(via Ruby Franke, Popular Parenting YouTuber, Arrested for Alleged Child Abuse)
According to Salt Lake Cityās Fox 13, arresting documents describe a child climbing out of a window and running to a neighborās home to ask for food and water. The neighbor noticed that the child had duct tape on their wrists and ankles and called the police. Another child was found at the home the first one escaped from, which belongs to Frankeās business partner and therapist Jodi Hildebrandt.
Viewers of ā8 Passengersā and investigative vloggers have flagged Frankeās concerning behavior around feeding and withholding food from her children for a long time. In one video, Franke brags about not feeding her kids breakfast until they do their chores, despite them being āliterally starving.ā In another, Franke explains the reasoning behind not bringing her hungry 6-year-old lunch at school, because itās actually the kidās responsibility to pack her own lunch. Itās all deranged.
Why do people that hate kids ever have kids? And why do they have such strong urges to share their evil with others? I guess itās...ATTENTION and MONEY.
One canāt help but notice the unfortunate pattern of Youtubers or parenting influencers on any platform whoāve compromised their childrenās wellbeing. Remember Myka Stauffer, who ārehomedā her adopted child with special needs in 2020? Or the āFamilyofFiveā parents, who were convicted of child abuse in 2017 for the elaborate and cruel āpranksā they pulled on their children? The parenting choices these people made are upsetting enough, but their incessant need to capitalize off of them for content at their childrenās expense is horrific.
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btw "religious psychosis" is Ruby Franke telling her children they are "satan" because they did petty kid's mischief, and not....an influencer becoming Christian and explaining how Jesus saved their life
This is the book that was inspired by Ballerina Farm and the controversies embedded in that whole concept--stuff I've been consuming with a big bucket of popcorn in my lap over the past few years, so I was intrigued to see what the book would be like.
I am not sure I've ever read 391 pages as fast as these ones. It helps that I was off work and the heatwave made anything else rather unfeasible, but that is still wild.
In brief, it is a novel about Natalie Heller Mills, a young, very religious Christian woman in the US who marries young, drops out of college (Harvard, no less), is almost immediately disappointed in her husband and then goes on to create a career for herself as a virtue-signalling Instagrammer who pretends to run a ranch 'just like in the olden days'.
The whole operation is, naturally, built on a small loan gift of 5 mio. dollars from her politician father-in-law, out-of-frame nannies, state of the art kitchen appliances and a crew of around 20 part-time ranch hands as well as a barrel of pesticides here and there, but who's counting. :)
Then, one day, Natalie wakes up, and everything looks different. In fact, everything looks like she has stepped back in time and is actually living in the pioneer days like she was cosplaying to do before.
In the first 30 pages, I thought, 'This is about as subtle as a mallet to the head.' There is at least one barb on every page, and they are flying in every direction. It was a fascinating deep dive into the special brand of religious rigour these public figures build their brands on, and just no end of commentary on the patriarchy, religion, misogyny, the attention economy, rage bait and all the things that are blasted at us every time we visit the internet these days.
The author did a good job of describing Natalie's gradual development from a floundering but ambitious young wife stuck in a marriage she won't allow herself to leave, to an unhinged propagandist who seems deeply co-dependent with an audience who loves to hate herāand whom she loves to hate right back.
Her religious upbringing had trained her to perform long before any cameras were pointed at her. She smiles when she's miserable and all her put-on meekness is a stone veneer over absolutely caustic take downs of her husband that start early on, like on page 28 when she prays, 'And please give my husband a spine. I'm tired of him needing to borrow mine.'
Her piousness is convulsive and desperate, like an ill-fitting glove, and I kept thinking about that episode of Malcolm in the Middle where Malcolm gives himself an ulcer by holding back his usual biting remarks. Her inner voice polices her in an increasingly frantic manner, to the point that it feels like there are two different voices in there fighting for the upper hand. (Which must make this fun as an audio book!)
Natalie does the things she's 'supposed' to do but it's so clear that none of them are a good fit for her. She has many children but she doesn't seem to like any of them. In fact, she is wary and outright threatened by her eldest daughter when the latter is barely a teenager. 'She is almost a woman, she cannot be trusted'āand it's as raw and insightful of a moment as it is tragic. Later on, she gives us a fabulously insane moment when she literally doesn't recognise another daughter for a few moments.
