Ballerina Farm & The Tradwife to Extremist Pipeline
Ballerina Farm being on the cover of Evie Magazine represents yet another shift toward the normalization of extreme right wing propaganda
There’s a very good chance that many of you reading this right now have absolutely no idea why this image is one of the most disturbing images I’ve come across this week.
I mean, it seems like a setup for a hackneyed bit, right? “Oh no, The New American Dream is a wHiTe WoMaN - what’s the big deal?” For anybody that’s not perpetually online, this looks like any given number of magazines you might see at the news stand or at your local grocery store or maybe even at Walmart, depending on where you are in the U.S..
But I promise you - this magazine cover is an alarm bell ringing right in your ears promising the normalization of fascism in a way that’s downright insidious.
The first unusual thing you will likely realize, since most of you discovered ME on TikTok, is that the person posing front and center in this cover is Hannah Neeleman - more famously known as the main figurehead behind Ballerina Farm, a family vlogger who posts about her farm… her home cookin’... her eight kids with husband Daniel… and homemaking. For her efforts, she’s earned nearly 20 million followers between both her TikTok (10+ million) and Instagram (8+ million).
Hannah is what you might call a “tradwife” - a stylistic (and also lifestyle) choice meant to draw to mind the June Cleavers and Harriet Nelsons of the world. A throwback to the 1950s way of living. Her Wikipedia page even claims that she is frequently seen wearing vintage-style dresses and gingham aprons, earning her comparisons to Ma from Little House on the Prairie.
But Ballerina Farm is more invested in the 1950s than the aesthetic choices.
In an interview with Megan Agnew for The Times, Hannah revealed that she and Daniel are against elective abortion and birth control, and Daniel revealed that there are times Hannah “gets so ill from exhaustion that she can’t get out of bed for a week.” It’s a full on dedication to the type of mindset that drives a certain type of rage bait that can keep the lights on on YouTube and TikTok for many, many years.
As Sara Petersen puts it in her own Substack on the subject,
“When I first saw this magazine cover, I thought it was photo-shopped. Photoshopped by some sort of cultural critique TickTocker with a dark sense of humor - as a way to illustrate the connection between Ballerina Farm’s idyllic representation of traditional motherhood and wifehood and the explicitly pro-Trump magazine, Evie. I thought it was fake at first glance simply because it’s so on the nose. The image. The headline (I don’t have time to even address the accompanying coverlines!!) The over-the-top TRADWIFE ALL CAPS of it all.”
This isn’t an anti-tradwife piece, to be clear. And the problem with the cover isn’t necessarily that it’s Ballerina Farm on the cover so much as what it represents. After all, as The Cut wrote about Hannah and Daniel,
“Unless she endorses the Trump-Vance ticket in a Reel, ham-handedly stage-managed by Daniel, Hannah Neeleman is just a highly visible working mom. She has a too-demanding husband and a lot of kids — relatable to many, unfortunately. Whatever she really thinks about while she’s practicing ballet at dawn in her gym, we’ll never know. In the midst of polarization and endless cycles of reactionary take-baiting, and despite whatever she writes on her website’s About Us section, Hannah Neeleman is a cipher. This is what keeps us coming back for more.”
By design, Ballerina Farm are supposed to be blatantly apolitical, aside from what the very act of being a tradwife represents to many people. So - what’s the issue?
The big issue is that Ballerina Farm are on the cover of Evie Magazine - a women’s magazine launched by a husband-and-wife super-influencer duo named Brittany Martinez-Hugoboom and Gabriel Hugoboom back in 2019.
As Falyn Stempler writes for The Express, “The magazine's mission was to provide an alternative to women's media like Cosmopolitan to "empower, educate and entertain young women with content that celebrates femininity and encourages virtue”” and “reaches more than 10 million people across all social media channels and earns millions of unique page views per month.”
It’s also conservative propaganda that was financed by Peter Thiel.
