A Ballerina, a Rugby Player, and an Ice Dancer Walk Into a Bar...

On Ballerina Farm, Body Positivity, and Finding Beauty in Motherhood

Me on the ice while 6 months pregnant with my second baby.

Last week I published an essay in Verily magazine titled “Making of a Mom: Finding Beauty in My Body” in which I talked about my struggle as a former elite athlete to embrace the physical changes that come with motherhood. The piece was more personal than my usual writing; however, a few months ago, I had posted a shorter version of the piece on my social media account and the response was overwhelming. It seemed like moms, and women in general, needed to hear the message that there is beauty and joy in doing what God is calling you to do, even when that means your body doesn’t fit the expectations that others have imposed on you (or you have imposed on yourself). I wanted to share this message with a wider audience – hence the extended version I published in Verily.

This past week, I can’t seem to get away from the online discussions (discussion is probably a generous word in this case) about Ballerina Farm and Ilona Maher – discussions that, in my mind, reinforce the message I tried to articulate in my essay. In case you missed it, here’s the oversimplified rundown:

1)    The Times of London published a hit piece on Hannah Neeleman, the ballerina turned farmer’s wife/beauty pageant queen/social media influencer/mom of 8, titled “Meet the queen of ‘trad wives’ (and her eight children).” The piece has been a lightning rod, setting off a frenzy of outrage at Hannah’s “wasted potential” and large brood of children on one side and outrage at the outrage on the other.

2)    Rugby player and Olympic bronze medalist Ilona Maher has been facing scrutiny for her supposedly unfeminine physique, with some commentators criticizing her for it and others celebrating it as an example of “gender non-conformity.” She has responded gracefully with a message of body positivity.

While much of the commentary on these two brouhahas has been inane, I have read two excellent pieces that have made me think about the ways my recent article intersects with these discussions. The first is this essay by Jim Dalrymple II for Institute of Family Studies. Dalrymple zeroes in on the main problem with the Times Ballerina Farm article:

“More than inadequate reporting, then, the bigger problem with the piece is that it treats sacrifice for the sake of family as unreservedly negative. The implication, the underlying assumption, is that individuals should put themselves first. And once you accept that assumption, it’s hard to see Hannah as anything other than a victim—never mind that Hannah never remotely frames herself as such. For some reason, The Times and many readers have decided that this woman’s decisions aren’t legitimate.”

I don’t follow Ballerina Farm on social media. Pretty much everything I know about the Neelemans is a result of the controversies around them, and none of us really has any way of knowing what the internal dynamic of their marriage and family is like, anyway. Yet I feel a natural sympathy with Hannah Neeleman, and I think Dalrymple’s insight explains why. Like Hannah, I was an elite athlete, and like her, I have felt the mix of pain and loss at giving up the person I was, as well as the indescribable joy of the mom I have become. And, as I related in my Verily piece, I have discovered that the loss is well worth the gain:

“…I walked away from continuing a career as an Olympic ice dancer so I could develop my other gifts and more fully become the person I am called to be. That has led me to marriage and motherhood. I walked into something more significant, and by that, I took skating with me. I didn’t get an Olympic medal, but I have an Olympia (and a Maris Stella!), and they are far more precious.”

I haven’t had to endure the criticism that Hannah Neeleman has because, from the outside, it doesn’t look like I “gave up” my skating career to “just be a mom.” (I also don’t have gazillions of social media followers.) I didn’t directly choose to retire from skating to start a family; I got married and had kids over 5 years after my last skating competition. To most people, it probably just looks like I lived my dream, and now I’m living another dream. I have a socially acceptable two children (so far), and I work enough to forestall accusations of “wasted potential.” What people don’t know is that I stopped skating unusually early in my career, long before I had reached my full potential. I chose to move on for some practical reasons (my skating partner was retiring, and it wasn’t clear I would find another who would be a good match), but more importantly because I knew I wanted more out of my life. I wanted to go to college and explore the intellectual riches of my Catholic faith. I wanted to go to grad school and work in international affairs. And I wanted a shot at meeting my future husband and starting a family – something that didn’t seem likely if I continued skating competitively into my thirties.

The family I have today is quite literally possible because I finished skating when I did. I met my husband at college the year after I retired, and if I had waited one more year, he would have graduated already. In my mind, the sacrifice of not being the same elite ice dancer I was is inextricably linked with the beauty of who I am today – and I wouldn’t have it any other way. In this way, I identify with Hannah Neeleman, and I admire her courage in standing up to a world that doesn’t understand how having toddlers pulling on your hair can be more valuable than being among the world’s elite dancers, whether on ice or on stage.

While the Ballerina Farm brouhaha has highlighted the theme of sacrifice for the sake of family, the Ilona Maher maelstrom has illustrated another theme from my Verily piece: the need to reclaim an authentic understanding of beauty and body image. I realized this when I read this outstanding essay by Helen Roy, in which she sums up the problems with our culture’s reaction to Maher and the beauty of Maher’s response:

“The discourse around Maher illustrates how both sides have lost touch with reality, tacitly endorsing one another’s misapprehension that womanhood is a matter of appearance, rather than biological fact…Ilona Maher, as an elite athlete with a truly athletic flair, responded to her detractors with an insightful TikTok video. ‘As you begin to watch the Olympics this week,’ she said, ‘I want you to take note of all the different kinds of body types here… from the smallest gymnast to the tallest rugby player, all are capable of magnificence.’ Maher quietly subverts both the faux-equality of the body positivity movement and shallow gender essentialism by prizing excellence over appearance.”

Roy recounts how our culture has moved from devaluing the maternal potential of the female body through the “heroin chic” ideal to a “body positivity” movement disconnected from any sense of excellence or purpose, and finally to transgenderism. Her observations dovetail neatly with the points I made in my Verily piece. The “ideal” ice dancer body type is remarkably similar to the “heroin chic” skinniness that, as Roy points out, denies the goodness of the physical signs of female fertility. As I wrote, “It turns out that growing little humans inside you and breastfeeding them for months on end changes your body, and not in the ways figure skating has trained you to expect. Becoming a mother is life-changing for anyone. Going from Olympic ice dancer to mother just adds one more layer of complexity. The truth is, I have baggage.”

My realization that beauty is not about fitting a particular body type, but about fulfilling your calling, is essentially the realization that beauty and excellence are inseparable. As I acknowledged, “Embracing the beauty in this season is a process…doesn’t mean I stop working to fit into that favorite dress or regain muscle strength; however, I’ve realized that I need to acknowledge the beauty in the waiting and even in the fact that my body will never go back to exactly the way it was.” Like Roy (and, I suspect, like Maher), I reject the false “body positivity” that tells women their bodies are not capable of excellence and that unhealthy is beautiful. I’ve just realized that there are many different kinds of excellence - including the excellence that belongs to pageant-queen-ballerina-farmers, Olympic rugby players…and to mothers like me.

A supposed “trad wife” and an Olympic rugby star wouldn’t seem to have much in common. Nonetheless, the reasons so many people misunderstand Hannah Neeleman and Ilona Maher are ultimately the same: a lack of understanding of female excellence and purpose. If our culture had a healthier view of womanhood, we would be able to see beauty both in giving up a ballet career to be a mom of many and having the body that comes with being one of the world’s best rugby players. Perhaps some day we’ll get there, but as the internet controversies of the past couple weeks show, we have a long way to go.