This is the midweek edition of Culture Study — the newsletter from Anne Helen Petersen, which you can read about here. If you like it and want more like it in your inbox, consider subscribing.
I got distracted at the top by that Ballerina Farm account. I would LOVE for someone to publish 10,000 words on the rise of what I call “Performative Farm.” I grew up on a farm in Iowa and I cannot abide the Farmhouse aesthetic trend or the rise of people with means setting up shop on a ranch or farm that they clearly do not rely upon as a livelihood and how this new cultural rural turn intersects with country music, evangelicalism, late-stage capitalism, white identity and conservative/libertarian politics.
When I was a kid in the 80s/90s there were a few former hippies who lived around our farm in older farmhouses who mostly worked in town but liked being out in the country. Other than that, it was all families who were farming to make a living. This meant raising crops to sell at market to earn money, mostly. However, the rise of corporate farming has mostly eradicated the family farm, so the Performative Farm is as much of a facade as the Momfluencer who is performing a sort of domesticity and motherhood that they imagine a bygone era to be like. It is not based in reality and plays heavily to a nostalgia that also isn’t based in reality. The reality is, since at least the 1970’s, family farming has been barely sustainable and the “rustic” charm manufactured by Pottery Barn or Magnolia is nothing more than a fantasy that never was.
YES YES I want to read that too! I have been fascinated by the Ballerina Farm account for ages, and the algorithm has therefore introduced me to other "homestead" accounts, and honestly I want to read 10k words just on the cooption of the term "homesteading" by this 'performative farming" set of momfluencers.
Part of what is so fascinating to me about BF is how she stays riiiiight on the line of being not afraid to get grimy and dirty, and puts her kids in eyebrow-raisingly dangerous situations for the sake of being "farm kids!" and yet also clearly has access to an amount of capital through her husband's family wealth that most "family farmers" couldn't dream of. She walks that line SO well, and seems really focused on balancing any intimation of how much capital they actually have to invest in their meat business with "but we make our own bread and barely have any furniture and our clothes are always charmingly dirty!" It just so galling and yet so impressive.
I am not on Twitter but sometimes I lurk there, poking around, and Dr. Sarah Taber is a great follow for this. She's a crop scientist who's done threads on performative farming that I find *fascinating,* along with lots of other topics like how the Picards in Star Trek: TNG had to have been water barons: https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
I think I actually found her through an AHP retweet!
OMG- I love Sarah! She is just so smart, so funny and wide ranging- and always zeros back to how rural living and farming has at most been a mixed bag for the working low income classes here in the USA!
Totally agree! It's sometimes tempting to get a Twitter account again and just follow her, but I'd rather someone persuaded her to do a Substack or write pieces on Medium or something. I'd read any stream of consciousness she put out on these subjects. Her thread on why farming in Georgia and California is the way it is was just mind-blowing.
Thank you!! I don’t do Twitter anymore, but I will try to see if I can find some of her work elsewhere! Maybe Culture Study will interview her on this subject someday!
The book she's working on is, from what I can understand, about how homesteading was a fraud and a failure but made a lot of land speculators rich, which is pretty irresistible for me right now!
I just read Prairie Fires and I got a lot from it but the parts about how "homesteading" was a complete scam from start to finish (ads for the "bonanza farms," land speculators, early monoculture with huge amounts of (hidden) capital, etc) have really stuck with me and inform a lot of my fascination with instagram "homesteaders".
I literally just ordered that book. Now I'm even more eager to read it. My mother's grandparents homesteaded in Montana, and that mythology has saturated my life. It's interesting to start viewing it very differently (especially when taken with the kinds of economic and post-serfdom conditions that drove so many people out of Europe).
YES! (My mother grew up on a wheat/cattle ranch in eastern Montana, and cousins still ranch the original homestead, so I have some relation to where you're coming from.)
I hope so! I just peeked because I was curious what she was up to, and she just did a thread on how fragile farm robots are. Maybe someone who knows her can prompt a Substack or something because I'd love to read her on a regular basis without back scrolling Twitter threads.
The other day she was like: "I'm going to ---how do you call it? a salon?" very Hilaria cucumberlike. She lived in NYC for 4 years and danced her whole life -- she knows what a salon is. This feigned ignorance of 'salons' and modernity--is just so strange.
I’m here for the casual Hilaria reference! It’s also incredibly insulting to rural people that she would assume they wouldn’t know what a salon is. People in the country have books, movies and Netflix!
I hate it too! I live on five acres with two horses and some chickens and it is NOT a farm, I have a day job that pays my bills, and so many friends refer to it as such. It sets my teeth on edge.
