September 10, 2024 • 49 mins
This week, Jamie takes a treacherous voyage into a complicated question -- why on Earth are there so many successful Mormon influencers? In this two-part series, she looks at how the origins and the values of the Mormon church deceptively align with the conservative "tradwife" influencing space of today... and yes, she will get into the tradwives. Contained herein: Joseph Smith shoving his face into a hat, a new Hulu reality series that is deceptively boring, Ballerina Farm, and the Mormons' early success in the conservative mommy blogging space.
Tune in for part 2, where ex-Mormon Alyssa Grenfell poses a theory at how the Church of Latter Day Saints stays two steps ahead of it all.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media joining.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
The six.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Six Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we
(00:57):
talk to the Internet's characters of the day and see
how their fifteen minutes of fame affected them and what
it says about the Internet and us. But this week
we're taking a bit of a side quest to answer
a question I've been asked quite a bit lately, and
I didn't know how to answer, why are there so
(01:18):
many Mormon women at the top of the social media
influencing pile After a recent episode, I saw this question
in the comments everywhere. I saw it on the sixteenth
minute Reddit board, which, by the way, someone made if
you're interested or have thoughts after episodes, And while it
did resonate with me that the subject of the episode
had been raised Mormon, I didn't want to touch that
within the episode for a couple reasons. First because they
(01:41):
never talk about Mormonism in their content and have generally
avoided questions about it. And second, I didn't have a
fucking clue what the answer to this question was, even
though I understand why it was being asked. So this
week we're going to attempt to answer that question in
a two part deep dive series. The second of which
will release on Thursday. Because to understand the root of
(02:04):
why Mormonism and present day Mormon mommy influencers are so successful,
you've got to understand where the overlaps in their interests
are and how the values of both of these communities
line up. So this week we're going to get all
up to speed on that, and on Thursday, Alissa Grenfell
will unpack how Mormon mobs have stayed on top of
(02:26):
internet influencing for the last twenty years. All right, let's
jump in and take a brief God, I really hope,
actually brief look into the history of the Mormon Church
in America, and I'll link to some additional resources in
the description of the episode. Okay, let's learn about Mormons.
Mormonism is a nineteenth century religion, formally founded by Joseph
(02:49):
Smith in eighteen thirty. He was born squarely in the
middle of the Second Great Religious Awakening in the US,
a religious revival that would strengthen movements like Methodism, Presbyterianism,
and the Baptist Church and would birth a lot more
and Joseph Smith was a kid of this era. He
grew up without a firm religion, but was curious to
try things. The Mormon Faith, often called the LDS or
(03:12):
Latter day Saints, came up shortly after the Shaker's movement.
The LDS came to prominence around the same time as
a number of Black church movements like the African Methodist
Episcopal Church. The LDS shares a little bit of DNA
with Spiritualism, and you could listen to my limited series
Ghost Church for more about the history of that. The
mid nineteenth century was a big time of religious change
(03:36):
and upheaval in the US, and after Mormonism took off,
new religions continued to pop up. For example, Jehovah's Witnesses
and Christian Scientists weren't far behind Mormonism, but very few
specific movements from this time still have the cultural hold
on America that Mormonism does. So Joseph Smith releases the
Book of Mormon and the religion is formalized in eighteen thirty,
(03:58):
but the religion's or story connects to two incidents from
the previous ten years. One was from eighteen twenty, when
Joseph was fourteen and asked both Jesus and God which
religion to follow, and was told by them follow none
of them. It is your job to prepare the world
for the second coming of Jesus. The other incident was
in eighteen twenty three, when a seventeen year old Smith
(04:20):
is said to have been visited by the angel Morone
to repeat this calling, and was also told that there
was an ancient record regarding God's dealings with the quote
unquote American Continent that he needed to translate with a
series of tools when he was a little older. After
the Angel Moroni's visit, Joseph Smith says that he retrieved
and divinely translated the text of the Book of Mormon,
(04:41):
which was inscribed on thin gold plates. There is a
bit of a wizard of Ozzi equality to the way
that this translation is dictated. There's magic stones. He's going
behind curtains, and sometimes he wouldn't even use the gold plates.
He would instead put a special stone in a hat,
then bury his face and said hat. But if you're
a prophet that he explained, the stone lights up within
(05:02):
the hat and then you just dictate from there. This
whole mystical plates thing also comes up in modern scientology,
where members in Florida are engraving the words of l
Ron Hubburn on to titanium plates as we speak. It
also harkens back to Helena Blovotsky's notion of the Acaciic
records of the late nineteenth century, which were said to
(05:24):
be indestructible tablets of the astral light. So there's that.
A lot of this reminds me of spiritualism, which in
its early days was composed of a lot of practical magic.
Great movie. And if you're not familiar with the origins
of the Book of Mormon, to be fair, most religious
origin stories are not significantly wilder than this. Spiritualism has
(05:47):
a similarly mystical origin story as for its contents. The
Book of Mormon details the plight of a group of
Jewish people in Jerusalem who escaped the city before it's
destroyed in six hundred BC. They build a boat, sail
it to the America, and soon become embroiled in a
conflict within the group between two groups called the Neophytes
and the Lamanites. One of the big changes made to
(06:08):
the Book of Mormon later on is that the Lamanites
were ancestors of all indigenous Americans. This language would later
be softened to say that they were among the ancestors
of some indigenous people. So a group of Jewish people
migrate to the Americas and become indigenous Americans. Okay. Jesus
(06:28):
is a huge part of Mormonism, and the Book of
Mormon details that after Jesus is resurrected in thirty three AD,
he goes to visit the Americas, where he is hailed
as the pale Prophet because yes, Mormon Jesus is white.
Some of their other beliefs, as expressed through Joseph Smith,
are that God is a flesh and blood being who
has a flesh and blood wife, his wife who lives
(06:52):
far away near a distant star. And God tells Joseph
Smith that we earthlings were brought into being to create
these nuclear families, to be closer to God, so that
one day we can live with God out of town
on the star where he lives. And to create these families.
You hear a lot of the classic signifiers of fundamentalist religions.
There is an emphasis on sacrifice, discipline, and suffering. There
(07:15):
are rigid gender roles. There's canonical homophobia. There's absurd racism
that was later scaled back in order to accommodate growth
in membership until a few decades ago. The Book of
Mormon described members as quote a white and delightsome people unquote.
To this day, there is still a tacit, don't ask,
don't tell policy within the church about queerness, and that's
(07:36):
an improvement from the mid twenty tens, when the children
of queer parents were still not allowed to be baptized
in the LDS. Anyways, in his time, Joseph Smith was,
for his account, declared a prophet by Jesus and genuinely
did face a great deal of persecution in the early
days where he was gathering followers in New York, he
was arrested and ejected from the state and took his
(07:58):
believers to Ohio to prepare for the Second Coming of
Jesus in Zion, a location TBD paradise where Smith envisioned
communities that would be governed by celestial laws as determined
by him. As it progresses, Mormonism grows further away from
traditional Christianity, and before you know it, the Mormons are
ousted from Ohio. Smith is tar and feathered. Before this,
(08:21):
the group then moves to Missouri, which is great because
the Lord just so happens to have told Joseph Smith
that that's actually where Zion is, but also where the
Garden of Eden was. So the Mormons start buying up
land in Missouri and to remind you of the era
of history we're in. This happened in eighteen thirty one,
just a year after the Indian Removal Act was passed
(08:41):
and brought about twenty years of brutal genocide of the
indigenous people. But once in Missouri, the Mormons are driven
out again, this time with increasing violence, and over the
next few years they head with Smith all over the Midwest,
where they're treated with similar hostility most places they go.
At one point, the governor of Missouri passed an extermination act.
Eventually they moved to Illinois, where they're permitted to set
(09:04):
up a city of their own called Nouvou basically Zion
two point zero, and it's here where Smith lightly militarizes
the group and increasingly sends out missionaries to continue to
grow the faith, and at the same time, Smith is
told by an angel to introduce one of the LDS's
most controversial policies, polygamy. And polygamy wasn't something that was
(09:24):
allowed to everyone in the faith at first, just the
powerful in the church, and during Smith's lifetime the practice
was kept fairly quiet. He married as many as forty women,
some of whom were under age. Women were expected to
remain in the home, have many children, and to this
day there is an early and intense emphasis on being
(09:44):
a wife and mother before all else. The end of
the line came for Joseph Smith in Illinois in eighteen
forty four, where non Mormon locals imprisoned and then killed
he and his brother. He's been hailed as an eternal
prophet in the Mormon Church ever since, and is still
an extremely prominent figure in the culture to this day.
And if you want this story told from the Mormon perspective,
(10:06):
there's a lot of LDS produced movies about it on
YouTube that are really well acted and actual.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
Being from the unseen world, exerting all my strength to
call upon God, I saw a pillar.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Of line, all right, save it for the pulpit. After
Smith's death, a guy named Brigham Young takes over and
the Mormons leave Navoo in eighteen forty six, hiking pioneer
style to what is now present day Utah, where in
the next ten odd years they ignored the American government
and practice polygamy openly, that is, until this was going
(10:48):
to prevent Utah getting statehood. Polygamy would be in LDS
sanctioned practice until eighteen ninety, but it was technically discontinued
at that point to avoid clashing with existing laws around bigamy.
Pass in the eighteen sixties and seventies. However, a lot
of Mormons continued to practice polygamy quietly. In today's Mormon marriages,
more traditional fundamentalist monogamy is certainly the norm, and there's
(11:12):
a long complicated history with the Mormons, Utah and indigenous people, because,
unlike most accounts of a new American colony being founded,
there were Native Americans in Utah when they arrived, and
under Brigham Young LDS members are encouraged to purchase Native
children as slaves and raise them in their homes with
the hopes of assimilating them to the Mormon faith. It's
(11:34):
not too dissimilar from the residential schools that separated Native
families and erase their culture, often killing children all the
way into the nineteen nineties. Today, there is still a
very high number of Mormons in Utah, hovering somewhere around
forty percent In twenty twenty three. It's where Brigham Young
University is and where are some of the religion's most
prominent influencers live today. Ever heard of the Real Housewives
(11:58):
of Salt Lake City?
