Welcome to the We Are More podcast.
My name is Alyssa.
And my name is Bri.
We are two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism.
We believe that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach His
word.
And apparently that's controversial.
Get comfy.
Hello world.
Hello.
You'll be happy to know that today we are recording in a room that's not 9,000 degrees.
Nine hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes.
Have I made that one before?
I don't think you have.
Is that the actual right numbers?
I'm pretty sure.
I always get them wrong.
I try and sing it and I'm like four thousand seven hundred and eighty thousand.
No, I lost it.
I'm not even sure what I just sang.
That's from Rent, right?
Girl, I don't know.
I'm pretty sure it's from Rent.
Where have I heard it from though?
Glee.
Is that what it is?
Oh great.
Yeah, but like it's just a song that everybody knows.
Have you rewatched Glee in recent years?
I think during the lockdown I rewatched it and I couldn't make it all the way through.
It's so bad.
I got to like the last season or two.
Yeah, it was bad.
I don't remember most of this stuff, but the teacher is horrifying on every level.
Oh, a hundred percent terrible.
He's a predator.
Everybody's a predator in there.
Yeah, it's bad.
And they're like, it's okay.
Because we're singing.
We're singing and it's Glee.
That happens with thespians.
The poor thespians out there.
I'm sorry.
I support you thespians.
We just went and saw Shrek the musical actually.
We did.
It was great.
Well, it was good.
It was a fun time.
It was not my favorite performance I've ever seen.
No, because they changed a lot of it.
Yeah.
They really pushed to make it, I would say politically correct.
Which is a rough thing to do with Shrek.
With Shrek.
Let's all keep in mind, it's Shrek.
The whole thing is about being weird and not fitting in and not caring.
I have a lot of gas.
It has never been tame.
No.
You know what I kind of wondered actually was if, because we went to a midday show.
Now the tickets didn't say this, but I wonder if there's a possibility that the midday show
was made more for kids and the evening show might have been more normal.
I don't know.
They still sang that one song.
Which one?
Why me?
Thank you for that.
I don't want to cuss on the podcast.
Not today.
Not today?
Do other people know that that's like our tagline?
We say it all the time in real life, but I think we've only said it once or twice on
the podcast.
It came from the podcast.
It did, but it's not a running joke.
I said it at work the other day and they did not react.
That's because they don't listen.
That's true.
Tell them not to listen.
Ahem, out there.
Co-workers.
My co-workers are spread across the globe and I don't actually know who they are, so.
That's so sad for you.
It's really not.
I'm okay with it.
So today we're going to be talking about, this is one of our mini episodes.
If you've ever tuned into one of these before, they're kind of just us talking.
It's us talking about current events, things that are going on, things that we feel are
necessary to sing about.
Frankly, mostly it's things Brie saw on TikTok.
A hundred percent.
And this is one of them.
It is.
Last mini episode was something I saw on TikTok.
They're all something you see on TikTok.
Listen, I'm current.
I'm on the social medias.
I'm scrolling all night long.
So this week on TikTok, Brie has been watching ballerinas.
Ballerinas.
When I was a kid, that's what I wanted to be.
I wanted to be a ballerina teacher.
We took all of two dance classes in our entire lives.
Yep.
I don't think that was an option for you.
But I was convinced.
Because I was my teacher's favorite because I was the cutest.
Well, I got to dance with the Easter bunny at the mall.
I remember that.
Wow, that took me back.
Yeah, because I was a favorite.
They don't even have malls anymore.
They have.
I've been watching YouTube videos about that.
They're all abandoned.
It's actually really spooky.
Honestly, all of the malls that I've been to lately have garbage stores in them.
It's like croissant sandwiches that all have fruit flies.
And like board games and calendars.
What?
There's a whole store dedicated to board games and calendars.
And I've seen it at multiple malls.
Are enough people buying board games and calendars?
No.
And they're overpriced.
I feel like maybe there's money laundering.
Maybe that's what's happening.
That definitely could be.
Conspiracies.
Dun-dun.
All right, now back to normal TikTok.
All right, so I've been watching TikTok.
Who here has heard of Ballerina Farm?
They can't see you raising your hand.
I'm raising my hand.
And only because I just heard about her, not because I've heard about her before.