We also live on a few acres with 3 horses and some ducks and chickens and a large garden. What gets me is that even with a relatively small amount of space and responsibility, I am constantly filthy, wearing jeans covered in duck poop and muddy boots. Performative farming is such a perfect way to describe these moms with their perfectly dressed horde of small children, hair and makeup done.
I also what to understand what labor, in addition to capital that fuels this farm. They send out boxes of packaged meat all over the country. Who is doing the physical work? Milking once a day ain't it.
We buy our hay from a farmer who is turning 80, and who told us that next year he's *only* going to do a single cut. "You know, I'm 80." He's such a top notch guy; the sort of person who would bring another farmer hay even if they can't pay at the moment, because "the animals have to eat". I know farming has been romanticized but I do yearn for that kind of community.
I have stayed well and clear of the mamasphere, although it does pop up from time to time. The posed photos, the bible quotes, the weird visual screechiness of the too well scrubbed settings, the bad decorative taste- no thanks.
Motherhood- especially White Motherhood(tm) has always been performative in this country- and has always had a price to it and come AT a price. That social media is the newest version of this does not surprise me one bit.
This is brilliant and scarily illuminating. AHP you are a Rock Star. I love the way you identify and explore ideas that occupy some miasmal unidentified niggling awareness in my psyche. And so much leaps in to clarity! (I’m am still engrossed by and horrified by Jesus and John Wayne, and the Mars Hill podcast which I found through you.) I am a grandmother watching my daughter and her friends navigate parenthood....it takes a LOT of intention and character to hew to your values, and try to live with authenticity. I know it always has, but social media is so distorting and distracting. Thanks thanks and keep up the brilliant work.
I don't follow moms but I do follow a lot of dog accounts, and I sometimes wonder the same thing: who is taking those carefully staged photos of the dog snuggling with his or her owner!
So if you look on Amazon, there are a lot of "content creator kits" that have things like cameras and microphones and tripods and such... but there's almost always a remote shutter button, too.
I mean no doubt there are Instagram husbands as well. But remote shutter buttons!
I follow a lot of kitten rescue/foster accounts, and have questions about the whole aesthetic! Their houses are always beautiful and spotless. Zero clutter or dust bunnies, in the accounts of people who post every day! How is that possible!?
Plus, given that animals move, I would guess that the majority of pics are out of focus or otherwise unusable. Getting one good snap may take a lot of time...
Which leads me to...why do people do this, if they have to keep their house spotless? I mean, I understand if they write books on the topic, as @kittenxlady does. But most are just private pet owners. Or, is their some sort of secret monetization going on that casual viewers don't get??
One of the dog accounts I follow has the same breed that I do, and she has white EVERYTHING -- rugs, comforters, blankets, etc. She does do some #sponsored posts, which must pay her enough to allow her to hire a professional cleaning service!
“algorithmic precarity” AKA “the anxiety of influence” (apologies to Harold Bloom) all wrapped up with “authenticity” demands. And then to have to learn a whole new skill set, including different algorithmic demands, for TikTok and whatever new platform that’s siphoning away eyeballs the brands want to attract. The mamasphere subculture is a case study of a much larger and rapidly metastasizing phenomenon. One of the things that makes it interesting is competing for the “sweet spot” for engagement plays on a whole set of affective responses that don’t involve an accelerating feedback loop of rage, depression or the sorts of toxic content that Facebook/IG has become infamous for. Interesting that the feedback loop for mama influencers is an arms race in acquiring durable goods.
I don’t think I’ve ever clicked so many links or added so many things to my TBR list from one post before. Does Kathryn need a research assistant? I don’t even need to get paid, I just want a legitimate excuse to be down this rabbit hole with her…
Oh no this introduced me to term/movement "tradwife" and it's a black hole of darkness I never wanted to find... But that being said, great interview. I'm a fairly new mom (9.5 months) and I haven't delved too deeply into the mamasphere. (Two exceptions: I occasionally read Virginia Sole-Smith and that account everyone loves about feelings & toddlers). I'm not sure why other than a vague sense of ickiness. I haven't explored this feeling enough to say more.
I don't have too many friends with kids and I think being a mom in basically a vacuum (not being part of the online world, not having many IRL parent friends) has been a blessing. I'm kind of protective of my own ignorance because I don't want to know what I'm doing wrong or what my daughter "should" be doing.
My kids are older (17, 13, 11) and I have often been so glad that I started parenting before the advent of social media. I hope you stay "ignorant" of the mom influencers.
