Simone Biles, Ballerina Farm and Josh O’Connor’s best film yet

Straight Up

How much should a journalist impose their own judgement in an interview? That’s the row raging on social media this week, after the Times published a profile of mega-influencer Hannah Neeleman, better known by her handle and business name ‘Ballerina Farm’. Writer Megan Agnew spent a day at Ballerina Farm in Utah with ‘queen of the tradwives’ Hannah, her eight kids, and husband Daniel, exploring the complexities of her ‘homemaker’ life as a Mormon mother. Is this important journalism exposing the underbelly of the ‘tradwife’ movement and a blatant case of coercive control? Or is it, as some have argued, a ‘hit piece’ with a ‘toxic’ faux-feminist agenda? We examine the many contradictions at the heart of this conversation, along with the rise of the Mormon influencer and the pro-natalist movement (ew, Elon Musk). Also, our verdict on the new Netflix Simone Biles documentary in time for the Olympics, Josh O’Connor’s incredible film La Chinera, which has just landed on streaming, and Apple TV’s Lady in the Lake starring Natalie Portman.

Ps: Please leave us some recommendations for uplifting books for August! We need happy content!!

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Reccs discussed:

• Simone Biles Rising, Netflix
• Meet the queen of the ‘trad wives’ (and her eight children), the Times
• My day with the trad wife queen and what it taught me, the Times
• Trad Wives: The influencers selling 1950s house-wife life, The Story podcast for the Times
• Meet the influencers repackaging the Mormon dream, Hunger
• La Chimera, Amazon Prime
• Lady in the Lake, Apple TV
• Land of Women, Apple TV