Speaker 5 (12:00):
Salt Lake City, Utah, is known for its magnificent mountains
and world.
Speaker 6 (12:05):
Class casetos, but what Salt Lake City is most known
for is the Mormon Church.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
A quick lesson on how to be a good Mormon.
Don't drink, don't swear, treat your body like a temple.
To be Mormon, we are taught honesty and integrity, and
most importantly, to watch for sue you're gonna go with
Mary your grandfather, Well, there you go. On the other
end of that, about a third of people raised in
the LDS today end up leaving the religion, as opposed
(12:37):
to the ninety five percent retention rate of the late
nineteen eighties. So it's important to note the Internet age
has made a difference in how Mormonism is perceived by
its own members. And if you're Mormon or ex Mormon,
you know that I am barely scratching the surface here.
It's an extremely complicated religion that's been around for nearly
two hundred years. Things I didn't mention include rituals, observances,
(13:00):
restrictive religious underwear, and for the very devout missions, which
are eighteen to twenty four month assignments where LDS officials
determine a location for a young person to go and
their job is to recruit people into the church. As
it pertains to today's episode, it's important to note that
Mormonism is a fundamentalist religion that has been historically hostile
(13:22):
to women, to queer people, and to anyone who isn't white.
What is also important is that the Mormon Church has
a shitload of money, A shitload I had no idea.
At present, the Mormon churches net worth is estimated to
be two hundred and sixty five billion dollars. For context,
Disney is valued at one hundred and sixty one billion dollars.
(13:45):
Much of this has to do with mandatory tithing, where
church members are required to give ten percent of their
income back to the LDS. As for pop culture, Mormonism
has been portrayed negatively a lot. Think HBO show Bis
Love and still running Broadway musical The Book of Mormon,
which of course the LDS condemned.
Speaker 5 (14:07):
Hello, my Name is Elder Price, and I would like
to share with you the most amazing book.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Hello, my name is Elder Grant.
Speaker 5 (14:20):
It's a book about America a long, long time ago.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
It has well, I wonder why they didn't like that.
But the LDS has also produced its fair share of
successful entertainment acts. There no scientology, but Mitt Romney, David Archiletta,
Donnie and Marie Osmond and Gladys Knight is still a
pretty impressive roster. The aquabats are Mormon? Really think about that?
(14:46):
And of course a ton of currently successful influencers more
when we come back. The prevalence of Mormon influencers has
(15:08):
been an increasing point of speculation in the last few months,
mostly in connection to two stories that have broken through
to the mainstream. The first story, as I write this,
a new Hulu reality show that is about to debut
about Mormon wife influencers.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
I love the Mormon Church, but there are a lot
of rules that we have to follow. We were raised
to be these housewives for the men, serving their every desires.
Have kids by the time you're twenty one or in
my case at sixteen, Well, I'm like this.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
We are trying to change the stigma of gender roles
in the Mormon culture.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
The central characters of this show are existing successful Mormon
mommy TikTokers, and if the comments on virtually every video
of these women is to be believed, they are very
controversial within the Latter day Saint community, and most would
say they do not represent Mormonism in spite of the
fact that they live in Salt Lake City, where the
(16:05):
LDS is headquartered. Most of them grew up Mormon, and
part of why they became so popular on TikTok was
because they were referencing the tenants and values of the church.
Speaker 7 (16:15):
Have you talked to your bishop or the church about anything? No?
Speaker 1 (16:21):
No, how come I don't know? Because like what if
they're going to like excommunicate me.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
This content got really popular under the hashtag mom talk
on TikTok in the early twenty twenties, and while this
content promotes fundamentalist values around gender rules, due to their popularity,
the mom talkers were also becoming primary breadwinners for their family.
The women of mom Talk look very modern. They're usually
wearing Kardashian adjacent athleteture, but the reason they have a
(16:48):
TV show, in my opinion, is not because they blew
up on TikTok or even really because they're Mormon. It's
because they were perceived as being bad at being Mormon.
In two to mom Talk influencer Taylor, Frankie Paul announced
that she and her husband would be getting a divorce
because of her violation of the terms of their soft
(17:09):
swinging within their Mormon friend group. And soft swinging is
not sanctioned by the LDS in no small part because
that might actually be fun for women.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Soft swinging, again, is when you like, just hug up,
but you don't go.
Speaker 5 (17:24):
All the way.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
It's a huge source of controversy among very online Mormons,
if the comment section is to be believed, and it's
not hard to understand why. Add this to the fact
that mom talkers were regularly breaking core tenants of the faith.
They did things like drink caffeine, they didn't wear their
religious garments beneath their clothes all the time. This soft
swinging incident might cause a scandal in your average suburban community,
(17:48):
but Paul's disclosure that there were multiple Mormon couples involved
caused to stir within the community. So presented with this
public scandal and subsequent high profile influencer's decision to remain
within the church. Is this bad for the Mormon pr
team or is all press good press? They haven't been
excommunicated or anything like that. But the Mormon Church has
(18:11):
issued the rare condemnation of this upcoming Hulu show. And
this is rare because the LDS hasn't commented on how
Mormons are portrayed in pop culture in a while. But
when the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives trailer dropped, the
LDS released the following statement.
Speaker 5 (18:27):
The portrayal is a gross misrepresentation that could have real
life consequences for people of faith. A statement by the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints reads it
depicts lifestyles and practices blatantly inconsistent with the teachings of
the Church and irresponsibly mischaracterizes the safety and conduct of
(18:49):
our volunteer missionaries. We understand the fascinations some in the
media have with the church, but regret that portrayals often
rely on sensationalism and inaccuracies that do not fairly and
fully reflect the lives of our church members or these
sacred beliefs that they hold.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Dear, there are a lot of Mormon rituals that aren't
often referenced in this kind of content, but is addressed
a lot in ex Mormon content. There is rituals like
the washing and anointing. There's endowment ceremonies and esthetics that
are all but directly pulled from Joseph Smith's interactions with
the American Freemasons. But whether the LDS likes it or not,
(19:32):
this is the latest step that actively Mormon influencers have
made into mainstream culture. Again, I haven't seen an episode
of this show yet, but it looks like the wives
are going to be centered in the story here, which
would have been unheard of in Mormonism at one time.
But what I've learned is that part of why Mormon
influencers are more successful than other trad wife Okay, let's
(19:55):
define tradwife.
Speaker 5 (19:57):
A trad wife is a woman who believes in and
pctices traditional gender roles and marriages. Some may choose to
take a homemaking role within their marriage, and others leave
their careers to focus on meeting their families' needs in
the home.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Part of why Mormon influencers are more successful than other
tradwife influencers of other religions is because the Mormon Church
has been unusually good at adapting to the Internet and
always has been. That's not the only reason, but we'll
get there. If you've managed to make it to Fall
twenty twenty four without having the word tradwife shoved in
(20:35):
your face, congratulations and sorry, because I am going to
tell you what it is. Tradwife content is a social
media trend from about the last half decade where women
create lifestyle content and make lifestyle changes, the more closely
aligned with traditional gender roles, with an emphasis on the
beauty of a return to old time values. So TikTok's
(20:56):
about making meals from scratch for five hours, defining oneself
primarily as a wife and a mother, rejecting or abandoning
a career outside the home, and being generally deferential to
the patriarch, whether that's a husband or father or priest.
Not all tradwives are Mormons hashtag not all tradwives, not
(21:17):
even close. And I'm not going to tackle the topic
of tradwive content wholesale in this episode. What you need
to know is the term tradwife shouldn't be conflated with
staying at home moms because while tradwife creators are moms
and at home with the children. Making tradwife content is,
for my money, a separate job from the actual parenting,
(21:40):
because being a stay at home parent is a job,
although most cultures are not conditioned to view that labor
as valid. Tradwife content looks beautiful, high on aesthetic and
low on practicality, showing only the esthetically pleasing parts of
the nuclear family and rarely any of the struggle or mess.
(22:01):
There's a sense of self surveillance to this content, an
appearance of perfection in the home and family that's projected
to the public, and often visual signifiers that harken back
to mid twentieth century America. So, if this makes sense,
tradwives don't look like stay at home moms. They look
like the advertisements of stay at home moms. And so
(22:23):
much of what makes their content appealing is that an
incredibly difficult lifestyle to achieve is made to seem easy, attractive,
and morally correct. Because if you're making lifestyle content of
any kind, whether you personally or morally endorse the lifestyle,
you're working in sales. I hate to break it to you,
how many hot dogs have I sold by accident incalculable,
(22:50):
just not. The trad live space is predominantly white, but
possibly more diverse than you might expect. There is an
active Black trat life community who, according to a Refinery
twenty nine piece by Nyla Burton in late twenty twenty two,
believe that quote traditional marriage is the key to Black
women's liberation from being overworked, economic insecurity, and the stress
(23:12):
of trying to survive in a world hostile to our
survival and existence. Cradwife content is popular across a lot
of religions, but what's consistent across these communities is a
feeling of performance, and this aesthetic of either mid century
housewives or cottage core. In my opinion, there's very little
(23:35):
intimacy to these posts, in spite of the fact that
we're seeing inside of a family's home and usually seeing
their children, who are, make no mistake, a part of
the business model. While I totally get why the content
is so appealing, it does feel like a performance, and
a very effective one. I mean, I'm like a militant feminist,
(23:57):
and I would be lying if I said I hadn't
seen a few trildwife posts that made me feel like
I was living my life the wrong way, but neutral statement.
These posts are a performance.
Speaker 4 (24:09):
Think of it like this.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
The Donna Reed Show very effectively sold the idea of
Donna Red as a nuclear housewife and mother that lived
in this effortless way, and in reality was a television
show that was produced by its star, and that the
real Donna Reed was a multi hyphenic creative and a
TV pioneer who was selling the idea of this housewife
(24:30):
rather than actually living that life herself. Well, would you say,
missus Johnson, that Donna worked hard in college?
