Blogs and Stories
Who Killed the Yummy Mummy?
Matt Sayles / AP
Will the recession mean I'll no longer be forced to listen to vapid one-upmanship among the superrich at excruciating dinner parties? Please say yes.
The Yummy Mummies are dead. But before I launch into a dirge, let me explain. I personally am used to the mummies feeling disenfranchised—for the last ten years they have felt marginalized for being millionaires and not billionaires. It just wasn’t fair, they groaned—all the good stuff was being stolen by the billionaires: the first-class seats, the suites at the Four Seasons, the Mandarin-speaking nannies, the $1,500 limited-edition strollers, Gwyneth’s baby nurse, the hot personal trainers, the floor seats at Knicks games, the tables at Nobu. Why, they cried, did billionaires get all the good stuff? When did having $10 million become relative poverty?
I myself witnessed the insanity first hand as recently as last winter at a small dinner party on the Upper East Side which descended, as all those dinners did, into a tirade by one Yummy Mummy who was not only drunk but also hopped up on her teenage son’s Adderall. She was incensed about the billionaires monopolizing all the perks that the normal millionaires usually got. “You know,” the Botoxed 40-year-old with three kids said as she played with the lock on her Birkin bag ($7,500 if you can get them, and by the way, you can now get them), “my nanny left me for someone who is paying $1,500 a week, cash. Last year we gave her a vacation to Mustique and three Hermès scarves. And my youngest doesn’t understand why we don’t have an elevator in our townhouse. I tried to explain to him that normal people don’t have elevators in their townhouses.”
I realized the 1920s had come to a screeching halt. No more reckless drivers, no more Daisy and Gatsby—that time is over.
I might have added, “Normal people don’t have townhouses, and in fact, almost half the world lives on less than $2.50 a day, or so says the World Bank. But really, what do they know? I bet none of those policy wonks at the silly old World Bank could get a Birkin bag from the Madison Avenue Hermès store.”
But I didn’t say that, because the status quo must be upheld, and what followed the tirade was an almost unbearable conversation about being rich and having values. The conversation about being a rich person with values usually goes something like this: “It’s very hard to instill good values in little Tiffany Amber. One of the ways we do it is by making her be nice to her weekend nanny.” This is always followed by intense nodding and other people joining in to explain the toothless restrictions they impose on their children.
I tried to inject a little bit of normality by offering a tidbit from growing up in New York City: “In 1991 I got into a fight with a homeless squeegee man, and then he spit on me. And the very next week my best friend got mugged at knifepoint for her bus pass.” Everyone laughed and thought I was lying or using artistic license. Crime in New York City? Why, that’s crazy.
But that was a year ago, and what a long and paper-wealth-destroying year it’s been. I remember a moment when there was a slight shift, a little something that made the yummy mummies just a bit less yummy. This moment was Before Bernie (or, as we in the know call that era, B.B.) but after the first major market meltdown. Suddenly, there was less talk about house building in the Hamptons. They were a little quieter about the private jet vacation, and in the name of a more modest Upper East Side they only used their 25-centimeter pocketbook of choice (BIRKIN, BIRKIN, BIRKIN). There was still the same amount of gabbing about traffic, staff, entertaining, custom stationery, and vacations, but the tone was slightly apologetic--almost as if there was a kind of post-modern modesty slipping into the zeitgeist.
But after Bernie (A.B.), after the vaporization of $17 billion of primarily Jewish wealth, everything changed. All of a sudden it was thought of as vulgar (vulgar—who remembers that word?) to use the phrase “wheels up,” or to post pictures of the inside of your G4 (admittedly owned by NetJets, but still appallingly expensive). All of a sudden it was no longer chic to have five Birkins (one in each color for every day of the work week, ironically owned by someone who never, ever worked). All of a sudden greed was gross. A friend called me to describe how overdressed our other friend was at a benefit. “Marie Antoinette-ish,” she called it. And that was when I realized the 1920s had come to a screeching halt. No more reckless drivers, no more Daisy and Gatsby—that time is over. In a world where Dick Fuld’s shopaholic wife must hide her signature Hermès shopping bag, in a land where Ruth Madoff tells reporters she has no idea who this Ruth Madoff is, in a world where the rich are soon going to be asked to pay for their crimes against the common man—in that world, driving a $300,000 car may very be the thing that drives our rich to extinction.
