Women in the News

December 3, 2024: Hannah Neeleman

Hannah & Daniel milking one of their cows together in the Spring of 2024. (from their website)

Her story is news to me, but not to the 22 million who follow her on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Today the New York Times published an article on Hannah Neeleman titled “Tycoon or Tradwife? The Woman Behind Ballerina Farm Makes Her Own Path.” 

If you, like me, are meeting her for the first time, I’ll introduce you with her words: “I wear many hats—mom, wife, cook, business owner, content creator, lover of God and all things butter.” 

For those of you who know exactly who she is—either from social media or the many other news outlets that have covered her: The London Times, TODAY, Vanity Fair, The Cut, Forbes, People, Marie Claire (and that was just the first page of my Google search)—you know that her lifestyle has become controversial. People can’t quite figure her out, hence the NYT article headline.

I LOVE that no one can figure her out, and for this reason I think she is a Warrior Woman.

The mission of Warrior Women is to offer an alternative narrative from the often-dueling scripts between feminists and traditionalists. I am drawing broad strokes here and making generalizations, but what I mean by that statement is probably obvious. These two voices are distinct, loud, bossy, and unyielding.

What I like about Hannah is she decided she wasn’t going to fit in either of those boxes, she wasn’t going to let either write her story. 

She is a woman of faith.
She is an artist.
She is an entrepreneur. 
She is a mom and wife. 
She is a farmer.

She says: “We try so hard to be neutral and be ourselves and people will put a label on everything. This is just our normal life.”

So let her be, people. Let her have all. the. things. Don’t make her choose just one of glorious roles she inhabits, as if there is only one life a woman can have.

You do you, Hannah. You do you.