Speaker 7 (24:39):
She worked hard up at seven in the morning, all
day in school and jobs between classes to earn a
little extra money, and then home to earn a roman
board to help me cooking dishes and a little ironing,
and men stud until midnight. I don't think she ever
(25:02):
had more than six hours.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
To me from a social media perspective, the trad life
phenomenon has a lot in common with a pattern that
we talk about on this show all the time. A
lot of the reason we're still talking about this content
is because there's been so much backlash and outrage toward
it since it became popular in the early twenty twenties.
Left leaning feminists who believe that the tradwife trend hearkens
(25:24):
a dangerous period of regression as the American people's right
to bodily autonomy slowly and surely slips into the very
mid century timeframe that tradwives so often portray. And this
outrage does help to fuel the success of the influencers,
because yes, they have millions of followers, but the snart
reddit boards and hate comments saying that tradwives are self
(25:47):
hating and glamorizing oppression have engagement in the hundreds of
thousands as well. And as far as the algorithm is concerned,
engagement is engagement, whether it's positive or negative. You're remind
finds me a lot of friend of the pod Max
Fisher's book A Chaos Machine, in which he fully illustrates
the ways in which modern algorithms are designed to enrage.
(26:09):
That's why we have so many social media stories that
are rooted in backlash and then backlash to the backlash.
Prod wife narratives fall neatly into this pattern because for
every bit of praise, there's an essay that's written in
stark disagreement. So why is this content so popular in
the last few years friend of the pod Brigid Todd
(26:30):
of there are no girls on the internet sets.
Speaker 8 (26:33):
During uncertain times, people sell easy solutions because our brains
in times of precarity crave simple solutions. But often those comforting,
simple solutions are just placeholders for the reality, which is
that the problem is actually systemic and institutional. You're not
going to dismantle it in your specific nuclear household and family.
(26:53):
If you're only looking within your own family, you're not
looking hard enough at the larger issues at play.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
While these as have millions upon millions of followers who
view the content as soothing or aspirational, there are plenty
of modern moms who were completely fucking baffled by it.
Because I've engaged with so much of this content that
my algorithm will never bounce back, I feel comfortable saying
that tradwife content is often a lot about subtext, right
(27:21):
projecting a message without explicitly stating it. Maybe the fifties
were a great time for women, Maybe we need to
bring it back, but there's a sense of encouraging to
submit to the status quo, a status quo that existed
before a lot of necessary civil rights were fought for,
But online now tradwives man. But let's bring it back
(27:43):
to the Mormon's side of this content specifically, because as
we're trying to get to the bottom of Mormons have
found a lot of success in this space. Mom Talkers
are far from the only prominent Mormon content creators dominating
social media today. The most popular, and so by extension,
the most embroiled in controversy is the second major Mormon
(28:05):
influencer story of the summer, Ballerina Farm. More when we
come back, welcome back to sixteenth minute. The more I
(28:29):
learned about tradwives, the more it became obvious that they
developed in response to the capitalism is for girls to
actually slay rhetoric of the mid twenty tens. But like,
is it that different when you're a tradwife entrepreneur? It
kind of seems like you're doing the same thing, but
the thing that you're selling is that you're not actually
(28:49):
doing the thing that I'm watching you doing. And when
we left off, we were talking about the most famous
Mormon influencer on the scene today, Ballerina Farm. Where do
we again? All my male listeners are getting like a
noseblade Mallerina Farm is the user name for a Mormon
woman named Hannah Neielman, whose follower count on Instagram currently
(29:10):
sits at ten million. She was raised in the LDS
and was a tremendously talented ballerina who got into and
graduated from Juilliard. And she cited over and over that
she was the first undergrad in modern history to be
pregnant while still at Juilliard because while there she got
married to fellow Mormon Daniel Nielman in twenty eleven, the
(29:32):
year before she graduated.
Speaker 9 (29:33):
So both the.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
Neielmans grew up in big, devout Utah Mormon families. Hannah
was one of nine, Daniel was one of ten. They
got engaged after only three weeks, and while Hannah was
still in college, she also started competing in beauty pageants.
She started with Miss New York and then re entered
the space after getting married and having kids, because Hannah
does not stay a ballerina. After graduation, Hannah and Daniel
(29:58):
moved to England for a semester at Cambridge, then Utah
so Daniel could finish his degree at Brigham Young University,
and then to Brazil, where Daniel worked as the director
of his father's security company for a few years, because
it must be said financially, these are incredibly privileged people.
Daniel's father founded Jet Blue. Dude, They've got money, and
(30:20):
he's so Mormon that he worked on Mitt Romney's failed
presidential campaign in twenty twelve. But Daniel's dream is to
move back to Utah and live on a farm, and
they finally do so in twenty seventeen, buying the eponymous
Ballerina Farm in twenty eighteen. By the time they moved
on to the three hundred and twenty eight acre farm,
they had four kids, and when they moved onto the farm,
(30:40):
Hannah Nielman's online brand as a Mormon wife was well established,
but significantly less successful. Hannah started her social media journey
as a mom influencer on a blog called We Took
the Train in early twenty thirteen, shortly after the birth
of her first child, Henry, and her college graduation. And
it's interesting that she in with a completely different era
(31:02):
of successful Mormon online influencers because in the two thousands
into the early twenty tens, Mormon mommy blogs were a thing.
The Mormon mommy blogger pipeline was popular for as long
as blogs were popular and mommy bloggers in general have
always enjoyed massive success and usually adapt to new social
(31:22):
media platforms pretty easily. I'd recommend Sarah Peterson's book mom
Fluenced for more on this topic because mommy blogging was
popular from the very dawn of social media, but it
was very different than the tradwive content that we see today.
There was a lot more emphasis on writing over visuals,
and the writing tended to be more confessional. Writer Catherine
(31:44):
Jeezer Morton has been covering this space for a long time.
I'm quoting here from a New York Times column called
Did Moms Exist Before Social Media? From twenty twenty, where
she mentions how Mormon women entering the mommy blog space
changed it.
Speaker 8 (31:58):
To overlook the influence of Mormon and other Christian mommy
bloggers on this ship would be a huge oversight. Mormon
mommy bloggers in particular, were enormously influential in establishing the
esthetic and tone that came to characterize influencer era online motherhood.
Mormonism encourages the careful documentation of family life, and Mormon
mothers were among blogging's earliest and most enthusiastic adopters. Unlike
(32:20):
the confessional. Early mommy blogs, Mormon mother's blogs broadcast a
clean and chipper vision of motherhood, replete with DIY crafting
projects and coordinated family photoshoots. Many of the most successful
Mormon bloggers from the mid auts, like Amber Phillerup Clark,
and Naomi Davis, went on to become mainstream lifestyle bloggers,
and although their Mormon faith is no secret, its prominence
(32:41):
were seated as the years passed.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
Early successful Mormon or ex Mormon mommy bloggers included how
the Armstrong of Deucey, Amber Phillarup Davis, and love Taza
aka Naomi Davis. Around this same time, successful family bloggers
like Dade Carl and his family only become really popular
on YouTube and the late oughts into the early twenty tens.
(33:05):
In fact, Carl's child, Brock, was considered to be the
first Truman baby, as in The Truman Show, as in
a child whose life was documented from moment one to
a massive social media audience. Scary, This hyper vulnerable mommy
blog stuff is considered pretty old school now. At the time,
(33:26):
Mormon mommy bloggers were a part of the coined blogger
nackle community, with personalities like Stephanie Nielsen of the Nine
Dialogues and see Jane Kendrick of c Jane Enjoyett serving
as early examples for their crossover appeal outside of the religion.
There was even an award system developed for successful blogger
Nacle publications called the Niblets. This went from twenty five
(33:49):
to twenty seventeen, and bloggers who were particularly good at
spreading Mormon values online got a trophy. And I don't
know if you feel the same way, but I was
really surprised because because I thought of Mormon culture as
so conservative in its gender roles that actively encouraging women
to speak at all would be a non starter. But
(34:10):
that's not true at all, if talks given by Mormon
leaders during the early blogging era are to be believed.
These blogs, blogs, et cetera were viewed to be an
extension of the Mormon mission and a way to get
the word out. I'm pulling this from an LDS news
post from two thousand and seven.
Speaker 5 (34:29):
Apostle urges students to use new media. Two hundred graduating
students at Brigham Young University, Hawaii were urged today to
use the Internet, including blogs and other forms of new
media to contribute to a national conversation about the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. Elder M Russell Ballard,
an apostle in the church, told the mostly Mormon student
(34:51):
body that conversations about the church would take place whether
or not church members decided to participate in them. We
cannot stand on in the sidelines while others, including our critics,
attempt to define what the church teaches.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
He said.
Speaker 5 (35:06):
While some conversations have audiences in the thousands or even millions,
most are much much smaller, but all conversations have an
impact on those who participate in them. Perceptions of the
Church are established one conversation at a time. Church leaders
have publicly expressed concern that while much of the recent
(35:28):
extensive news reporting on the church has been balanced and accurate,
some has been trivial, distorted, or without context. Elder Ballard
said there were too many conversations going on about the
church for church representatives to respond to each individually, and
that church leaders can't answer every question, satisfy every inquiry,
(35:52):
and respond to every inaccuracy that exists. He said students
should consider sharing their views on blogs, responding to anna
line news reports, and using the new media in other ways,
but he cautioned against arguing with others about their beliefs.
There is no need to become defensive or belligerent, he said.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
This feels like a skeleton key to a lot of
Mormon content to why Mormons are so online, whether they
are overtly discussing their religion or not. Modern Mormon missionaries
will very often vlog their experiences. This is from a
missionary named Grayson Hardman from last year.
Speaker 5 (36:34):
All right, we're all proselyting through it in the heat.
We just had our very first contact really of the
day in person. What happens not interesting.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
Posting is all but baked into the religion in the
modern day, probably in a sour dough that took five
hours to make. By the time Mormon tradwives and mommy
bloggers become mainstream famous, they're not wearing their religion on
their sleeve as much. It's more of a soft pitch.
