I am a fancy travel lady. I love discounts, but they’re going to be for the most elegant thing I can afford. For my birthday this year, I booked a suite at Baltimore’s Ivy Hotel, a grand dame of a Gilded Age masterpiece in Mount Vernon that cost more than $1,000 a night.
A few people I told were shocked I spent so much to stay someplace about two miles from home. I started to explain that the price included breakfast, parking, an afternoon tea and an open bar, until I realized I was trying to justify how I spend my money to people who weren’t contributing in any way. Instead, I just said, “I wanted to go, I could afford it, so I did.”
We don’t know whether Vice President Kamala Harris bought the gold-and-pearl Tiffany earrings she wore during Tuesday’s debate with former President Donald Trump, or whether they were a gift, but they still garnered a lot of questions.
First, it was alleged that they might be Bluetooth transmitters (they’re not). Once that silliness was debunked, the controversy became whether a so-called woman of the people should own $800 earrings.
“Instead of pushing conspiracy theories, how about we point out that most Americans would kill for $800 in their savings, not on their ears, and she’s out of touch that way,” wrote one X user. To that I say: Whatever. To paraphrase Harris herself, that type of thinking is part of a tired old playbook that dictates women should be circumspect with their spending in a way that men are not. We’re over it.
In an excellent essay in Medium about the gender-based lens through which society has historically characterized spending, writer and social scientist Katie Jgln notes that women tend to buy more of the household items, including groceries, even though they historically make less money. The expectation seems to be that when we open our wallets, it’s for other people, and when it’s not, we’re being irresponsible. We are not supposed to have nice things, and if we do, we aren’t supposed to talk about it.
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Nah. This is an echo of that “Parks and Recreation” subplot where every once in a while, it’s OK to “treat yo’ self.” Because you can.
Leyla Krikor, 49, a frequent international traveler and diver who lives in Burtonsville, said a former boss told her, “Everybody thinks you’re bragging, going on these vacations. Would you just not go on some of these trips?” Can you imagine the gall? Krikor thinks the guy thought he was offering advice about being more likable, “but it’s not my issue that other people are jealous of what I do,” she said. “Other people have nice cars. This is my thing. I spend money on what’s important to me, and I deserve it.”
Yeah, you do! As long as your bills are paid, you get to spend your money on what makes you happy, no permission needed. I surveyed women like Krikor across social media platforms on what they proudly spend their own hard-earned cash on, and they listed things like trips, jewelry, luxury bags and quality denim. This isn’t a new phenomenon, said Renee Wilson, owner of Baltimore’s Bijoux Jewels, whose customers are mostly women.
“They [women] are working so hard today, and of course they should buy something for themselves. It’s not just frivolous or emotional. It’s an investment. Gold is very, very high right now,” she said. “And why should anyone tell anyone what to spend their money on after working so hard?”
Wilson hits on something very telling. According to FinanceBuzz, a Capital One survey found that men splurge just as much as women do, and spend 40 percent more than women on those splurges. Still, Jgln noted, “it’s women who are portrayed as frivolous or overspenders” while men are portrayed as the “‘savvy financier’ guy who would never splurge on anything silly.”
Chantelle Washington, 51, of White Marsh, thinks that for successful women — particularly unmarried ones like herself — the issue is a lack of societal control. “Men are struggling with the fact that there are alternatives to getting married,” said the self-described “equal opportunity splurger” of handbags, shoes, travel or “an end table that’s ridiculously priced but so delicious I can’t resist.”
“I had a friend whose husband told her I was going to die alone,” she said. “I want a man, but I don’t need a man. I’d rather die alone knowing I had a really good time along the way. I don’t understand why we’re supposed to live small to make someone else feel better.”
Washington’s observation that monitoring women’s money is about control is partly why I think the so-called trad-wife movement is having a moment. When she bought her first home and invited family over to check it out, “my auntie goes, ‘All you need now is to find your own man. Now you just need a husband.’ Someone is always trying to dictate how we live and move in the world. I’m not sorry.”
The same thing happened to me when I bought my first home as a 28-year-old single woman. A family friend told me I should buy “a little condo” instead of the rowhome in a historic district because what if I met someone soon and he didn’t like the house? The idea that I should base major purchases on the opinions of a nonexistent man was … stupid. But it’s not an isolated sentiment.
We don’t know anything about how Harris got her earrings because, again, it’s none of our business. Both she and her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, make enough money that spending $800 for a nice pair of earrings — which are below the median price for pearl earrings at Tiffany’s, by the way — is not a big deal.
Barbara Vick, 55, a longtime DMV resident who now lives in Roanoke, has her own Tiffany story about buying herself a ring as a treat after landing a new job.
When she and a female friend went into the store, though, “none of the men working would even acknowledge we were there. My friend said, ‘Let’s just stand here and see how long it takes.’ So we just sat there until a woman came out of the back and was like, ‘Do you need some help?’ ”
As a matter of fact, Vick did, and five minutes later she was walking out of the store with her pretty new ring, and the saleswoman got a commission. She thinks the men “thought we were just lookie-loos, two women just looking at Tiffany rings.” What they didn’t know is that Vick’s grandmother raised her family alone as a union worker in Michigan and proudly bought her own jewelry when she could afford it.
“I think women too often deny themselves even small pleasures, because maybe they could use that money for the kids or the groceries, and think they should take care of somebody else,” she said. “The vice president can do what she wants to do with her money. That’s about what I paid for that ring, all those years ago. I loved it and I wanted it.”
And that’s all there is to say.