But Ballerina Farm is this TikTok and Instagram account run by Hannah Neelman.
But it's also an actual functioning farm out of Utah.
I wrote down where in.
I think Utah is sufficient.
Utah is sufficient because I can't read my own writing.
But this girl, Hannah Neelman, a little bit of a backstory for her.
She was studying to be a ballerina at Juilliard back in the day.
I don't know when.
Prior to 2018, I'm going to say.
All right.
Well, she's got like eight kids.
So yeah.
Hey, sorry.
Don't spoil it.
I'm sorry I spoiled it.
So she was a ballerina at Juilliard when she came upon this man named Daniel Neelman.
And he is the son of David Neelman, who's the founder of JetBlue.
He wanted to date her.
She said no for like six months.
Eventually, he stalked her.
Yeah, I don't want to say he fully stalked her, but he did figure out that she was flying
from New York to Salt Lake City and bought a plane ticket that was directly next to her.
You know, super creepy, super creepy.
And they ended up going on a date.
And she said, I would like to date for a year, which is a normal amount of time for she's
she grew up Mormon.
They're both Mormon.
It's a traditional amount of time for someone of that faith to
Plus they're very young at this point.
Oh, yeah.
She hasn't even graduated college.
Right.
She wanted to date for a year.
He said pass.
He's only two years older than her.
But he was like, I need to be married and engaged now.
So they were engaged after a month.
After two months, they were married.
And after I think three months, they were having they were expecting their first child.
Quick turnaround time.
Quick turnaround.
She birthed her first son and then graduated.
And then they moved to Brazil for his job.
And then she popped out a couple more kids in Brazil.
Now she has a total of eight kids.
She is homesteading running this farm with her husband in Utah.
They have a website.
They sell all their meat, eggs, milk on a website, etc.
I don't know.
I don't know how farms work, but she's super popular on TikTok and Instagram.
Between those two platforms, she has over 18 million followers.
She also got really popular because with her last daughter, she had two due dates.
So she had her actual due date when she was supposed to birth that kid.
And then two weeks, I think, after she birthed that kid, she was in a pageant because she
does pageants.
So she was Mrs. American 2023.
And then she participated in Mrs. World.
And that was in January 2024.
So she had her kid and then boom was in this pageant.
Ouch.
Yeah.
I guess they didn't realize that maybe this is going to sound bad, but that they had pageants
for middle aged women.
Yeah, Mrs. I guess.
Yeah.
I wouldn't call her middle aged.
It depends on how long she's planning on living.
She's older than us, I think.
Well, I hope so.
With eight children, I can't imagine having it.
But if she started that young, she's probably not that much older than us.
She might be your age.
As a personal story, shut up.
As a personal story, our great grandmother got married when she was 14 and started popping
out kids very quickly.
So to us, eight kids anywhere near the age group that we're in is insane.
But you look at that just a couple of generations ago and she had, I'm not sure how many kids
there were.
A lot.
A lot of kids.
Very, very young.
I mean, by the time she hit my age, she had all of her kids.
You could be a grandmother.
Shut up.
I've been bringing up my birthday lately, so I'm going to bring up yours.
I know that this is ridiculous at my age and you all will never know what it is.
I think we've actually said it before.
It's a mystery that will remain a mystery at my 97 years of age.
People like my friends around my age saying that they're having babies, starting a family,
yada, yada, yada.
I'm like, whoa!
And I'm old.
I had kids so many years ago.
It should be normal, but my brain still can't wrap around it.
I'm like, you can do that.
You're still a kid.
Well, some of us are still kids.
Some of us are as immature as kids.
And I'm talking about myself.
So the controversy with Hannah came about through an article and it was, I believe,
the UK Times.
I just heard it was The Times.
I think it was the UK Times.
Megan Agnaw is the author.
Journalist.
Okay.
The writer.
The interviewer.
The person.
So she went and sat with the family and I think spent a couple days there.
Just one day.
I think so.
And just kind of observed them, as you do if you're writing an article on someone.
She interviewed them.
She watched them live their lives.
And then went back and wrote an article that has become very controversial.
And this just came out.
So July 20th, 2024 is when this article came out.
So the article strongly implied, I'm going to say, that Hannah had given up her life
dreams of being a ballerina.