For anybody that needs a little context, Peter Thiel is a billionaire venture capitalist and entrepreneur who has had his mitts on everything from PayPal to Facebook, to even personally mentoring (and financing) JD Vance’s successful run for the U.S. Senate. He’s also somebody who wrote a book titled “The Diversity Myth,” has been described as having “extremist politics and ethically dubious business practices” by Gawker, and then used his anger at this coverage to bankroll a lawsuit designed to bankrupt Gawker. Successfully.
“In a 2009 essay, he wrote, "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible," and that women gaining voting rights "rendered the notion of 'capitalist democracy' into an oxymoron,"” Erin Mansfield points out for USA Today, before going deeper into his history of financing notorious the worst of the right wing, such as being a key reason Ted Cruz became senator.
He’s also a man who has been described as “Nazi-curious” and, according to Bloomberg journalist and Thiel biographer Max Chafkin, was close to Curtis Yarvin, an alt-right provocateur close to Steve Bannon. He’s also one of the most prominent people who got Donald Trump elected the first time around, and is likely the architect of the Trump/Vance ticket.
In a profile about Peter Thiel for The New Yorker back in 2021, Annie Wiener writes about how Thiel was mentored by anthropological theorist René Girard, who innovated a concept known as mimetic desire.
Girard once wrote, “Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires.”
To make a long road shorter, mimetic desire is the idea that one’s wants are influenced by OTHERS’ wants or needs. As Wiener puts it, it “can foster envy, rivalry, infighting, and resentment” and “leads to acts of violent scapegoating, which serve to preclude further mass conflicts by unifying persecutors against a group or an individual.”
I say all of this to highlight the type of person financing Evie Magazine, and why it’s not “just” another women’s magazine. Sami and I spoke a bit more about Evie Magazine in the latest episode of American Fever Dream, which (depending on when you listen) is either out tomorrow, Tuesday, or has already been out for awhile. If you didn’t know we spend more time on the topic, make sure to go check it out. If you’re here because you want more after listening, then I need you to know how much I love you, my dustbunnies, for joining me on so many platforms while I rant about Peter Thiel and Evie Magazine.
From the top down, Evie Magazine is a truly insidious piece of propaganda in modern times... because it doesn’t look like what we expect the most insidious things to look like. Thiel’s own perversion of “mimetic desire” has manifested itself many times throughout the years. Through allegations that his influence kept mis- and disinformation spreading on Facebook, to his ability to silence critics through frivolous lawsuits… and now, within the pages of his very own magazine, where he can influence women in truly damaging ways.
For starters, the Ballerina Farm cover is only the third print issue of the magazine, and when you have a major get like BALLERINA FARM on the cover, you’re bound to get a ton of very excited Hannah stans signing up in droves to get access to the story. And the story is a MAGAZINE EXCLUSIVE.
Which is a bit of an issue.
For starters, this potentially means that Peter Thiel, or at least a company he helped start, has access to your home address and credit card information. Considering that he co-founded a company named Palantir, a data mining company that sells software managing and analyzing data to further secure it, it feels like a bit of a power play on Thiel’s end to get this much prime data.
But if you hit the Evie Magazine website right now, you’ll see a preview for that article right now. And you’ll also see a lot of the fluff you may normally see in Cosmo or Vogue, with titles like “How Does Lindsay Lohan Look More Beautiful Than Ever?” and content focusing on the new Lana Del Rey album. So far, so celebrity. It’s incredibly likely that your group chat has innocuously sent you one of these links before, especially if you fancy yourself a small business supporter.
But something starts to feel a little off after a while with stories like:
“Ice Spice Is The Latest Celebrity To Prove Body Positivity Is Out.”
“Conservative Women Celebrate Trump’s Win By Having Babies While Liberals Swear Off Sex.”
“Why Did Ellen DeGeneres Leave America? Here's Why People Think She "Fled" The Country.” An article detailing social media conspiracy theories that Ellen took part in Diddy’s freak-offs and had ties to Jeffrey fucking Epstein.