You usually find out their Mormon whereas if you scroll
all the way down to the beginning of their profile,
(37:08):
they often used to be more overt about the values
they held. But again, to connect it back to that piece,
this heating to a spouse a vision of an ideal
Mormon family without defensiveness or belligerence. It kind of makes sense. Okay,
back to Ballerina Farm. Because Hannah Nielman starts in the
waning days of mommy blogging, she kind of straddles different
(37:29):
eras of social media and Mormons online. She starts mommy
blogging on we took the Train in the twenty tens,
at the end of the mommy blogging trend, and then
is at the forefront of the Instagram and TikTok Mormon
mommy blogs, which are wildly different in tone. They're not
at all confessional and are far more defined by their
esthetic and this sense of ferial certainty. So to give
(37:52):
you an idea of how her narrative voice shifts, here's
an example of how Hannah would speak in her early
blogging days in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 8 (38:00):
I've been thinking a lot lately about my life and
just how grateful I really am that I am right
here right now. Two people. One was a past pageant coach,
the other a fellow dancer I want to dance with.
Ask me if I was really happy to have given
up those dreams for where I am today.
Speaker 3 (38:18):
Ha, I am so happy.
Speaker 8 (38:20):
I am so at peace. I have a husband who
is mine forever.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
Together.
Speaker 8 (38:26):
We have a beautiful baby boy who is full of
purity and joy. I get to dance and teach as
much as possible, and I love that, of course, but
there is nothing more rewarding than seeing my family here
right now. I really feel like the luckiest girl in
the world. So yep, I am happy. Goal for the
(38:48):
week only eat out once.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
It's still praising the lifestyle, but even acknowledging her own
insecurity or the doubt that people in her life had
about her religion, is not something you would see today.
In these early posts, you can really feel Hannah grappling
with I love dance, but I love my husband and motherhood.
Am I doing the right thing? She also talks about
going to McDonald's and loving it, something that wildly differs
(39:15):
from her current dance as a tradwive slash farmed table influencer.
In these early days, she's working part time teaching dance
while raising her eldest son, trying to sort of find
a balance between traditional values and what her passions are.
This is not at all what Ballerina Farm content sounds like.
Here's a post from this year.
Speaker 9 (39:37):
Today, we're making some Turkish eggs. So I started off
by straining some of Daniel's homemade yogurt in a cheesecloth
and hung that so it could get a bit thicker.
Can I wash my butter? I also like to run
under some cold water to get it really nice and washed.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
So Hannah starts as a completely different kind of Mormon influencer.
When I started looking looking for an answer to this
question why there are so many Mormon women that are
successful online, I was seeing the same answer over and over. Well,
it's because Mormon women are taught to journal a lot.
The Instagram and TikTok content on the farm is wildly successful,
(40:15):
and Hannah and Daniel continue to grow their family that
now consists of eight children, and they quickly expand this
success to start a series of businesses. They start a
beef farm, they start a lifestyle brand, and Hannah goes
from a middling blogger to a leading TikTok and Instagram creator,
racking up millions of views on her videos of making
(40:37):
meals from scratch, talking about the advantages of her farm
to table and family first lifestyle, and doing it all
in full makeup. And these cottage core flowy dresses. There's
also quiet advertisements in Ballerina Farm content for most of
her videos. You can find affiliate codes on her website
for basically anything you saw her use in the course
(40:58):
of the video. In twenty two every One, Hannah had
two hundred thousand Instagram followers. Now she has ten million.
So the days where Hannah was teaching Dan's part time
are long gone. Now she's a farmer who isn't just
running a business and making meals. And as these responsibilities
pile up, viewers began to question how she was doing
(41:20):
all of this, like, surely someone is helping with the
kids and the business, right because the kids are homeschooled
and the meals took hours, and Hannah appeared to be
making content and co running multiple businesses while also upholding
conservative values. That's a lot of jobs, but we're not
really allowed behind the curtain. Part of the content's appeal
(41:41):
is that Hannah made this all look so easy, and
as she was doing all of this, she continued to
compete in the occasional pageant, winning the title of missus
America in twenty twenty one and twenty twenty three.
Speaker 10 (41:54):
What You're all Flipping out about is her looking smoke
and hot and participating in miss world right after she
gave birth. I mean, like, I think the placenta probably
hadn't even come out when she was putting on her
ball gown.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
I mean she is. That was quick.
Speaker 10 (42:12):
That was a quick turnaround. So she's in your head
about that. But why was she not in your head before?
I think you guys just haven't been following her closely enough.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
She's projecting the super mom image right. It's unclear to
viewers how it's attained, and you get the feeling that
it either requires a lot of personal sacrifice, a lot
of other people working just outside the frame, or both,
because the alternative is, well, what the fuck is wrong
with me? But this virtuousness, this emphasis on disciplining the body,
(42:42):
the emphasis that ball gowns aside my marriage and family
are the most important thing. That's a solid ad for Mormonism.
And even so the Ballerina farm family doesn't often reference
the Mormon Church online, it's implied they get ready for
church on camera. There's extreme emphasis placed on the gender
roles in nuclear families. But for someone who comes across
(43:05):
their content by chance, there's nothing that screams, these are
Mormons unless you know what to look for in terms
of home decor, and this feels by design. You don't
build an empire with the ninth most popular religion in
the US according to Pew research, behind dominant Protestant and
Catholic practices, behind Judaism, and behind other subcategories like atheist,
(43:27):
agnostic end quote nothing in particular, unquote. If you're six
places behind Nothing in Particular and want to keep growing
your business, it makes sense that they avoid endorsing their
often controversial religion. So in most places, I've seen Ballerina
Farm classified as a soft advertisement for the church and
(43:48):
for feminists with careers who openly advocate on issues like
queer and trans rites and open abortion access. I understand
why Ballerina Farm's success is triggering, and for people who
work on farms that are not banngrolled by JetBlue, the
account scans as even more of a performance. And then
this past summer, Vallerina Farm has been a popular point
(44:09):
of discussion for years with evangelizing followers and snark blogs
with readership in the six figures, but she comes to
widespread mainstream attention this past summer when a Times profile
written by Megan Agnew suggested that beneath this content was
a very disturbing dynamic. Main takeaways from the article include
(44:30):
Hannah and Daniel said they met on a plane. It
turns out this was a plane that Daniel's father owned,
and he specifically requested to be set on seid plane
beside Hannah, making it the most expensive predatory meet cute
I've ever heard of. Hannah wanted to date for a
year in order to maintain her education at Juilliard, but
was overruled by Daniel. She was engaged a month later
(44:51):
and was married and pregnant soon after that, all before graduation.
There are, of course people working on Vallerina farm and
for their company, they were just never acknowledged as existing
in the content. However, Hannah is not allowed to have
nanny's to help her at home, and the article implies
(45:12):
that this is Daniel's choice, and he describes Hannah as
becoming so exhausted by caring for the eight children that
she will sometimes collapse for a week at a time,
which plays into the Mormon and just generally fundamentalist belief
that women's suffering is virtuous, but to a modern audience
hearing this dynamic within such a wealthy family felt fucked up.
(45:34):
Hannah and Daniel did not believe involuntary abortion, something their
content suggested but never stated, and that Hannah's identity prior
to their marriage and especially her relationship with Dance, had
been slowly choked out by Ballerina Farm and the Mormon lifestyle.
And this story had reach not only because it was upsetting,
(45:56):
but because it seemed to vindicate and sadden a lot
of the people who had been asking how Ballerina Farm
quote unquote did it all. The article suggests that the
answer is by sacrificing parts of herself and being exhausted
to the point of not being able to function. Something
I thought was interesting while examining the reaction to this
story was that non Mormons tended to find Daniel Nielman
(46:20):
as the villain of this story because it's him who
is constantly correcting, negging, and suppressing Hannah throughout the profile
as written. But X Mormon influencers are careful to add
a little bit of nuance to this. Their suggestion is more,
does Daniel come off as an entitled asshole? Yes, but
both Daniel and Hannah are playing their role here. It
(46:40):
doesn't excuse the behavior, but x Mormon YouTubers like Jordan
and Mackay note that Daniel was playing the part of
the devout Mormon husband to the hilt here. And what
I'll say in Ballerina Farm's defense, While I find the
details of this story really dark, I do believe Hannah
Nielman when she says that she believes this is the
correct way to live, and the rest of us can
(47:01):
make of it what we will. Hannah has of course
condemned this piece in a recent post.
Speaker 6 (47:07):
A couple of weeks ago, we had a reporter come
into our home to learn more about our family and business.
We thought the interview went really well, very similar to
the dozens of interviews we had done in recent memory.
We were taken back, however, when we saw the printed article,
which shocked us and shocked the world by being an
(47:28):
attack on our family and my marriage.
Speaker 3 (47:31):
And her audience has only continued to grow. Honestly, I
think this article might have helped her in the long run.
But all this, while fascinating, does not answer my question,
why is this a ten million follower account? Hannah Nielman
has not been acknowledged by the LDS as a remarkable asset,
and she doesn't emphasize her religion as she once did,
(47:55):
So is she an asset to the Mormon Church? The
answer becomes clearer if you start to follow the money.
It's impossible to get meaningful insight into this issue without
talking to people who have been Mormons themselves who intimately
understand the culture. There is a thriving corner of the
Internet that is built around x Mormon content, primarily on
(48:18):
YouTube and TikTok. As I'm writing this, there are plenty
of creators who have left the church explaining their personal
experience with the various indoctrinations, cultural stigmas, and oppression experience
within the LDS. Often accounts of their childhood and their
mission and why they ultimately left. Like pro Mormon content,
ex Mormon creators appear to be very successful, and I've
(48:39):
watched quite a bit of it in preparation for this episode.
Some resources I've used are the long running Mormon Stories podcast,
which has been going since two thousand and five, and
a number of YouTubers, especially Alyssa Grenfell, who I'll be
talking to in the next part of this episode. Here's
what I'll leave you with. If Mormonism is nowhere near
(49:01):
the country's most popular religion but is disproportionately represented on
our social media, then what is there left to look to?
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Then?
Speaker 3 (49:11):
Money? Any algorithm, Alyssa Grenfell explains in Part two via Then.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
Sixteenth Minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio.
Itias written, posted, and produced by me Jamie Loftus. Our
executive producers are so Ghy Lickerman and Robert Evans.