She wanted to be a professional dancer.
And she chose not to do that so that she could follow her husband where he wanted to go,
farm because that's what he wanted to do, and have eight babies because that's what
was expected of her, whether from her family or her religion or her husband.
One of the pieces that I saw said that she, and this is not that relevant, but I just
thought it was hilarious.
She was like, you know, we got married and we talked about having kids and we both want
kids because I guess they both come from families of like nine children.
And so they want a big family.
And she was like, we just left it up to God.
Whenever God wanted to give us children, that was fine.
And God created anatomy and biology, sister.
Do you know how that works?
Well, she goes, we didn't expect it just a couple months later.
I was like, once again, have you had the conversation of the birds and the beast?
Right?
Did we not talk about this?
Come on.
Now, I understand that hyper religious families don't necessarily teach sex ed super well,
but I think after the first three, you might figure something out.
Seriously, birth control.
And you know, if you want a huge family, there's nothing wrong with that at all.
Have all the babies that you want to have.
But to say, well, we just, we left it in God's hands, but we didn't expect it so soon.
You're going to end up like the Duggars.
Come on.
They still want more kids.
They've said they want more kids.
But Hannah has part of her social media presence is that she is, they call her the queen of
the trad wives.
That was the name of the article too.
Yeah.
And that's where a lot of the controversy lies is that she is on social media, on YouTube,
promoting this very domestic, very male centered lifestyle.
Where I watched a couple of her videos and she makes dinner.
There's so many people at the table.
They all eat, they destroy everything.
And then the kids go off and they do whatever they're going to do.
He disappears.
I don't know where he went.
And she has to sit there and clean everything.
And from what I can tell, hand wash everything because they're homesteaders.
So she's hand washing all the dishes.
She's putting everything away and it's a time lapse.
So you can see nobody's coming in to help her.
And at one point she's also holding the baby while doing the dishes, while dealing with
all of this stuff.
You're telling me her husband couldn't come and hold the baby.
Well, he was dealing with seven others maybe, but those others are doing their own thing.
That's the rest of the video is the kids.
Don't get me wrong with nine children, there's going to be a lot of chaos.
Is it eight?
I'm sorry.
Eight children.
There's going to be a lot of chaos.
Less chaos than nine perhaps, but still quite a lot.
I think it's just really difficult because you are so wildly outnumbered.
One of the things that came out of that article was, now this seems very foreign to me, but
the idea of having nannies.
They have billions of dollars, they have tons and tons of money and tons and tons of children.
And people were like, well, why don't you get some nannies?
Gosh dang it.
Well, the husband is very against nannies.
So people were like, but Hannah's raising all eight on her own.
And it's like, they are her children.
So yes.
But something that he said in response in the article that, I don't know how to say
her name, Agnew.
I think it's Agnew.
In the article we're discussing.
In the article that we're discussing, she writes that Hannah cares for all eight children
without the help of a nanny.
And her husband, Daniel, told Agnew, the journalist, that quote, Hannah sometimes becomes so ill
from exhaustion that she can't get out of bed for a week.
Which is crazy to me because not only is she caring for all these children, they also,
a homeschool to my knowledge.
I think they might bring someone in to help with the homeschooling, but regardless, those
kids are always in the house.
And she is cooking clean and doing all of that.
But she also runs the farm.
So she's taking care of, like, they have chickens and they have, they just started a dairy.
It's a full blown fricking farm.
And also she manages her social media accounts, which is a ton of work.
And it does bring in money.
But that is a ton of work.
The girl never stops.
I think my response as the husband would be like, girl, sit down.
Let's calm down.
Let's order a pizza.
Can I make dinner instead?
Or not even, forget that.
Don't ask.
Just start making dinner.
It's not something to brag about that your wife is so exhausted from life.
From her life.
That she can't get out of bed for a week.
That's sad.
At the end of the day, it is abuse.
That's what it is.
And now Hannah has come out with some statements after the fact that I think it's important
to address and talk about because she says that the article presented things in a very
untrue light.
And that she's not being abused, that she made these decisions for herself on her own.
She didn't just make them to make him happy.
And that she loves the life that she has.
She loves her kids.
She loves raising them.
She did a video and then she also did an article, like a blog on their website.