I'm only a hair "older" than you in momming (15 months) and I feel what you're saying deep down. Somehow being a pandemic mom has meant that I'm slightly freer of the obvious pressures, but it makes me more worried/aware that there are less obvious ones just lurking.
Okay I have clearly spent way too much time thinking about this, and I think I finally have it. These accounts reinforce the notion that I am irresponsible. It's on me to remember that they are highlight reels at their most honest, they don't acknowledge the privilege, the help, the expectations, their reality. I just compare how they claim to spend their 24 hours to how I spent mine. They aren't sharing their responsibilities for a proper comparison, and That is what makes the so noxious in the context of hustle culture. This isn't even their side hustle let alone real life, and I see it in the moments between my REAL actually responsibilities, the moments when I dont want to see my dirty face and lifeless hair in the mirror, the padding and redness from Cushing's, the semioermanent hair dye the baby has surely used as finger paint on our porous white tile bathroom floor upstairs. Those moments are precious and vulnerable, the polar opposite of BF. Give me AC Shilton's Affirmation Chickens every day. She shows her work without beating you over the head with it, which prompts me to give me credit for my own. It's a totally different experience.
Damn, this takes me back to the original mom group work that Sarita Schoenebeck did. Those moms ended up being pissed she was studying them in the early Web 2.0 days; now, I assume they'd be flattered.
Meg - you knocked it out of the park again. Well done. And AHP -> another timely topic. My daughter was just telling me this weekend that she's been going down the rabbit hole(s) of the origins of "crafts" v. "art" and how much of those distinctions stem from the time period Dr. Ulrich wrote about. When they made those "economic production" tasks "social," they made them hobbies...regardless of the skill, time, detail, etc. And we all know why this matters - crafts sell for way less than art...
I got distracted at the top by that Ballerina Farm account. I would LOVE for someone to publish 10,000 words on the rise of what I call “Performative Farm.” I grew up on a farm in Iowa and I cannot abide the Farmhouse aesthetic trend or the rise of people with means setting up shop on a ranch or farm that they clearly do not rely upon as a livelihood and how this new cultural rural turn intersects with country music, evangelicalism, late-stage capitalism, white identity and conservative/libertarian politics.
When I was a kid in the 80s/90s there were a few former hippies who lived around our farm in older farmhouses who mostly worked in town but liked being out in the country. Other than that, it was all families who were farming to make a living. This meant raising crops to sell at market to earn money, mostly. However, the rise of corporate farming has mostly eradicated the family farm, so the Performative Farm is as much of a facade as the Momfluencer who is performing a sort of domesticity and motherhood that they imagine a bygone era to be like. It is not based in reality and plays heavily to a nostalgia that also isn’t based in reality. The reality is, since at least the 1970’s, family farming has been barely sustainable and the “rustic” charm manufactured by Pottery Barn or Magnolia is nothing more than a fantasy that never was.
YES YES I want to read that too! I have been fascinated by the Ballerina Farm account for ages, and the algorithm has therefore introduced me to other "homestead" accounts, and honestly I want to read 10k words just on the cooption of the term "homesteading" by this 'performative farming" set of momfluencers.
Part of what is so fascinating to me about BF is how she stays riiiiight on the line of being not afraid to get grimy and dirty, and puts her kids in eyebrow-raisingly dangerous situations for the sake of being "farm kids!" and yet also clearly has access to an amount of capital through her husband's family wealth that most "family farmers" couldn't dream of. She walks that line SO well, and seems really focused on balancing any intimation of how much capital they actually have to invest in their meat business with "but we make our own bread and barely have any furniture and our clothes are always charmingly dirty!" It just so galling and yet so impressive.
I am not on Twitter but sometimes I lurk there, poking around, and Dr. Sarah Taber is a great follow for this. She's a crop scientist who's done threads on performative farming that I find *fascinating,* along with lots of other topics like how the Picards in Star Trek: TNG had to have been water barons: https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
I think I actually found her through an AHP retweet!
OMG- I love Sarah! She is just so smart, so funny and wide ranging- and always zeros back to how rural living and farming has at most been a mixed bag for the working low income classes here in the USA!
Totally agree! It's sometimes tempting to get a Twitter account again and just follow her, but I'd rather someone persuaded her to do a Substack or write pieces on Medium or something. I'd read any stream of consciousness she put out on these subjects. Her thread on why farming in Georgia and California is the way it is was just mind-blowing.
Thank you!! I don’t do Twitter anymore, but I will try to see if I can find some of her work elsewhere! Maybe Culture Study will interview her on this subject someday!
