Courtesy | Unsplash
In a spring slump? Take a page out of a ballerina’s book.
Hannah Neeleman released a short video Feb. 25 advertising her brand’s protein powder. Many know Neeleman as the ballerina-turned-homemaker behind Ballerina Farms, an upscale homestead business in Utah. Her aspirational Instagram @ballerinafarm has 10.4 million followers.
The overpriced protein powder is forgettable. The ad is not.
In the voiceover, The Juilliard School graduate Neeleman talks us through the grit and dedication that underlie ballerinas’ grace and beauty.
“On this stage, I learned to be strong,” Neeleman says. “And that strength never leaves you. It prepares you.”
The camera pans from the ballerinas to Neeleman, pregnant with her ninth child, overlooking her Utah farm.
“The stage is different,” Neeleman says. “But the strength is the same.”
In other words, nothing is wasted. That’s a message of great hope for every Hillsdale student. Neeleman came under fire in 2024, when a profile of her family in The Times scrutinized her decision to start a family in her early twenties rather than continue dancing professionally.
“I was going to be a ballerina. I was a good ballerina,” Neeleman told Times reporter Megan Agnew. “But I knew that when I started to have kids my life would start to look different.”
Agnew insinuates throughout the rest of the article that Neeleman is oppressed in her life as a wife and mother, interpreting Neeleman’s answer that her current lifestyle isn’t “what she had always wanted” as a definitive sign of her unhappiness. The headline dubbed Neeleman the “queen of the ‘trad wives’” despite Neeleman having resisted the title.
Neeleman’s personal circumstances, like anyone’s, are complex. But you don’t need to resonate with her aesthetics or be a fan of her brand to realize she’s onto something in her recent ad.
Popular culture presents both men and women with the idea that parenthood is a dead end, a waste of human excellence. At the same time, certain strains of conservative thought frame the time before marriage and parenthood as worthless, sometimes stooping so low as to mock childless, unmarried people. Recall, for instance, Harrison Butker’s 2024 commencement address at Benedictine College, in which he said his wife’s life “truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and a mother.”
The intention is sweet, but while many mothers might feel that way, Butker’s remarks hurt women whose singleness is not their choice or who have suffered from infertility. Such a mentality could cause single people to start living as though their lives don’t matter before a relationship or marriage. For students less than enthused about the academic life, even college can feel like a waiting period.
But to regard any period as a dead end — to “quiet quit” at your own life — cheats the world of the gifts and contributions only you are capable of and robs you of the satisfaction of doing what God made you for.
By contrast, Neeleman treats every stage of her life as vitally important. Her single years were worth living, both for their own sake and for the way they prepared her; motherhood has given her a new stage for the same pursuit of virtue — that strength that rejoices in the challenge.
So be ambitious for virtue, no matter your relationship or employment status. Tackle term papers, summer internships, and postgrad nine-to-fives with the confidence that nothing in your life will be wasted, except by your own choice. Whether or not the virtue you cultivate in your work, hobbies, or relationships can be reflected on your resume, it will bear fruit.
Caroline Kurt is a senior studying English.