Something’s already feeling a bit off before the mask is fully ripped off with articles like “Texas Dad Loses Parental Rights In Battle Against Ex-Wife’s Plan To "Chemically Castrate" 10-Year-Old Son” and “Joe Rogan Says Bill Gates And Anthony Fauci Are Responsible For "Side Effects, Lying, And Ruining Economies".” And then it gets extra insidious when you come across the article about Laken Riley.
For full context here, a man named Jose Antonio Ibarra was convicted for life without parole on multiple counts of murder, following the killing of a Georgia nursing student named Laken Riley, as well as being served multiple consecutive sentences for aggravated assault with intent to rape, among others. Not to take away from the tragedy, but you might be wondering why Evie is diving into the true crime space. After all, this doesn’t really fit their “celebration of femininity and virtue” does it?
Well, that’s the thing. The article isn’t about Laken Riley, and I’d wager the author of the piece, Meredith Evans, wouldn’t care about Laken Riley at all if she weren’t at the middle of the Republican mission to smear undocumented people at all costs.
The title of the article?
“MSNBC Changes Headline After Facing Backlash For Empathizing With Laken Riley’s Killer.”
As Evans writes for Evie,
“MSNBC's decision to title their piece "Laken Riley's killer never stood a chance" was tone-deaf and insensitive to Laken Riley and her family. After facing backlash, they quietly changed the headline to "The guilt of Laken Riley's killer was never in doubt." The move is a clear sign that they recognized the misstep, but the damage was done.”
Aside from the fact that this piece is presented as original reporting and yet reads as an opinion column, this is a clear and flagrant mischaracterization of MSNBC’s article.
In fact, both articles by Meredith Evans for Evie about Laken Riley focus much more on the “illegal immigrant” angle than on Laken Riley, with the title of her original article being “Laken Riley Was Murdered By An Illegal Immigrant—Where's The Outrage?”
The subheading? “"George Floyd got 4 televised funerals and 70 days of riots," wrote attorney Eric Matheny on X. "What does Laken Riley get?"”
This is what we’ve come to expect from Evie Magazine, who have been accused of being a front for Thiel and the Hugobooms to not only spread right wing messages to a complacent audience, but also sow the seeds of distrust in the media. It’s not uncommon to see racist, xenophobic, transphobic, and anti-vaxx rhetoric on the front page sandwiched between tehe articles about Lindsay Lohan and Lana Del Rey.
But there’s another angle Evie is ESPECIALLY aggressive on: birth control, with many people alleging they are outright pushing for an eradication of women’s reproductive rights.
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It may sound like a conspiracy theory, but it goes so far beyond even the articles I’ve already covered.
6 Lies We’ve Been Told About The Birth Control Pill.
The Shocking Effects of Different Birth Control Methods on Divorce Rates.
And my favorite: the one that claims cortisol gives women symptoms similar to fucking PTSD.
What makes this all so downright despicable is that back in 2022, Peter Thiel and Evie Magazine backed a company called 28. You or your BFFs may have even heard of this company: they made an app under the same name that, as Vice puts it, is “a “femtech” company offering workouts and nutritional tips based on users’ menstrual cycles, and which requires those users to enter information about the first day of their last period.”
Peter Thiel is ABSOLUTELY the perfect person to back an app like this, y’all. Sooooo perfect.
As Anna Merlan wrote in that same Vice article,
“In a 2009 essay, he famously expressed the opinion that giving women the right to vote made the country less libertarian and thus worse. And as Inc. magazine reported in 2016, Thiel reportedly expressed an interest in having young people’s blood transfused into his own body as a potential fountain of youth.”
But hey. It’s just a period tracker, right? What could be the harm in that?
Welp.
Maggie Harrison Dupré for Futurism writes, “The core premise of the app appears to get women off modern birth control methods, like the hormonal pill or an intrauterine device. Its website is almost comically vague on what the alternative might be, but a focus on "cycles" suggests that it's essentially the rhythm method, which basically entails attempting to avoid sex during ovulation. That's fine in principle, but the rhythm method is statistically quite ineffective, with about a quarter of couples using it accidentally becoming pregnant over the average year.”