The book she's working on is, from what I can understand, about how homesteading was a fraud and a failure but made a lot of land speculators rich, which is pretty irresistible for me right now!
I just read Prairie Fires and I got a lot from it but the parts about how "homesteading" was a complete scam from start to finish (ads for the "bonanza farms," land speculators, early monoculture with huge amounts of (hidden) capital, etc) have really stuck with me and inform a lot of my fascination with instagram "homesteaders".
Yes, I absolutely loved this book!! Hard to get other folks to read it though haha
I literally just ordered that book. Now I'm even more eager to read it. My mother's grandparents homesteaded in Montana, and that mythology has saturated my life. It's interesting to start viewing it very differently (especially when taken with the kinds of economic and post-serfdom conditions that drove so many people out of Europe).
Here's her actual description: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/finish-the-damn-book-taber#/
Love it!! Based on that book description, I feel like she would have a LOT to say on nostalgia and IG influence performance of rural America!
YES! (My mother grew up on a wheat/cattle ranch in eastern Montana, and cousins still ranch the original homestead, so I have some relation to where you're coming from.)
I hope so! I just peeked because I was curious what she was up to, and she just did a thread on how fragile farm robots are. Maybe someone who knows her can prompt a Substack or something because I'd love to read her on a regular basis without back scrolling Twitter threads.
The other day she was like: "I'm going to ---how do you call it? a salon?" very Hilaria cucumberlike. She lived in NYC for 4 years and danced her whole life -- she knows what a salon is. This feigned ignorance of 'salons' and modernity--is just so strange.
I’m here for the casual Hilaria reference! It’s also incredibly insulting to rural people that she would assume they wouldn’t know what a salon is. People in the country have books, movies and Netflix!
And haircuts!
I hate it too! I live on five acres with two horses and some chickens and it is NOT a farm, I have a day job that pays my bills, and so many friends refer to it as such. It sets my teeth on edge.
We also live on a few acres with 3 horses and some ducks and chickens and a large garden. What gets me is that even with a relatively small amount of space and responsibility, I am constantly filthy, wearing jeans covered in duck poop and muddy boots. Performative farming is such a perfect way to describe these moms with their perfectly dressed horde of small children, hair and makeup done.
Yes! The dirt! The goat wormer in the fridge! Nothing glamorous about it!
Oh you could run a small field hospital with what I have in the fridge and pantry!
I also what to understand what labor, in addition to capital that fuels this farm. They send out boxes of packaged meat all over the country. Who is doing the physical work? Milking once a day ain't it.
ALL OF THIS. I want an IG called “The Hidden [Underpaid] Laborers of Ballerina Farm”
Let’s help them unionize!
THIS!!!!!!
Oh, yes. I grew up on a working farm. My dad still farms at 74 and I have extended family who farm. Performative farming drives me bonkers.
This is my exact situation except my dad is *only* 70. Haha.
My grandfather sold his ranch when he was around 85. This is not a job that presents clean fingernails or retirement as an option!
We buy our hay from a farmer who is turning 80, and who told us that next year he's *only* going to do a single cut. "You know, I'm 80." He's such a top notch guy; the sort of person who would bring another farmer hay even if they can't pay at the moment, because "the animals have to eat". I know farming has been romanticized but I do yearn for that kind of community.
💕
My father is a farmer and my mother was a teacher, then principal, so I did not grow up with the idea that work was 40 hours/week.
YES YES A THOUSAND TIMES YES
I have stayed well and clear of the mamasphere, although it does pop up from time to time. The posed photos, the bible quotes, the weird visual screechiness of the too well scrubbed settings, the bad decorative taste- no thanks.
Motherhood- especially White Motherhood(tm) has always been performative in this country- and has always had a price to it and come AT a price. That social media is the newest version of this does not surprise me one bit.
This is brilliant and scarily illuminating. AHP you are a Rock Star. I love the way you identify and explore ideas that occupy some miasmal unidentified niggling awareness in my psyche. And so much leaps in to clarity! (I’m am still engrossed by and horrified by Jesus and John Wayne, and the Mars Hill podcast which I found through you.) I am a grandmother watching my daughter and her friends navigate parenthood....it takes a LOT of intention and character to hew to your values, and try to live with authenticity. I know it always has, but social media is so distorting and distracting. Thanks thanks and keep up the brilliant work.
Oh, my gosh, "Who is taking these pictures?" is the most common question I ask myself when I stumble into the "mamasphere" on Instagram.
I don't follow moms but I do follow a lot of dog accounts, and I sometimes wonder the same thing: who is taking those carefully staged photos of the dog snuggling with his or her owner!