Speaker 3 (49:33):
The amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Our theme song is by Sad thirteen and Pet. Shoutouts
to our dog producer Anderson, my Kat's Flee and Casper
and my pet Rockbord, who will outlive us all.
Speaker 7 (49:47):
Bye.
Cool Zone Media joining.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
The six.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Six Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we
(00:57):
talk to the Internet's characters of the day and see
how their fifteen minutes of fame affected them and what
it says about the Internet and us. But this week
we're taking a bit of a side quest to answer
a question I've been asked quite a bit lately, and
I didn't know how to answer, why are there so
(01:18):
many Mormon women at the top of the social media
influencing pile After a recent episode, I saw this question
in the comments everywhere. I saw it on the sixteenth
minute Reddit board, which, by the way, someone made if
you're interested or have thoughts after episodes, And while it
did resonate with me that the subject of the episode
had been raised Mormon, I didn't want to touch that
within the episode for a couple reasons. First because they
(01:41):
never talk about Mormonism in their content and have generally
avoided questions about it. And second, I didn't have a
fucking clue what the answer to this question was, even
though I understand why it was being asked. So this
week we're going to attempt to answer that question in
a two part deep dive series. The second of which
will release on Thursday. Because to understand the root of
(02:04):
why Mormonism and present day Mormon mommy influencers are so successful,
you've got to understand where the overlaps in their interests
are and how the values of both of these communities
line up. So this week we're going to get all
up to speed on that, and on Thursday, Alissa Grenfell
will unpack how Mormon mobs have stayed on top of
(02:26):
internet influencing for the last twenty years. All right, let's
jump in and take a brief God, I really hope,
actually brief look into the history of the Mormon Church
in America, and I'll link to some additional resources in
the description of the episode. Okay, let's learn about Mormons.
Mormonism is a nineteenth century religion, formally founded by Joseph
(02:49):
Smith in eighteen thirty. He was born squarely in the
middle of the Second Great Religious Awakening in the US,
a religious revival that would strengthen movements like Methodism, Presbyterianism,
and the Baptist Church and would birth a lot more
and Joseph Smith was a kid of this era. He
grew up without a firm religion, but was curious to
try things. The Mormon Faith, often called the LDS or
(03:12):
Latter day Saints, came up shortly after the Shaker's movement.
The LDS came to prominence around the same time as
a number of Black church movements like the African Methodist
Episcopal Church. The LDS shares a little bit of DNA
with Spiritualism, and you could listen to my limited series
Ghost Church for more about the history of that. The
mid nineteenth century was a big time of religious change
(03:36):
and upheaval in the US, and after Mormonism took off,
new religions continued to pop up. For example, Jehovah's Witnesses
and Christian Scientists weren't far behind Mormonism, but very few
specific movements from this time still have the cultural hold
on America that Mormonism does. So Joseph Smith releases the
Book of Mormon and the religion is formalized in eighteen thirty,
(03:58):
but the religion's or story connects to two incidents from
the previous ten years. One was from eighteen twenty, when
Joseph was fourteen and asked both Jesus and God which
religion to follow, and was told by them follow none
of them. It is your job to prepare the world
for the second coming of Jesus. The other incident was
in eighteen twenty three, when a seventeen year old Smith
(04:20):
is said to have been visited by the angel Morone
to repeat this calling, and was also told that there
was an ancient record regarding God's dealings with the quote
unquote American Continent that he needed to translate with a
series of tools when he was a little older. After
the Angel Moroni's visit, Joseph Smith says that he retrieved
and divinely translated the text of the Book of Mormon,
(04:41):
which was inscribed on thin gold plates. There is a
bit of a wizard of Ozzi equality to the way
that this translation is dictated. There's magic stones. He's going
behind curtains, and sometimes he wouldn't even use the gold plates.
He would instead put a special stone in a hat,
then bury his face and said hat. But if you're
a prophet that he explained, the stone lights up within
(05:02):
the hat and then you just dictate from there. This
whole mystical plates thing also comes up in modern scientology,
where members in Florida are engraving the words of l
Ron Hubburn on to titanium plates as we speak. It
also harkens back to Helena Blovotsky's notion of the Acaciic
records of the late nineteenth century, which were said to
(05:24):
be indestructible tablets of the astral light. So there's that.
A lot of this reminds me of spiritualism, which in
its early days was composed of a lot of practical magic.
Great movie. And if you're not familiar with the origins
of the Book of Mormon, to be fair, most religious
origin stories are not significantly wilder than this. Spiritualism has
(05:47):
a similarly mystical origin story as for its contents. The
Book of Mormon details the plight of a group of
Jewish people in Jerusalem who escaped the city before it's
destroyed in six hundred BC. They build a boat, sail
it to the America, and soon become embroiled in a
conflict within the group between two groups called the Neophytes
and the Lamanites. One of the big changes made to
(06:08):
the Book of Mormon later on is that the Lamanites
were ancestors of all indigenous Americans. This language would later
be softened to say that they were among the ancestors
of some indigenous people. So a group of Jewish people
migrate to the Americas and become indigenous Americans. Okay. Jesus
(06:28):
is a huge part of Mormonism, and the Book of
Mormon details that after Jesus is resurrected in thirty three AD,
he goes to visit the Americas, where he is hailed
as the pale Prophet because yes, Mormon Jesus is white.
Some of their other beliefs, as expressed through Joseph Smith,
are that God is a flesh and blood being who
has a flesh and blood wife, his wife who lives
(06:52):
far away near a distant star. And God tells Joseph
Smith that we earthlings were brought into being to create
these nuclear families, to be closer to God, so that
one day we can live with God out of town
on the star where he lives. And to create these families.
You hear a lot of the classic signifiers of fundamentalist religions.
There is an emphasis on sacrifice, discipline, and suffering. There
(07:15):
are rigid gender roles. There's canonical homophobia. There's absurd racism
that was later scaled back in order to accommodate growth
in membership until a few decades ago. The Book of
Mormon described members as quote a white and delightsome people unquote.
To this day, there is still a tacit, don't ask,
don't tell policy within the church about queerness, and that's
(07:36):
an improvement from the mid twenty tens, when the children
of queer parents were still not allowed to be baptized
in the LDS. Anyways, in his time, Joseph Smith was,
for his account, declared a prophet by Jesus and genuinely
did face a great deal of persecution in the early
days where he was gathering followers in New York, he
was arrested and ejected from the state and took his
(07:58):
believers to Ohio to prepare for the Second Coming of
Jesus in Zion, a location TBD paradise where Smith envisioned
communities that would be governed by celestial laws as determined
by him. As it progresses, Mormonism grows further away from
traditional Christianity, and before you know it, the Mormons are
ousted from Ohio. Smith is tar and feathered. Before this,
(08:21):
the group then moves to Missouri, which is great because
the Lord just so happens to have told Joseph Smith
that that's actually where Zion is, but also where the
Garden of Eden was. So the Mormons start buying up
land in Missouri and to remind you of the era
of history we're in. This happened in eighteen thirty one,
just a year after the Indian Removal Act was passed
(08:41):
and brought about twenty years of brutal genocide of the
indigenous people. But once in Missouri, the Mormons are driven
out again, this time with increasing violence, and over the
next few years they head with Smith all over the Midwest,
where they're treated with similar hostility most places they go.
At one point, the governor of Missouri passed an extermination act.
Eventually they moved to Illinois, where they're permitted to set
(09:04):
up a city of their own called Nouvou basically Zion
two point zero, and it's here where Smith lightly militarizes
the group and increasingly sends out missionaries to continue to
grow the faith, and at the same time, Smith is
told by an angel to introduce one of the LDS's
most controversial policies, polygamy. And polygamy wasn't something that was
(09:24):
allowed to everyone in the faith at first, just the
powerful in the church, and during Smith's lifetime the practice
was kept fairly quiet. He married as many as forty women,
some of whom were under age. Women were expected to
remain in the home, have many children, and to this
day there is an early and intense emphasis on being
(09:44):
a wife and mother before all else. The end of
the line came for Joseph Smith in Illinois in eighteen
forty four, where non Mormon locals imprisoned and then killed
he and his brother. He's been hailed as an eternal
prophet in the Mormon Church ever since, and is still
an extremely prominent figure in the culture to this day.
And if you want this story told from the Mormon perspective,
(10:06):
there's a lot of LDS produced movies about it on
YouTube that are really well acted and actual.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
Being from the unseen world, exerting all my strength to
call upon God, I saw a pillar.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Of line, all right, save it for the pulpit. After
Smith's death, a guy named Brigham Young takes over and
the Mormons leave Navoo in eighteen forty six, hiking pioneer
style to what is now present day Utah, where in
the next ten odd years they ignored the American government
and practice polygamy openly, that is, until this was going
(10:48):
to prevent Utah getting statehood. Polygamy would be in LDS
sanctioned practice until eighteen ninety, but it was technically discontinued
at that point to avoid clashing with existing laws around bigamy.
Pass in the eighteen sixties and seventies. However, a lot
of Mormons continued to practice polygamy quietly. In today's Mormon marriages,
more traditional fundamentalist monogamy is certainly the norm, and there's
(11:12):
a long complicated history with the Mormons, Utah and indigenous people, because,
unlike most accounts of a new American colony being founded,
there were Native Americans in Utah when they arrived, and
under Brigham Young LDS members are encouraged to purchase Native
children as slaves and raise them in their homes with
the hopes of assimilating them to the Mormon faith. It's
(11:34):
not too dissimilar from the residential schools that separated Native
families and erase their culture, often killing children all the
way into the nineteen nineties. Today, there is still a
very high number of Mormons in Utah, hovering somewhere around
forty percent In twenty twenty three. It's where Brigham Young
University is and where are some of the religion's most
prominent influencers live today. Ever heard of the Real Housewives
(11:58):
of Salt Lake City?
Speaker 5 (12:00):
Salt Lake City, Utah, is known for its magnificent mountains
and world.
Speaker 6 (12:05):
Class casetos, but what Salt Lake City is most known
for is the Mormon Church.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
A quick lesson on how to be a good Mormon.