And I want to say that we are not criticizing anyone that wants to be a stay at home mom.
Anyone that wants to have eight children.
I know we make it sound like it's so overwhelming, but my gosh, it's got to be overwhelming for
me personally.
I cannot imagine.
But if that is what you want, if that's where you feel like God is leading you, go for it.
If you want to have a farm and turn your own butter, more power to you.
Absolutely.
No issues with that.
No shade.
Do your thing.
No shade.
No shame.
I think the problem in this instance lies in choice.
Did she have a choice?
One of the people that I was listening to, she said, can you give up your own agency?
Can you say to someone else, you have full power and control over me from here on out?
To me that sounds unbiblical.
Because you're putting that person before God at the end of the day.
God made you.
He cares about you.
He cares about that other person too, but that to me seems like it's a not okay thing
to do.
I'm very 50 shades and that freaks me out.
Well, I think that falls under, I don't know if you guys have ever seen this, but there's
a very famous depiction from the, it's from Bill Gothard, who was like a famous very,
very conservative horrifying.
Bill!
Not that Bill.
I hate you so I always will.
And it's an umbrella.
So at the top there's God and God, I don't know, is there.
And then there's-
Wow, this is descriptive.
Shut up.
Maybe we'll post a picture of it.
There's an umbrella and it's God.
And so God is like overlapping everybody.
And then there's a slightly smaller umbrella and that's the husband.
And there's a slightly smaller umbrella and that's the wife.
And there's a slightly smaller umbrella and that's the kids.
You can look it up, it'll make more sense.
But that's what it reminds me of, is like I'm going to put my husband on this pedestal
where he protects me and I assume that he is following what God wants both of us to
do.
As opposed to me having my own choice, my own agency and saying, well this is what God
is telling me that I need or that our kids need or that we need.
Like sometimes it's okay to say, God is telling me this for both of us, what's he telling
you?
Communication?
What?
Miracles.
So I think it's such an interesting concept to think, can you make a decision in your
life, the choice to get married to a particular person, that says you get to control me forever.
You get to tell me what to do, you get to tell me that I can't have a nanny, you get
to tell me whether I can have an epidural or not, because that's another controversy
that was in the article.
You can tell me where we're going to live and whether I'm going to leave my career and
all of these things.
Is that okay?
Are we as a society okay with one decision defining all of those things for somebody?
And obviously we can't step in for her, she's going to make the decisions she's going to
make, but when it comes to allowing her to be an influencer, someone that influences
young girls, young boys, are we okay with that?
I'm not okay with that.
Yeah.
I mean she's influencing 18 million people.
That is a lot of people.
That's a lot of people.
And one of the other things that I wanted to talk about too is her situation in life.
The tradwife movement idealizes stay at home moms and traditional marriage, which means
female submission, which means men make the decisions, etc. etc.
We talk about it all the time.
And in making that the ideal position for a woman, it's easy to do when you're a millionaire.
She married into a millionaire family.
I don't know their net worth.
I don't know, but they're loaded.
I mean they own a whole airline.
Lots of people own planes.
They own an airline.
And when you have that kind of money, you have a lot of freedom.
If she chooses to divorce this man someday because he is whatever, because if she decides
that this is an abusive situation or whatever, that she leaves him, number one, she's probably
going to get a solid divorce settlement.
She's going to get a lot of money out of this.
Number two, she has a social media following.
So she really does have a job that she's going to make money at.
Financially, she's doing okay while saying, be a stay at home mom.
Quit your job.
You don't need to make money.
She's making all kinds of money.
Other women in less financially stable situations.
Her influences.
Yes.
Let's say they follow what she does and they quit their jobs and they are fully financially
dependent on their spouse.
Now they don't have the option to leave.
If he becomes abusive, if he abuses his power, she can't leave.
She can, but it's going to be very difficult.
She's going to have to look to family.
She's going to have to look to charities.
She's going to have to look to a lot of places to help financially support her in this divorce
situation.
Right.
Whereas, if she had a stable job, if she had some independence, if she had a community
outside of her husband.
Or the people that she was looking to be influenced from encouraged her to be strong, to not just
make decisions because a man or someone else told you to do so.
You are strong.
You are valued.
You are worth more.
