth. But she’s also identified as an extremely photogenic online homemaker phenomenon often referred to as the “traditional” movement—even if critics point out that many traditional influencers are essentially running large advertising businesses. In a new interview with Sunday Times, Neeleman says she’s not really involved in a larger movement, agreeing that her life as a mother of eight, with nine million Instagram followers, is anything but traditional.

“I don’t necessarily sympathize with it,” she said, “because we are traditional In the sense that as a man and a woman, we have children, but I feel like we are opening up a lot of paths that have never been opened before.” She agrees when her husband, Daniel Neeleman—who barely left her side during the interview, as the reporter carefully noted—said that she was the co-CEO of their farm business. “So for me to have the label of a traditional woman,” she continued. “I’m a little bit, I don’t know if I identify with that.”

That doesn’t mean she is I am perfectly comfortable calling myself a feminist.“I feel like I’m a feminist,” she said, before pausing. “There are so many different ways to interpret that word. I don’t even know what feminism means anymore,” she continued. “We try our best to be neutral and be ourselves, and people will label things. This is just our normal life.”

Through Neeleman and her family‘s membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is widely known, but that’s not the focus of the content she posts to her millions of followers. According to Time, It was a frequent topic of conversation at home. Daniel said they both agreed with Mormon teachings on “sexual relations” and abortion. “We saw the joy of having children,” he said. “And the sanctity of life,” Hannah Neeleman added.

Neeleman also said the decision to expand her family was influenced by prayer“For me, it was a matter of prayer,” she said. “I said to myself, ‘God, is it time to bring another child to Earth?’ And I’ve never been denied.” Six of Neeleman’s eight children were drug-free home births, which she has documented extensively on social media. Still, she said she enjoyed the one time she gave birth with an epidural. “It was great,” she said with a laugh.