Don't drink, don't swear, treat your body like a temple.
To be Mormon, we are taught honesty and integrity, and
most importantly, to watch for sue you're gonna go with
Mary your grandfather, Well, there you go. On the other
end of that, about a third of people raised in
the LDS today end up leaving the religion, as opposed
(12:37):
to the ninety five percent retention rate of the late
nineteen eighties. So it's important to note the Internet age
has made a difference in how Mormonism is perceived by
its own members. And if you're Mormon or ex Mormon,
you know that I am barely scratching the surface here.
It's an extremely complicated religion that's been around for nearly
two hundred years. Things I didn't mention include rituals, observances,
(13:00):
restrictive religious underwear, and for the very devout missions, which
are eighteen to twenty four month assignments where LDS officials
determine a location for a young person to go and
their job is to recruit people into the church. As
it pertains to today's episode, it's important to note that
Mormonism is a fundamentalist religion that has been historically hostile
(13:22):
to women, to queer people, and to anyone who isn't white.
What is also important is that the Mormon Church has
a shitload of money, A shitload I had no idea.
At present, the Mormon churches net worth is estimated to
be two hundred and sixty five billion dollars. For context,
Disney is valued at one hundred and sixty one billion dollars.
(13:45):
Much of this has to do with mandatory tithing, where
church members are required to give ten percent of their
income back to the LDS. As for pop culture, Mormonism
has been portrayed negatively a lot. Think HBO show Bis
Love and still running Broadway musical The Book of Mormon,
which of course the LDS condemned.
Speaker 5 (14:07):
Hello, my Name is Elder Price, and I would like
to share with you the most amazing book.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Hello, my name is Elder Grant.
Speaker 5 (14:20):
It's a book about America a long, long time ago.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
It has well, I wonder why they didn't like that.
But the LDS has also produced its fair share of
successful entertainment acts. There no scientology, but Mitt Romney, David Archiletta,
Donnie and Marie Osmond and Gladys Knight is still a
pretty impressive roster. The aquabats are Mormon? Really think about that?
(14:46):
And of course a ton of currently successful influencers more
when we come back. The prevalence of Mormon influencers has
(15:08):
been an increasing point of speculation in the last few months,
mostly in connection to two stories that have broken through
to the mainstream. The first story, as I write this,
a new Hulu reality show that is about to debut
about Mormon wife influencers.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
I love the Mormon Church, but there are a lot
of rules that we have to follow. We were raised
to be these housewives for the men, serving their every desires.
Have kids by the time you're twenty one or in
my case at sixteen, Well, I'm like this.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
We are trying to change the stigma of gender roles
in the Mormon culture.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
The central characters of this show are existing successful Mormon
mommy TikTokers, and if the comments on virtually every video
of these women is to be believed, they are very
controversial within the Latter day Saint community, and most would
say they do not represent Mormonism in spite of the
fact that they live in Salt Lake City, where the
(16:05):
LDS is headquartered. Most of them grew up Mormon, and
part of why they became so popular on TikTok was
because they were referencing the tenants and values of the church.
Speaker 7 (16:15):
Have you talked to your bishop or the church about anything? No?
Speaker 1 (16:21):
No, how come I don't know? Because like what if
they're going to like excommunicate me.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
This content got really popular under the hashtag mom talk
on TikTok in the early twenty twenties, and while this
content promotes fundamentalist values around gender rules, due to their popularity,
the mom talkers were also becoming primary breadwinners for their family.
The women of mom Talk look very modern. They're usually
wearing Kardashian adjacent athleteture, but the reason they have a
(16:48):
TV show, in my opinion, is not because they blew
up on TikTok or even really because they're Mormon. It's
because they were perceived as being bad at being Mormon.
In two to mom Talk influencer Taylor, Frankie Paul announced
that she and her husband would be getting a divorce
because of her violation of the terms of their soft
(17:09):
swinging within their Mormon friend group. And soft swinging is
not sanctioned by the LDS in no small part because
that might actually be fun for women.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Soft swinging, again, is when you like, just hug up,
but you don't go.
Speaker 5 (17:24):
All the way.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
It's a huge source of controversy among very online Mormons,
if the comment section is to be believed, and it's
not hard to understand why. Add this to the fact
that mom talkers were regularly breaking core tenants of the faith.
They did things like drink caffeine, they didn't wear their
religious garments beneath their clothes all the time. This soft
swinging incident might cause a scandal in your average suburban community,
(17:48):
but Paul's disclosure that there were multiple Mormon couples involved
caused to stir within the community. So presented with this
public scandal and subsequent high profile influencer's decision to remain
within the church. Is this bad for the Mormon pr
team or is all press good press? They haven't been
excommunicated or anything like that. But the Mormon Church has
(18:11):
issued the rare condemnation of this upcoming Hulu show. And
this is rare because the LDS hasn't commented on how
Mormons are portrayed in pop culture in a while. But
when the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives trailer dropped, the
LDS released the following statement.
Speaker 5 (18:27):
The portrayal is a gross misrepresentation that could have real
life consequences for people of faith. A statement by the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints reads it
depicts lifestyles and practices blatantly inconsistent with the teachings of
the Church and irresponsibly mischaracterizes the safety and conduct of
(18:49):
our volunteer missionaries. We understand the fascinations some in the
media have with the church, but regret that portrayals often
rely on sensationalism and inaccuracies that do not fairly and
fully reflect the lives of our church members or these
sacred beliefs that they hold.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Dear, there are a lot of Mormon rituals that aren't
often referenced in this kind of content, but is addressed
a lot in ex Mormon content. There is rituals like
the washing and anointing. There's endowment ceremonies and esthetics that
are all but directly pulled from Joseph Smith's interactions with
the American Freemasons. But whether the LDS likes it or not,
(19:32):
this is the latest step that actively Mormon influencers have
made into mainstream culture. Again, I haven't seen an episode
of this show yet, but it looks like the wives
are going to be centered in the story here, which
would have been unheard of in Mormonism at one time.
But what I've learned is that part of why Mormon
influencers are more successful than other trad wife Okay, let's
(19:55):
define tradwife.
Speaker 5 (19:57):
A trad wife is a woman who believes in and
pctices traditional gender roles and marriages. Some may choose to
take a homemaking role within their marriage, and others leave
their careers to focus on meeting their families' needs in
the home.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Part of why Mormon influencers are more successful than other
tradwife influencers of other religions is because the Mormon Church
has been unusually good at adapting to the Internet and
always has been. That's not the only reason, but we'll
get there. If you've managed to make it to Fall
twenty twenty four without having the word tradwife shoved in
(20:35):
your face, congratulations and sorry, because I am going to
tell you what it is. Tradwife content is a social
media trend from about the last half decade where women
create lifestyle content and make lifestyle changes, the more closely
aligned with traditional gender roles, with an emphasis on the
beauty of a return to old time values. So TikTok's
(20:56):
about making meals from scratch for five hours, defining oneself
primarily as a wife and a mother, rejecting or abandoning
a career outside the home, and being generally deferential to
the patriarch, whether that's a husband or father or priest.
Not all tradwives are Mormons hashtag not all tradwives, not
(21:17):
even close. And I'm not going to tackle the topic
of tradwive content wholesale in this episode. What you need
to know is the term tradwife shouldn't be conflated with
staying at home moms because while tradwife creators are moms
and at home with the children. Making tradwife content is,
for my money, a separate job from the actual parenting,
(21:40):
because being a stay at home parent is a job,
although most cultures are not conditioned to view that labor
as valid. Tradwife content looks beautiful, high on aesthetic and
low on practicality, showing only the esthetically pleasing parts of
the nuclear family and rarely any of the struggle or mess.
(22:01):
There's a sense of self surveillance to this content, an
appearance of perfection in the home and family that's projected
to the public, and often visual signifiers that harken back
to mid twentieth century America. So, if this makes sense,
tradwives don't look like stay at home moms. They look
like the advertisements of stay at home moms. And so
(22:23):
much of what makes their content appealing is that an
incredibly difficult lifestyle to achieve is made to seem easy, attractive,
and morally correct. Because if you're making lifestyle content of
any kind, whether you personally or morally endorse the lifestyle,
you're working in sales. I hate to break it to you,
how many hot dogs have I sold by accident incalculable,
(22:50):
just not. The trad live space is predominantly white, but
possibly more diverse than you might expect. There is an
active Black trat life community who, according to a Refinery
twenty nine piece by Nyla Burton in late twenty twenty two,
believe that quote traditional marriage is the key to Black
women's liberation from being overworked, economic insecurity, and the stress
(23:12):
of trying to survive in a world hostile to our
survival and existence. Cradwife content is popular across a lot
of religions, but what's consistent across these communities is a
feeling of performance, and this aesthetic of either mid century
housewives or cottage core. In my opinion, there's very little
(23:35):
intimacy to these posts, in spite of the fact that
we're seeing inside of a family's home and usually seeing
their children, who are, make no mistake, a part of
the business model. While I totally get why the content
is so appealing, it does feel like a performance, and
a very effective one. I mean, I'm like a militant feminist,
(23:57):
and I would be lying if I said I hadn't
seen a few trildwife posts that made me feel like
I was living my life the wrong way, but neutral statement.
These posts are a performance.
Speaker 4 (24:09):
Think of it like this.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
The Donna Reed Show very effectively sold the idea of
Donna Red as a nuclear housewife and mother that lived
in this effortless way, and in reality was a television
show that was produced by its star, and that the
real Donna Reed was a multi hyphenic creative and a
TV pioneer who was selling the idea of this housewife
(24:30):
rather than actually living that life herself. Well, would you say,
missus Johnson, that Donna worked hard in college?
Speaker 7 (24:39):
She worked hard up at seven in the morning, all
day in school and jobs between classes to earn a
little extra money, and then home to earn a roman
board to help me cooking dishes and a little ironing,
and men stud until midnight. I don't think she ever
(25:02):
had more than six hours.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
To me from a social media perspective, the trad life
phenomenon has a lot in common with a pattern that
we talk about on this show all the time. A
lot of the reason we're still talking about this content
is because there's been so much backlash and outrage toward
it since it became popular in the early twenty twenties.