Maybe she would make a different choice.
And I'm not saying, again, again and again and again.
If your choice is to be a homemaker, if that's something that you feel God is calling you
to do, awesome.
Do it.
But I think don't hold it up as the gold standard for all women.
For all women.
Just because you're a woman means that you must enjoy cooking and cleaning and birthing
babies without epidurals.
No one enjoys birthing babies.
I mean, maybe there's like two people that do, but it is a bad time.
Okay, we got to talk about why we're talking about this though, because she has had eight
children.
And the interviewer was talking to her and she's like, so you had all of these without
any epidurals, any pain medication, whatever, yada yada yada.
And she's like, yes.
And her husband had left the room at that point and she whispered to the interviewer,
she was like, except for one of her daughters, I think her name was Martha, because she actually
had her at a hospital.
She's like, I had an epidural with that one because I ran two weeks late and she was a
10 pound baby and it was the best experience ever.
And Daniel was gone.
And she specifically mentioned her husband wasn't there.
She had an epidural and it was the best birthing experience of her life.
Well I believe she's made a statement about that particular part of the article too.
And she said, she didn't whisper it because he left the room and he didn't want her to
hear him because that's how the article made it sound.
She said, I whispered because he got a phone call and so he left the room and I didn't
want to bother his phone call.
No, I can't sit here and say, oh yeah, absolutely.
She's lying.
I can't do that.
That doesn't sound the most logical to me, simply because his phone call is a whole lot
less important than your interview.
And why would you feel the need to mention it at all that your husband was gone for that
birth?
Right.
I would just be like, yeah, except for this 10 pound baby that I had to push out, I had
to get drugged up for that one.
And the concept behind that is that he believes in natural birth, correct?
I don't really know.
I'm making assumptions that he does.
I don't really think he gets a choice.
Well, if he's not pushing it out his Vagene, then that's what kills me is women, whatever
birthing experience you want to have, it is your decision.
If you want to stay at home and have your baby in a bathtub, as long as you have some
medical professionals there, please, please do that for me.
But do it like do that.
That is your experience.
You have had to carry this child for nine months.
You have to push it out of your body.
It's a bad time.
Yeah.
So do it however you want to do it.
If you want to do it in a hospital with 45 doctors and an epidural, that would be my
recommendation.
45.
No nurses, all doctors.
Actually, the nurses are way better.
I trust the nurses.
I had a midwife for my son and it was great.
She was wonderful.
She was so kind and helpful the whole time.
So maybe midwives.
Maybe that's the way to go.
I didn't like her.
You didn't like the one that was there when I had him.
All I know is I was forced to hold a leg and now I will never have children.
Adoption is always an option for you.
A big fan of adoption.
I feel like something that was brought up through this article coming out through all
of the drama is women have dreams.
I don't know if you noticed, but women and men both equally have dreams.
More often than not in our society, it seems like women are forced to balance their dreams
with maybe their family's dreams and pick which ones work best for them.
Usually, they put their family first.
You don't really see that a lot with men because their jobs are to do their nine to five.
That's their dream.
Their dream is their job, not their family.
Whereas women are told their dreams are their family.
I think we can tie that really nicely into a TikTok that Brie made recently.
It's great.
You guys should go watch it.
I highly encourage not watching it.
There was a statement made aboutâ¦
I'm not going to mention any names because I just don't want to deal with that, but
one politician made a statement about another politician.
Oh, well listen, tell me more.
He called herâ¦
It was a middle-aged man, right?
He called her a single cat lady?
What was the exact statement?
Childless cat lady.
And when I heard that, and I don't really think it matters what side of the political
spectrum you fall on, would you ever say that about a man who had focused on his career?
Oh, that's a childless cat man.
Why is it an insult for someone to be childless?
I have no tiny clue.
It is not.
She made a choice to focus on her dreams, her career, what she wanted out of life, and
that is as valid as a woman making a choice to have children and make that her goal.
You don't get to judge someone based on that choice specifically.
You don't know the backstory of it either.
Maybe she's not able to.
And regardless, whether it was the ability to or whether it was a choice on her part,
it's none of your business.
None of your business.
And her ability to bear children has nothing to do with her ability to lead.
Any women.
Not just her.
All women.