So to simplify that even further: it’s a period app that wants you to stop using birth control, insinuating that focusing on monitoring your “cycles” is the “better” way to abstain. Splendid.
Dupré further points out that Evie co-founder Brittany Hugoboom rationalized the app’s choices due to “the pill and the negative impact it's had on their brains and bodies,” before Dupré points out that despite it being true that many folks have faced negative reactions to the pill, and that women (“especially women of color”) are often excluded from medical studies on the pill,
“28's anti-birth control rhetoric discounts the fact that there are many, many different kinds contraceptives these days, with no one-size-fits-all to reproductive care. It's also true that the demonization of hormonal birth control specifically has become a sort of rallying cry in certain circles of the women's wellness community, where skepticism and conspiracy theories, cult-followed "conspiritualist" influencers like Kelly Brogan, and "doing your own research" reign supreme. Somehow, in these growing communities, embracing the pill is to reject an inherent womanhood, and rejecting the pill, in turn, is the only path to "healthy hormones, self-discovery, and a beautiful, feminine physique," as 28 claims.”
Which leads me back to the Ballerina Farm cover story.
“The New American Dream,” the cover promises. On the website, the title of the preview article is backdropped with a video of Hannah and Daniel out on the ranch. Hannah riding a horse. Hannah kissing Daniel. Hannah waving to Daniel. The New American Dream, indeed. But Evie Magazine aren’t interested at all in wearing a mask to GO mask off. Right up front, they reveal the game in full:
“We are living through a cultural shift—a resurgence of the values and aspirations that once defined the American Dream. In an era weary of noise and corruption from the establishment, big corporations, and legacy media, people are longing for simplicity, authenticity, and purpose. At Evie, we’re proud to be at the forefront of this movement….In this print issue, you hold a new vision of American culture—a celebration of Americana, beauty, grounded ambition, and timeless values.”
By getting in bed with Evie Magazine, Hannah has abandoned what The Cut referred to as her “cipher” status. She has embraced an anti-woman, anti-trans, anti-progress outlet all in the interest of expanding her own brand. She is helping to normalize hate in a way that is objectively going to be more effective and damaging than any direct messaging Evie Magazine can think up.
This may potentially be a bit of a hot take, but there’s nothing inherently wrong about being a “tradwife” or wanting to live a more “traditionally” gendered life. Some women do, indeed, like being a stay at home housewife, and the style of dress that comes with the tradwife fad. These are generally women who don’t dream of being career women, but of being the caregiver to a partner, a home, and children. Hannah Neeleman COULD have been the woman these kinds of women could look up to; maybe she showed something they could look at but never have, but still gave them something to aspire to.
Different strokes and all that, couldn’t be me, but I’ve never really been a “tradwife alarmist” in the way fellow creators have been. There’s a lot to be said based on the Agnew interview as well as Hannah’s old blog posts about Daniel, who’s a billionaire trust fund kid that’s the son of JetBlue founder David Neeleman and is… a bit controlling… but that’s more of a “men ain’t shit” observation than a true criticism of Hannah. Allegedly. If anything, THAT part of Hannah’s story is concerning - and maybe even worthy of its own deep dive.
But what’s happening here with Evie Magazine is the amplification of a potential new propaganda arm for bad faith right wing actors in America, and Hannah signaling that she’s onboard with boosting this propaganda to her nearly 20 million followers is concerning.
“Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires.”
Peter Thiel’s mimetic desire looks a whole lot like Ballerina Farm - and he wants YOU to want fascism. But if we can recognize that what we want is NOT what Peter Thiel wants, there’s a world in which we can recognize propaganda for what it is and put this $49 glossy out-of-focus crap in the trash where it belongs.
If there was ever a magazine cover that promoted the Aryan Nation ideal, this one is it. Did they hire Leni Riefenstahl as art director? Looks like it to me!