So if you look on Amazon, there are a lot of "content creator kits" that have things like cameras and microphones and tripods and such... but there's almost always a remote shutter button, too.
I mean no doubt there are Instagram husbands as well. But remote shutter buttons!
I follow a lot of kitten rescue/foster accounts, and have questions about the whole aesthetic! Their houses are always beautiful and spotless. Zero clutter or dust bunnies, in the accounts of people who post every day! How is that possible!?
Plus, given that animals move, I would guess that the majority of pics are out of focus or otherwise unusable. Getting one good snap may take a lot of time...
Which leads me to...why do people do this, if they have to keep their house spotless? I mean, I understand if they write books on the topic, as @kittenxlady does. But most are just private pet owners. Or, is their some sort of secret monetization going on that casual viewers don't get??
One of the dog accounts I follow has the same breed that I do, and she has white EVERYTHING -- rugs, comforters, blankets, etc. She does do some #sponsored posts, which must pay her enough to allow her to hire a professional cleaning service!
“algorithmic precarity” AKA “the anxiety of influence” (apologies to Harold Bloom) all wrapped up with “authenticity” demands. And then to have to learn a whole new skill set, including different algorithmic demands, for TikTok and whatever new platform that’s siphoning away eyeballs the brands want to attract. The mamasphere subculture is a case study of a much larger and rapidly metastasizing phenomenon. One of the things that makes it interesting is competing for the “sweet spot” for engagement plays on a whole set of affective responses that don’t involve an accelerating feedback loop of rage, depression or the sorts of toxic content that Facebook/IG has become infamous for. Interesting that the feedback loop for mama influencers is an arms race in acquiring durable goods.
I don’t think I’ve ever clicked so many links or added so many things to my TBR list from one post before. Does Kathryn need a research assistant? I don’t even need to get paid, I just want a legitimate excuse to be down this rabbit hole with her…
Oh no this introduced me to term/movement "tradwife" and it's a black hole of darkness I never wanted to find... But that being said, great interview. I'm a fairly new mom (9.5 months) and I haven't delved too deeply into the mamasphere. (Two exceptions: I occasionally read Virginia Sole-Smith and that account everyone loves about feelings & toddlers). I'm not sure why other than a vague sense of ickiness. I haven't explored this feeling enough to say more.
I don't have too many friends with kids and I think being a mom in basically a vacuum (not being part of the online world, not having many IRL parent friends) has been a blessing. I'm kind of protective of my own ignorance because I don't want to know what I'm doing wrong or what my daughter "should" be doing.
My kids are older (17, 13, 11) and I have often been so glad that I started parenting before the advent of social media. I hope you stay "ignorant" of the mom influencers.
I'm only a hair "older" than you in momming (15 months) and I feel what you're saying deep down. Somehow being a pandemic mom has meant that I'm slightly freer of the obvious pressures, but it makes me more worried/aware that there are less obvious ones just lurking.
These interviews are so great.
Ugh, this piece is so good and so interesting and yet I am annoyed that I now have more things I simply MUST read. :D
Okay I have clearly spent way too much time thinking about this, and I think I finally have it. These accounts reinforce the notion that I am irresponsible. It's on me to remember that they are highlight reels at their most honest, they don't acknowledge the privilege, the help, the expectations, their reality. I just compare how they claim to spend their 24 hours to how I spent mine. They aren't sharing their responsibilities for a proper comparison, and That is what makes the so noxious in the context of hustle culture. This isn't even their side hustle let alone real life, and I see it in the moments between my REAL actually responsibilities, the moments when I dont want to see my dirty face and lifeless hair in the mirror, the padding and redness from Cushing's, the semioermanent hair dye the baby has surely used as finger paint on our porous white tile bathroom floor upstairs. Those moments are precious and vulnerable, the polar opposite of BF. Give me AC Shilton's Affirmation Chickens every day. She shows her work without beating you over the head with it, which prompts me to give me credit for my own. It's a totally different experience.
Damn, this takes me back to the original mom group work that Sarita Schoenebeck did. Those moms ended up being pissed she was studying them in the early Web 2.0 days; now, I assume they'd be flattered.
Meg - you knocked it out of the park again. Well done. And AHP -> another timely topic. My daughter was just telling me this weekend that she's been going down the rabbit hole(s) of the origins of "crafts" v. "art" and how much of those distinctions stem from the time period Dr. Ulrich wrote about. When they made those "economic production" tasks "social," they made them hobbies...regardless of the skill, time, detail, etc. And we all know why this matters - crafts sell for way less than art...