The Times published an article on July 20, 2024 looking into the life of influencer Hannah Neelman, known as Ballerina Farm on TikTok. With her husband, eight kids and demanding farm life, she posts content regarding the food she cooks and her daily chores. The article also explored her past, highlighting her dream to become a ballerina and study at Juilliard’s School of Performing Arts, which she ultimately gave up for her traditional housewife, or “tradwife” lifestyle due to a pregnancy and her husband’s dream of living a “conventional” life.
After the article went viral on social media, thousands began commenting on Neelman’s recent posts and making videos of their own, enraged at her condition and the role her husband played in her giving up her dancing career. Viewed as an “attack on feminism,” many were heartbroken to see a woman so capable discard her desired career path and instead live on a farm with a lot of kids, purely because it was what her husband wanted.
Around the time of the publication of the article, 36-year-old and African-American Sonya Massey was fatefully shot on July 6, 2024, by the same police she called for a suspected trespasser lurking around her home. Bodycam footage revealed an innocent conversation between Massey and the police officer escalating to Massey on the ground saying “please don’t hurt me,” before the officer fired anyway. Massey’s shooting happened two weeks before the ballerina farm controversy, yet sparked far less conversation than the Ballerina Farm article. With people still commenting about the controversy on Neelman’s videos to this day, Sonya Massey’s shooting seems to have been forgotten by the media.
Stories like Massey’s happen every day — stories of minorities being taken advantage of, discriminated against and abused. And yet, a significantly less proportion of these stories get the same amount of coverage and outrage as those centered around white women. A common trend on social media has been to advocate for white women and ignore women of color, especially with the way the algorithm is designed to focus on trends, and therefore can mask stories with less traction. Coined selective feminism, this phenomenon diminishes the stories of so many other women, such as women of color and women in the LGBTQ+ community, and ostracizes them from a more inclusive definition of feminism, stunting the road to equality.
With their vast social media platforms, celebrities have the opportunity to spread their word to hundreds of people. Looking at the known example of Taylor Swift and her history, she’s preached a lot about feminism throughout her career, for example in her woman of the decade speech from Billboard in 2019 and her documentary “Miss Americana.” Being one of the biggest stars globally, people listen to what she has to say. Yet, with a platform so large, her feminism hardly extends to advocating for women of color, something she could easily do.
Swift’s use of “white feminism” goes to show how narrow some definitions can be, as they offer little to women in minority groups. “White feminism” is a term used to describe expressions of feminism which focus on white women and neglect women of color. It’s not that we need to stop caring about the things Swift and other white feminists advocate for, it’s that we need to start making room for the thousands of women of color that face misogyny every day.
Intersectionality also includes the women and gender non-conforming members of the LGBTQ+ community. While there has been a growing trend of acceptance, transgender women, especially those of color, are still victims of prejudice. In 2024, 48% of hate crimes against transgender people and gender expansive people were committed against black trans women.
Additionally, internet personality and trans woman Dylan Mulvaney received significant backlash for her song “Days of Girlhood,” which was released on March 13, 2024. Cisgender women critics claimed that the lyrics in her song — referencing “overspending,” “retail therapy” and “picking up meds” — perpetuates harmful stereotypes of girlhood, neglecting the idea that Mulvaney could be speaking about her unique experiences with girlhood instead of a generalization. However, when Taylor Swift released her song “The Man” in 2019 about her experience as a woman in the music industry, she received positive messages of empowerment and gratitude. The backlash from cisgender women when it comes to transgender creators displays a territorial stance on girlhood, with the mindset that it’s something that is “theirs” and needs to be protected.
With social media being such a widespread platform, the stories we choose to uplift are up to us. The internet’s outrage at Ballerina Farm’s situation seems justified, but it raises the question: if Neelman were a minority, would her story have been told?
When stories are told, change happens. With the mass amount of MVHS students that consume their news through social media platforms, it is crucial that we give a louder voice to the stories that thousands of women in minority groups face. This can be done by absorbing our news through trusted outlets and looking for these hidden stories instead of the narrow group of stories that social media shows us, especially because with the way the algorithm is designed, oftentimes only a selective group of content typically from white and cisgender women is emphasized.
When we tackle selective feminism, we make room in history for all the women in minority groups, as well as bring new perspectives to the table. Feminism is for all women, and it’s time we start acting like it.