Left leaning feminists who believe that the tradwife trend hearkens
(25:24):
a dangerous period of regression as the American people's right
to bodily autonomy slowly and surely slips into the very
mid century timeframe that tradwives so often portray. And this
outrage does help to fuel the success of the influencers,
because yes, they have millions of followers, but the snart
reddit boards and hate comments saying that tradwives are self
(25:47):
hating and glamorizing oppression have engagement in the hundreds of
thousands as well. And as far as the algorithm is concerned,
engagement is engagement, whether it's positive or negative. You're remind
finds me a lot of friend of the pod Max
Fisher's book A Chaos Machine, in which he fully illustrates
the ways in which modern algorithms are designed to enrage.
(26:09):
That's why we have so many social media stories that
are rooted in backlash and then backlash to the backlash.
Prod wife narratives fall neatly into this pattern because for
every bit of praise, there's an essay that's written in
stark disagreement. So why is this content so popular in
the last few years friend of the pod Brigid Todd
(26:30):
of there are no girls on the internet sets.
Speaker 8 (26:33):
During uncertain times, people sell easy solutions because our brains
in times of precarity crave simple solutions. But often those comforting,
simple solutions are just placeholders for the reality, which is
that the problem is actually systemic and institutional. You're not
going to dismantle it in your specific nuclear household and family.
(26:53):
If you're only looking within your own family, you're not
looking hard enough at the larger issues at play.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
While these as have millions upon millions of followers who
view the content as soothing or aspirational, there are plenty
of modern moms who were completely fucking baffled by it.
Because I've engaged with so much of this content that
my algorithm will never bounce back, I feel comfortable saying
that tradwife content is often a lot about subtext, right
(27:21):
projecting a message without explicitly stating it. Maybe the fifties
were a great time for women, Maybe we need to
bring it back, but there's a sense of encouraging to
submit to the status quo, a status quo that existed
before a lot of necessary civil rights were fought for,
But online now tradwives man. But let's bring it back
(27:43):
to the Mormon's side of this content specifically, because as
we're trying to get to the bottom of Mormons have
found a lot of success in this space. Mom Talkers
are far from the only prominent Mormon content creators dominating
social media today. The most popular, and so by extension,
the most embroiled in controversy is the second major Mormon
(28:05):
influencer story of the summer, Ballerina Farm. More when we
come back, welcome back to sixteenth minute. The more I
(28:29):
learned about tradwives, the more it became obvious that they
developed in response to the capitalism is for girls to
actually slay rhetoric of the mid twenty tens. But like,
is it that different when you're a tradwife entrepreneur? It
kind of seems like you're doing the same thing, but
the thing that you're selling is that you're not actually
(28:49):
doing the thing that I'm watching you doing. And when
we left off, we were talking about the most famous
Mormon influencer on the scene today, Ballerina Farm. Where do
we again? All my male listeners are getting like a
noseblade Mallerina Farm is the user name for a Mormon
woman named Hannah Neielman, whose follower count on Instagram currently
(29:10):
sits at ten million. She was raised in the LDS
and was a tremendously talented ballerina who got into and
graduated from Juilliard. And she cited over and over that
she was the first undergrad in modern history to be
pregnant while still at Juilliard because while there she got
married to fellow Mormon Daniel Nielman in twenty eleven, the
(29:32):
year before she graduated.
Speaker 9 (29:33):
So both the.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
Neielmans grew up in big, devout Utah Mormon families. Hannah
was one of nine, Daniel was one of ten. They
got engaged after only three weeks, and while Hannah was
still in college, she also started competing in beauty pageants.
She started with Miss New York and then re entered
the space after getting married and having kids, because Hannah
does not stay a ballerina. After graduation, Hannah and Daniel
(29:58):
moved to England for a semester at Cambridge, then Utah
so Daniel could finish his degree at Brigham Young University,
and then to Brazil, where Daniel worked as the director
of his father's security company for a few years, because
it must be said financially, these are incredibly privileged people.
Daniel's father founded Jet Blue. Dude, They've got money, and
(30:20):
he's so Mormon that he worked on Mitt Romney's failed
presidential campaign in twenty twelve. But Daniel's dream is to
move back to Utah and live on a farm, and
they finally do so in twenty seventeen, buying the eponymous
Ballerina Farm in twenty eighteen. By the time they moved
on to the three hundred and twenty eight acre farm,
they had four kids, and when they moved onto the farm,
(30:40):
Hannah Nielman's online brand as a Mormon wife was well established,
but significantly less successful. Hannah started her social media journey
as a mom influencer on a blog called We Took
the Train in early twenty thirteen, shortly after the birth
of her first child, Henry, and her college graduation. And
it's interesting that she in with a completely different era
(31:02):
of successful Mormon online influencers because in the two thousands
into the early twenty tens, Mormon mommy blogs were a thing.
The Mormon mommy blogger pipeline was popular for as long
as blogs were popular and mommy bloggers in general have
always enjoyed massive success and usually adapt to new social
(31:22):
media platforms pretty easily. I'd recommend Sarah Peterson's book mom
Fluenced for more on this topic because mommy blogging was
popular from the very dawn of social media, but it
was very different than the tradwive content that we see today.
There was a lot more emphasis on writing over visuals,
and the writing tended to be more confessional. Writer Catherine
(31:44):
Jeezer Morton has been covering this space for a long time.
I'm quoting here from a New York Times column called
Did Moms Exist Before Social Media? From twenty twenty, where
she mentions how Mormon women entering the mommy blog space
changed it.
Speaker 8 (31:58):
To overlook the influence of Mormon and other Christian mommy
bloggers on this ship would be a huge oversight. Mormon
mommy bloggers in particular, were enormously influential in establishing the
esthetic and tone that came to characterize influencer era online motherhood.
Mormonism encourages the careful documentation of family life, and Mormon
mothers were among blogging's earliest and most enthusiastic adopters. Unlike
(32:20):
the confessional. Early mommy blogs, Mormon mother's blogs broadcast a
clean and chipper vision of motherhood, replete with DIY crafting
projects and coordinated family photoshoots. Many of the most successful
Mormon bloggers from the mid auts, like Amber Phillerup Clark,
and Naomi Davis, went on to become mainstream lifestyle bloggers,
and although their Mormon faith is no secret, its prominence
(32:41):
were seated as the years passed.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
Early successful Mormon or ex Mormon mommy bloggers included how
the Armstrong of Deucey, Amber Phillarup Davis, and love Taza
aka Naomi Davis. Around this same time, successful family bloggers
like Dade Carl and his family only become really popular
on YouTube and the late oughts into the early twenty tens.
(33:05):
In fact, Carl's child, Brock, was considered to be the
first Truman baby, as in The Truman Show, as in
a child whose life was documented from moment one to
a massive social media audience. Scary, This hyper vulnerable mommy
blog stuff is considered pretty old school now. At the time,
(33:26):
Mormon mommy bloggers were a part of the coined blogger
nackle community, with personalities like Stephanie Nielsen of the Nine
Dialogues and see Jane Kendrick of c Jane Enjoyett serving
as early examples for their crossover appeal outside of the religion.
There was even an award system developed for successful blogger
Nacle publications called the Niblets. This went from twenty five
(33:49):
to twenty seventeen, and bloggers who were particularly good at
spreading Mormon values online got a trophy. And I don't
know if you feel the same way, but I was
really surprised because because I thought of Mormon culture as
so conservative in its gender roles that actively encouraging women
to speak at all would be a non starter. But
(34:10):
that's not true at all, if talks given by Mormon
leaders during the early blogging era are to be believed.
These blogs, blogs, et cetera were viewed to be an
extension of the Mormon mission and a way to get
the word out. I'm pulling this from an LDS news
post from two thousand and seven.
Speaker 5 (34:29):
Apostle urges students to use new media. Two hundred graduating
students at Brigham Young University, Hawaii were urged today to
use the Internet, including blogs and other forms of new
media to contribute to a national conversation about the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. Elder M Russell Ballard,
an apostle in the church, told the mostly Mormon student
(34:51):
body that conversations about the church would take place whether
or not church members decided to participate in them. We
cannot stand on in the sidelines while others, including our critics,
attempt to define what the church teaches.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
He said.
Speaker 5 (35:06):
While some conversations have audiences in the thousands or even millions,
most are much much smaller, but all conversations have an
impact on those who participate in them. Perceptions of the
Church are established one conversation at a time. Church leaders
have publicly expressed concern that while much of the recent
(35:28):
extensive news reporting on the church has been balanced and accurate,
some has been trivial, distorted, or without context. Elder Ballard
said there were too many conversations going on about the
church for church representatives to respond to each individually, and
that church leaders can't answer every question, satisfy every inquiry,
(35:52):
and respond to every inaccuracy that exists. He said students
should consider sharing their views on blogs, responding to anna
line news reports, and using the new media in other ways,
but he cautioned against arguing with others about their beliefs.
There is no need to become defensive or belligerent, he said.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
This feels like a skeleton key to a lot of
Mormon content to why Mormons are so online, whether they
are overtly discussing their religion or not. Modern Mormon missionaries
will very often vlog their experiences. This is from a
missionary named Grayson Hardman from last year.
Speaker 5 (36:34):
All right, we're all proselyting through it in the heat.
We just had our very first contact really of the
day in person. What happens not interesting.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
Posting is all but baked into the religion in the
modern day, probably in a sour dough that took five
hours to make. By the time Mormon tradwives and mommy
bloggers become mainstream famous, they're not wearing their religion on
their sleeve as much. It's more of a soft pitch.
You usually find out their Mormon whereas if you scroll
all the way down to the beginning of their profile,
(37:08):
they often used to be more overt about the values
they held. But again, to connect it back to that piece,
this heating to a spouse a vision of an ideal
Mormon family without defensiveness or belligerence. It kind of makes sense. Okay,
back to Ballerina Farm. Because Hannah Nielman starts in the
waning days of mommy blogging, she kind of straddles different
(37:29):
eras of social media and Mormons online. She starts mommy
blogging on we took the Train in the twenty tens,
at the end of the mommy blogging trend, and then
is at the forefront of the Instagram and TikTok Mormon
mommy blogs, which are wildly different in tone. They're not
at all confessional and are far more defined by their
esthetic and this sense of ferial certainty. So to give
(37:52):
you an idea of how her narrative voice shifts, here's
an example of how Hannah would speak in her early
blogging days in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 8 (38:00):
I've been thinking a lot lately about my life and
just how grateful I really am that I am right
here right now. Two people. One was a past pageant coach,
the other a fellow dancer I want to dance with.
