Happy New Year everyone! Not sure about everyone else, but 2023 started with a bang for me!
I am the Upper East Side mom that went viral for showing a Chanel gift bag that was gifted to moms at the hospital I gave birth to, by Chanel….but I opened it 3 years later.
My post, which is now private, was made as I was cleaning out my closet and organizing, looking for an old tote bag I wanted to use that following day and hadn’t seen in forever. There, on the bottom of my closet under my hanging clothes and out of site, I found the tote bag. I opened it and found the gift bag from the hospital….from 3 years prior!And then I was wondering where the one from my daughter was from her birth as well….yikes. Never realizing the power of TikTok, or even that more than my few followers who see my “Daily Life of a NYC Mom” Vlogs, I took the gift bag and recorded myself opening it and showing what was inside. The contents of the bag were a bottle of perfume, a lipstick and a mascara. I was expecting sample sizes! Unfortunately my reaction of “not too bad!” Was not met well, and looking back I can see why. Although as a 42 year old mom new to TikTok, I felt like I was pretty much talking to myself….boy was I WRONG! I woke up to news that my TikTok was on the NY Post, MSN, daily mail, and more! My mind was BLOWN! Friends from all over the country were messaging asking if it was me. People were incredibly divided. From comments of “I wish I was in the tax bracket where I would forget a Chanel gift bag.” To hilarious comments such as “I would forget my baby in the hospital before I’d forget to open a Chanel gift bag,” to people defending me that it’s probably a good thing I cared ore about my baby than a lipstick. To further it, it became a debate over healthcare disparities and took on a MUCH deeper issue than I ever realized it would.
It was been 6 days since I posted it, and I have been recognized by people I work with, parents of my kids classmates, a woman at Trader Joe’s I ran in to, it has been quite shocking and overwhelming.
I do want to make it clear that the hospital I gave birth at was not the one gifting these gift bags. There were any accusations of hospitals not paying their workers yet gifting these to “bougie moms.” This could not be further from the truth! In fact, many responses to my video were of nurses who work there and said that employees were often gifted Chanel products as well. The reason is that the hospital was awarded for excellence in Obstetrics, and Chanel basically donated gift bags to the new moms. This is not a health insurance issue, or something you needed to pay for a private room for. It was simply an amazing gesture for new moms and I wish everyone got this!
There were many people defending me because they felt it was probably a good thing I was more focused on my baby than my gift bag. On the flip side were the personal attacks. From being called ugly and non-deserving, to being told I was showing off, to people going back to my other social media to see if I indeed am an Uber-wealthy elite Manhattanite as I was being portrayed by some. Tons of questions about what my husband does for a living. This leads to my next point….
Manhattan is Not Only for the Extremely Wealthy
I didn’t fully realize until this happened that people feel you have to be extremely rich to live in Manhattan. The truth is not everyone here lives in the world of private schools, personal drivers, huge apartments with amazing views or brownstones. Some people sacrifice to live here because they appreciate the lack of commute and the lifestyle. I myself am an RN, my husband has two full time jobs. It’s true, if many of us lived in different parts of the country then we would be considered “wealthy.” When you live somewhere where a 2 bedroom 2 bathroom apartment is out of reach and well over a million dollars, its hard to feel that way. Yet there are many parts of the country that this would buy a mansion. It is all relative! Gossip Girl, Sex and the City, and many many more have given the notion that women here are covered in designer names, spend their days shopping and at Pilates, or getting massages and their nails done. This is definitely a stereotype that is NOT accurate at all. The Upper East side is filled with all tax brackets (believe it or not!!)
So, why didn’t I open the Gift Bag?
The truth is, and I didn’t even want to attempt to explain this on TikTok because the comments were becoming disruptive for me, I didn’t need these products. And the reason why isn’t because I buy myself these things all the time as people were claiming. The reason is that a member of my husbands family worked for a makeup-manufacturer. This meant we were always given samples of designer makeup, so much that we were always bringing them to our friends and coworkers. Anyone who knows me knows this is true and was probably given makeup or skincare products from me! I did not realize there would be a perfume in the gift bag, but I assumed it would be makeup and cream samples.
Another reason…I had just had a baby! My priority just was not the gift bag, I also did not have a labor where I had time to think about anything. I walked to the hospital with contractions and my water already broken, was taken to triage already with urges to push, and barely got in to my room before I had him…it was FAST! My daughters birth was even crazier as she came 4 weeks early.
It’s all a learning experience, and I am very excited about all of the new, sweet amazing followers this attention has brought to my page. I definitely will make posts assuming the whole world may see them from here on out!