She speaks the language of digital media and has some good business instincts and would have likely been successful as a shrewd and hard businesswoman if she had actually graduated, gained some skills and gotten a job. A lot of it felt like those times you hear about super elaborate crimes and think, this person could have gotten so far if they had ever considered using their powers on the right side of the law. Natalie could have gotten so far if she hadn't chosen to make everything as hard for herself as humanly possible.
She could have had it so easy. She could have completed her Ivy League education, actually matured, lived an easier life making good money, she could have supported her husband when he wanted to raise his kids and teach in primary school instead of shoving him down radicalising rabbit holes, and she could have actually enjoyed her life instead of merely screaming at herself that she was happy. But some people just never are, are they.
She says that the Angry Women who leave her nasty comments are 'defined by their infinite capacity for restlessness'. By contrast, she is defined by her infinite capacity for pain, which she bitterly calls ādisciplineā. She has committed herself to a narrowly defined role and sees it as a point of pride that she has the discipline to withstand the brutality of it. Just like a ballerina who performs gracefully on bloodied feet.
The religious self-effacing is worn like a badge, although we only get Natalie's inner voice to know how she really feels. We don't know how the other Christian women around her feel--only what they say out loud. And it's stuff like, 'Men are like babiesātheir needs are not negotiable.' said by her mum on page 97. Natalie echoes this somewhat on page 118, referring to her husband as 'this fairy-tale fever dream of a man-child I'd married.'
But even her mum is aware of the shortcomings of menāthey are really seen as something to manage and steer all while making it look like they are the leaders. And she had wanted Natalie to get a degree. Maybe Natalie's mum was cosplaying her performative Christianity in a way that wasn't clear to little Natalie growing up--after all, the mum only had two children instead of as many as her body could bear, and she never remarriedāshe protected herself within the framework set by the religion. However, Natalie didn't see through the pretense.
When her sister tries to broach the subject of how this life had been sold to them through, essentially, false advertisement, Natalie reacts strongly and loudly to shut that down immediately. Sunk cost is a bitch.
The descriptions of the unhappiness behind the shiny facades are exquisite. Living with her political class in-laws made me think of Elizabeth Taylor in 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'. Both Natalie's mother's and her mother-in-law's solutions to the pressures in their lives are a quiet form of horror. Both cheerfully built their own cages and so, in the end, did Natalie. Because the image of her life was more important than the life itself. The aesthetics came before anything else.
That's why she flails for so many pages trying to prop up her useless earthworm of a husband. She has painted herself into a corner and now has an uphill battle trying to turn him into a worthy figurehead for her operation. Dimwitted Caleb who will occasionally have a weak lightbulb moment, only for that lightbulb to faintly fizz and pop without leading anywhere.
Mind you, these people met at Harvard!
Around page 150, Natalie's many instances of shutting herself down make me think the words 'psychological self-mutilation'. I imagine her stomach ulcer again. And I think, 'Thank goodness I am not American.' This is horror, but it's very American-flavoured horror which, let's not forget, draws super close parallels to real-life Ballerina Farm and to a lesser degree Ruby Franke as well. I can't see that this type of cultish behaviour would fly in Europe. It also makes me think that I don't want to be reading so many American books.
As Natalie gets more and more unhinged in the last 100 pages, I relished the language, and it was quite entertaining to watch her self-censorship increasingly fail and all her (official) principles fall like dominoes.
In fact, the story is peppered through with hypocrisy. Not only does Natalie directly lie about the use of pesticides and keep quiet about all the staff she has on the ranch (and all the animals dying), she also hides money from her husband and is quick to decide that his mistress will of course have an abortion if he has gotten her pregnant (after hundreds of pages of droning on about āHis creationsā), and when she said how her father-in-law would know an out of state doctor they could trust, it was such a delicious nugget. š
While there is a lot in the story that is ridiculous, there is also plenty that is dark and creepy. When some big conservative YouTuber discovers her after Caleb talks about her Instagram on some manosphere forums, he gives her a shoutout on a live stream, leading to her launch into conservative superstardom. āLook at how hard this woman works. Look how exhausted and beautiful she is. This, my friends, is the true American dream.ā he praises on page 240.
The American dream is an exhausted woman.
For a tiny moment, Natalie questions it. āDid I look exhausted? And why was that a good thing?ā But the moment passes and she hurtles onward toward insanity. Because without her martyrdom, what does she actually have?
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Watching the Ruby Franke doc and this Jodi Hildebrandt woman is a long term closeted lesbian with religious psychosis leading a cult and instead of kicking her out of the house and protecting her kids, Ruby kicked out her teenage son for kissing a girl cause the crazy woman said thatās whatās making the demons possess herā¦
