In an ad for protein powder, Hannah Neelman, the mega-mom influencer behind @ballerinafarm which boasts 10.3 million followers on Instagram alone, announced she is pregnant with her ninth child with husband Daniel Neelman.
“As a ballerina, you are associated with many things: elegance, grace, poise,” Neelman says in the ad, stepping into the camera’s frame and opening her jacket to reveal a pregnant belly. “But a term not often associated enough? Strength.” The short film/advertisement continues for two minutes. In the caption, Hannah urges viewers to follow the link in her bio to shop Farmer Protein, a bag of which costs $67 for a one-time purchase.
Neelman is considered by both critics and fans to be a mom influencer who exemplifies the values of a trad wife as she homeschools her 8 children on a sprawling Utah farm. Her content often features her making food from scratch in her home kitchen while deploying a mid-century housewife aesthetic, replete with gingham dresses.
Neelman is no stranger to controversy. She and her husband’s business operation has been in the news lately after halting sales of raw milk following reported bacteria concerns. A local Utah news outlet, KPCW, reported that Ballerina Farm failed a health inspection last summer after high levels of coliform (a bacteria that includes E. coli) was found in their raw milk. A Ballerina Farm spokesperson told KPCW that their raw milk was tested daily, and that the batch that failed the screenings wasn’t sold to customers.
What we know is that the social media algorithm loves pregnant bellies. It loves babies.
In social media videos addressing the controversy, Hannah said that the decision to discontinue raw milk sales was a “business decision” because “economically, it wasn’t making sense for us to put so much time and effort into this raw milk operation.”
In her pregnancy announcement for her ninth child, Neelman does what the top mom influencers do so well: blends her family’s milestones with commerce. “This was a very calculated and thought-out plan for both her personal branding and for the company’s branding,” says Jo Piazza, a journalist and host of the podcast Under the Influence which delves into the world of mom influencing. “What we know is that the social media algorithm loves pregnant bellies. It loves babies.”
And when it comes to Hannah Neelman’s personal and professional life, nothing could be more on-brand than a new pregnancy. “Her brand is built on the idea of homesteading, homeschooling, a traditional family,” Piazza says. “Even though to a lot of people, it seems absurd to have nine children, it’s definitely burnishing that traditional family brand.”
Though mom influencers are regularly dismissed as vapid and silly, the top strata of them are commanding multi-million dollar empires (something I delved into for the reporting for my forthcoming book, Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids & the Cost of a Childhood Online). In Hannah’s case, her social media accounts, which have expanded to include Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Substack, are only the tip of the iceberg. There is also the Ballerina Farm Store which sells everything from a make-your-own-sourdough kit ($89) to Farmer Hydrate electrolyte powder ($39) to Ballerina Farm-branded t-shirts ($48).
Neelman’s detractors claim she only shows the starry-eyed version of being a homeschooling mom of 8 (now almost 9); that she fosters unrealistic expectations for mothers as she posts herself perfectly put together and cooking every meal from scratch; that she is a submissive wife who lets her husband take the reins of her empire. Neelman has pushed back on these assertions, and has rejected the tradwife label.
The protein powder ad in which she announces her ninth pregnancy seems to also stand as a defense to at least some of those claims. “It tells me that she is really trying to relate to women as a strong entrepreneur who does a lot of this work on her own and who is not submissive to her husband,” Piazza says. (Hannah’s husband does not appear in the announcement.) “I truly think this is showing that Hannah and the rest of the mom influencing world wants recognition for the work that they’re doing.”
And that’s the thing – mom influencing is work. But the dream that mom influencers are really selling is what is showcased in Hannah’s advertisement/announcement: that the work of mom influencing and brand building can be done alongside the work of building a family.