Right.
Yeah, and I think we're not trying to make a political statement here.
We're simply trying to make a statement about women because our value is so often tied to
our ability to or choice to have children and raise them and homestead and do all, you
know, cook and clean and do all of these things that we see these TradWive influencers doing.
And the fact that it's coming out as an insult in such a public political arena is so disheartening.
I feel like I feel more enraged just because I am childless.
You're not a cat lady though.
I'm not a cat.
I don't really like cats.
But just the thought that someone thinks that my value is any less because I don't have
children.
I get that question constantly.
When are you having kids?
When are you going to start birthing kids?
But my value is not tied to my, if any, future children.
Right.
You know?
Yeah.
You hope that because we talk about things from a Christian perspective.
We talk about things from the church world and whatever.
And there's a part of me that because we're a little bit insulated and we talk about specifically
this feminism concept within the church, you have this hope that all of this misogyny and
garbage is not happening in the greater world.
And that's why it's so important that we're speaking out about it still.
You think like, okay, Susan B. Anthony did her job way back in the day.
It was Susan B. Anthony, right?
She's one of them.
But it is still happening today.
And I think we want, this is the legacy that we leave is being able to speak out and Susan
B. Anthony could take one step, but she couldn't take the amount of steps that we can take.
And then her daughter could take an extra step and her daughter could take another one.
And so it's important that we not forget that the world is still not perfect, that misogyny
is still out there, that patriarchy is still out there and happening to so many women.
And so we continue to take those steps forward because feminism isn't women should be above
everyone else and let's have a matriarchy.
It's equality.
Can we finally just have equality?
Please.
Like I said, that's hard.
I saw a TikTok that, oh, shock.
And we're ending on TikTok.
The other day, there was like, instead of asking someone if they're a feminist, we should
start asking people if they're misogynist.
Because we should just assume that people are.
Oh my gosh.
Like you're for equality, right?
Oh, are you not?
I think that's hilarious.
All right.
So guys, your homework for the week.
Yeah.
What?
And ask someone if they're misogynist.
Oh boy.
Our daughters daughters will adore us.
That's really stuck in my head right now.
I don't believe you.
Okay.
So next week we are going to be starting.
I don't even want to call this series a two parter.
Oh, the best thing's always coming to me.
What?
I think you never liked.
You're so weird.
So we're going to talk about our different roles in the church.
So Bree's going to be up first because I decided that she has to go first.
I'm the oldest I get to decide.
What?
We've had so many podcasts about that not being true.
So she's going to talk about singleness in the church and what that looks like for her
from her perspective.
I'll still be here, but mostly she has to talk.
Honestly, she can leave.
She has no idea.
I really don't.
I got married when I was 21.
And then we'll have a week of a mini episode that we have yet to decide about because those
are supposed to be current events.
And then we'll do me talking about being married in the church and what that looks like.
So we hope you guys can get out.
I have no idea.
So we hope you guys will tune in for those.
I think those will be really fun and interesting to talk about.
Very informative.
I don't know if fun is going to be the answer.
I always say fun.
Fun is not.
I don't know that any of this is fun.
Fun meaning may make you cry.
Alright, so if you want to cry later, I had about two weeks.
Tune in.
One more thing that I wanted to say.
Last week we said we were going to challenge ourselves every week to grow our listener
base and we asked you guys if you would share with anybody that you knew in Canada.
And we saw Canada pop up just this morning.
I'm so excited and just so honored and blessed that you guys wanted to share like that.
So this week I think our challenge is going to be anybody that knows anyone in Australia.
We would love to see that little flag pop up on there.
I think that would be super fun.
So please do share it with them.
Please do share it with anybody that you think would be interested in our faith and feminism
topic.
Additionally, yesterday we hit a thousand downloads and we are so beyond excited about
that.
My daughter made us a sign.
It was super cute.
And we're just, I don't know, super blessed that you guys want to be on this journey with
us and we hope that you'll continue to hang out in the future and listen to more crazy
fun things that we have to say.
Not fun.
Crazy intense things that we have to say.
Alright, well we'll see you guys later.
We're going to go eat some dinner.
Oh, I'm so hungry.
I made bread.
Thank you.
You tried my...
Shut up.
Okay, goodbye.