Ask me if I was really happy to have given
up those dreams for where I am today.
Speaker 3 (38:18):
Ha, I am so happy.
Speaker 8 (38:20):
I am so at peace. I have a husband who
is mine forever.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
Together.
Speaker 8 (38:26):
We have a beautiful baby boy who is full of
purity and joy. I get to dance and teach as
much as possible, and I love that, of course, but
there is nothing more rewarding than seeing my family here
right now. I really feel like the luckiest girl in
the world. So yep, I am happy. Goal for the
(38:48):
week only eat out once.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
It's still praising the lifestyle, but even acknowledging her own
insecurity or the doubt that people in her life had
about her religion, is not something you would see today.
In these early posts, you can really feel Hannah grappling
with I love dance, but I love my husband and motherhood.
Am I doing the right thing? She also talks about
going to McDonald's and loving it, something that wildly differs
(39:15):
from her current dance as a tradwive slash farmed table influencer.
In these early days, she's working part time teaching dance
while raising her eldest son, trying to sort of find
a balance between traditional values and what her passions are.
This is not at all what Ballerina Farm content sounds like.
Here's a post from this year.
Speaker 9 (39:37):
Today, we're making some Turkish eggs. So I started off
by straining some of Daniel's homemade yogurt in a cheesecloth
and hung that so it could get a bit thicker.
Can I wash my butter? I also like to run
under some cold water to get it really nice and washed.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
So Hannah starts as a completely different kind of Mormon influencer.
When I started looking looking for an answer to this
question why there are so many Mormon women that are
successful online, I was seeing the same answer over and over. Well,
it's because Mormon women are taught to journal a lot.
The Instagram and TikTok content on the farm is wildly successful,
(40:15):
and Hannah and Daniel continue to grow their family that
now consists of eight children, and they quickly expand this
success to start a series of businesses. They start a
beef farm, they start a lifestyle brand, and Hannah goes
from a middling blogger to a leading TikTok and Instagram creator,
racking up millions of views on her videos of making
(40:37):
meals from scratch, talking about the advantages of her farm
to table and family first lifestyle, and doing it all
in full makeup. And these cottage core flowy dresses. There's
also quiet advertisements in Ballerina Farm content for most of
her videos. You can find affiliate codes on her website
for basically anything you saw her use in the course
(40:58):
of the video. In twenty two every One, Hannah had
two hundred thousand Instagram followers. Now she has ten million.
So the days where Hannah was teaching Dan's part time
are long gone. Now she's a farmer who isn't just
running a business and making meals. And as these responsibilities
pile up, viewers began to question how she was doing
(41:20):
all of this, like, surely someone is helping with the
kids and the business, right because the kids are homeschooled
and the meals took hours, and Hannah appeared to be
making content and co running multiple businesses while also upholding
conservative values. That's a lot of jobs, but we're not
really allowed behind the curtain. Part of the content's appeal
(41:41):
is that Hannah made this all look so easy, and
as she was doing all of this, she continued to
compete in the occasional pageant, winning the title of missus
America in twenty twenty one and twenty twenty three.
Speaker 10 (41:54):
What You're all Flipping out about is her looking smoke
and hot and participating in miss world right after she
gave birth. I mean, like, I think the placenta probably
hadn't even come out when she was putting on her
ball gown.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
I mean she is. That was quick.
Speaker 10 (42:12):
That was a quick turnaround. So she's in your head
about that. But why was she not in your head before?
I think you guys just haven't been following her closely enough.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
She's projecting the super mom image right. It's unclear to
viewers how it's attained, and you get the feeling that
it either requires a lot of personal sacrifice, a lot
of other people working just outside the frame, or both,
because the alternative is, well, what the fuck is wrong
with me? But this virtuousness, this emphasis on disciplining the body,
(42:42):
the emphasis that ball gowns aside my marriage and family
are the most important thing. That's a solid ad for Mormonism.
And even so the Ballerina farm family doesn't often reference
the Mormon Church online, it's implied they get ready for
church on camera. There's extreme emphasis placed on the gender
roles in nuclear families. But for someone who comes across
(43:05):
their content by chance, there's nothing that screams, these are
Mormons unless you know what to look for in terms
of home decor, and this feels by design. You don't
build an empire with the ninth most popular religion in
the US according to Pew research, behind dominant Protestant and
Catholic practices, behind Judaism, and behind other subcategories like atheist,
(43:27):
agnostic end quote nothing in particular, unquote. If you're six
places behind Nothing in Particular and want to keep growing
your business, it makes sense that they avoid endorsing their
often controversial religion. So in most places, I've seen Ballerina
Farm classified as a soft advertisement for the church and
(43:48):
for feminists with careers who openly advocate on issues like
queer and trans rites and open abortion access. I understand
why Ballerina Farm's success is triggering, and for people who
work on farms that are not banngrolled by JetBlue, the
account scans as even more of a performance. And then
this past summer, Vallerina Farm has been a popular point
(44:09):
of discussion for years with evangelizing followers and snark blogs
with readership in the six figures, but she comes to
widespread mainstream attention this past summer when a Times profile
written by Megan Agnew suggested that beneath this content was
a very disturbing dynamic. Main takeaways from the article include
(44:30):
Hannah and Daniel said they met on a plane. It
turns out this was a plane that Daniel's father owned,
and he specifically requested to be set on seid plane
beside Hannah, making it the most expensive predatory meet cute
I've ever heard of. Hannah wanted to date for a
year in order to maintain her education at Juilliard, but
was overruled by Daniel. She was engaged a month later
(44:51):
and was married and pregnant soon after that, all before graduation.
There are, of course people working on Vallerina farm and
for their company, they were just never acknowledged as existing
in the content. However, Hannah is not allowed to have
nanny's to help her at home, and the article implies
(45:12):
that this is Daniel's choice, and he describes Hannah as
becoming so exhausted by caring for the eight children that
she will sometimes collapse for a week at a time,
which plays into the Mormon and just generally fundamentalist belief
that women's suffering is virtuous, but to a modern audience
hearing this dynamic within such a wealthy family felt fucked up.
(45:34):
Hannah and Daniel did not believe involuntary abortion, something their
content suggested but never stated, and that Hannah's identity prior
to their marriage and especially her relationship with Dance, had
been slowly choked out by Ballerina Farm and the Mormon lifestyle.
And this story had reach not only because it was upsetting,
(45:56):
but because it seemed to vindicate and sadden a lot
of the people who had been asking how Ballerina Farm
quote unquote did it all. The article suggests that the
answer is by sacrificing parts of herself and being exhausted
to the point of not being able to function. Something
I thought was interesting while examining the reaction to this
story was that non Mormons tended to find Daniel Nielman
(46:20):
as the villain of this story because it's him who
is constantly correcting, negging, and suppressing Hannah throughout the profile
as written. But X Mormon influencers are careful to add
a little bit of nuance to this. Their suggestion is more,
does Daniel come off as an entitled asshole? Yes, but
both Daniel and Hannah are playing their role here. It
(46:40):
doesn't excuse the behavior, but x Mormon YouTubers like Jordan
and Mackay note that Daniel was playing the part of
the devout Mormon husband to the hilt here. And what
I'll say in Ballerina Farm's defense, While I find the
details of this story really dark, I do believe Hannah
Nielman when she says that she believes this is the
correct way to live, and the rest of us can
(47:01):
make of it what we will. Hannah has of course
condemned this piece in a recent post.
Speaker 6 (47:07):
A couple of weeks ago, we had a reporter come
into our home to learn more about our family and business.
We thought the interview went really well, very similar to
the dozens of interviews we had done in recent memory.
We were taken back, however, when we saw the printed article,
which shocked us and shocked the world by being an
(47:28):
attack on our family and my marriage.
Speaker 3 (47:31):
And her audience has only continued to grow. Honestly, I
think this article might have helped her in the long run.
But all this, while fascinating, does not answer my question,
why is this a ten million follower account? Hannah Nielman
has not been acknowledged by the LDS as a remarkable asset,
and she doesn't emphasize her religion as she once did,
(47:55):
So is she an asset to the Mormon Church? The
answer becomes clearer if you start to follow the money.
It's impossible to get meaningful insight into this issue without
talking to people who have been Mormons themselves who intimately
understand the culture. There is a thriving corner of the
Internet that is built around x Mormon content, primarily on
(48:18):
YouTube and TikTok. As I'm writing this, there are plenty
of creators who have left the church explaining their personal
experience with the various indoctrinations, cultural stigmas, and oppression experience
within the LDS. Often accounts of their childhood and their
mission and why they ultimately left. Like pro Mormon content,
ex Mormon creators appear to be very successful, and I've
(48:39):
watched quite a bit of it in preparation for this episode.
Some resources I've used are the long running Mormon Stories podcast,
which has been going since two thousand and five, and
a number of YouTubers, especially Alyssa Grenfell, who I'll be
talking to in the next part of this episode. Here's
what I'll leave you with. If Mormonism is nowhere near
(49:01):
the country's most popular religion but is disproportionately represented on
our social media, then what is there left to look to?
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Then?
Speaker 3 (49:11):
Money? Any algorithm, Alyssa Grenfell explains in Part two via Then.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
Sixteenth Minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio.
Itias written, posted, and produced by me Jamie Loftus. Our
executive producers are so Ghy Lickerman and Robert Evans.
Speaker 3 (49:33):
The amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Our theme song is by Sad thirteen and Pet. Shoutouts
to our dog producer Anderson, my Kat's Flee and Casper
and my pet Rockbord, who will outlive us all.
Speaker 7 (49:47):
Bye.
Host
Jamie Loftus
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