Maybe there is one bright spot in an otherwise dismal future: the death of the Yummy Mummy. Sure, there will still be ladies Botoxing, and Dr. Mel Practice will still lovingly break your nose and make you look like Michael Jackson, but the culture of waste, of bragging, of bragging about waste, is slowly being replaced by a culture of sheepishness and shame. And I for one am thrilled. Yay, shame!! Bravo, sheepishness!! Here’s hoping for seven lean years of modesty, of drivers driving Dodge Darts, of flying commercial, of no-name handbags, of bragging about trips to Costco. I’d like to live in a world where Mrs. Fuld hangs out just a few blocks north of Hermès at the Heavenly Rest Soup Kitchen. Because you know what, Mrs. Fuld? Working at a soup kitchen might medicate your obvious shopaholism, might actually fill the black hole of nihilism in your soul in a way that blowing ten grand a week at Hermès can’t.
Molly Jong-Fast is the author of the weirdly popular cult novel Normal Girl and Girl Maladjusted. She has written for The New York Times, The Times of London, Cosmo, W magazine, The New York Observer, Mademoiselle, Marie Claire, British Elle, and many other newspapers and magazines. She is currently working on her third book, a novel called THE SOCIAL CLIMBER'S HANDBOOK. She is addicted to needlepoint. And since you are wondering, yes, her mother is Erica Jong, and yes, she is afraid to fly.
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Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
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Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
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Jeff Madrick is a contributor to the New York Review of Books and a former economics columnist for the New York Times. He is editor of Challenge Magazine, visiting professor of humanities at Cooper Union, and senior fellow at the New School's Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. He is the author of Taking America, The End of Affluence (Random House) and The Case for Big Government.
you should have edited this down to; "Look at me! I have super rich friends."
who cares?
Memo to Tina Brown: The Daily Beast is being read outside The Hamptons.
Yet another writer jumping on the post Madoff bandwagon. Tina, please! Humour is great but these blogger insights into this A.B. period aren't very incisive. Molly is an interesting writer but this was too much fluff even for me!
I've never been one to begrudge people their wealth. Are Yummie Mummies often shallow, ignorant and pampered women, completely oblivious to the reality playing out around them in the world? Why, yes. They are.
And this might be a stretch for you, but I've always viewed their lifestyles as some sort of a punishment, as if these people were born with a missing gene----that gene that allows the rest of us to see the world in all of its layered dimensions, it's multi-faceted beauty, and even, yes, it's naked hypocrisy. But to really see, feel and particpate in the world is something of a gift, if you will, much better pursued with eyes wide open rather than peaking out from behind a Birkin bag.
Wealth often precludes those holding the ticker tape from living fully. Blinded from the simple truths and lessons the rest of the world takes for granted--- poverty, hardship, perserverence, patience, compassion----the wealthy that you speak of are often a mere Botox-shell of their counterparts.
I've always sort of pitied them, as my ambitions have never included town houses, purses, private jets or yachts. My ambition is to live life fully, to become a better person and then the leave the world a little better off than I found it.
Hmm. There were four posts here and now only two remain. One of the missing posts is mine. What's up with that?
I echo "pourmecoffee's" sentiment: I don't live in the Hamptons.
Molly, why do you and your mother insist on writing about the fabulous lives of the wealthy (even if you pretend to put them down) when you know you love being part of it. Plus, why would you want to be around these vapid people at Upper East Side dinner parties - although I don't believe half of what you write about.
My frustration with articles like this one is the relish with which the writer infuses her account. Clearly, she enjoys being a member of this pretty gross set. Therefore, it ends up being an exercise in hypocrisy and condescension. Oh, and boring.
Molly, Could you please speak with Alexandra? She's in desperate need of some perspective. Thanks, Myra
Sorry, Margot, money is a neutral. It does not cause personality disorders or bad habits. If anything, it gives more opportunities to do good and fewer excuses for wasting your life. But it's also human nature to be sucked into greed even if you hold yourself above it. Molly, consider an article on how previously grounded people can slip into that temptation, not how the shallow adapt their shallowness to changed circumstances.
So let me get this straight...the Yummy Mummies have not exactly had a change of heart or turned over a new leaf, they just feel embarassed to be themselves...
Snore....
Molly's comic voice is always appreciated. Anybody with a sense of humor should see that she is exploring her own ambivalence about the longing to be super rich and the need to find meaning in non-purchaseables, such as time spent with people we love, helping those in need, acts of creation and scholarship, etc.
Nice article Molly--
Unf after about 20 years they'll all be back Yummy Mummying again (when the market/economy finally cycles back to prior levels)--
Until then, there's Birkins available for us regular working folk! Woo-hoo!!!
"But after Bernie (A.B.), after the vaporization of $17 billion of primarily Jewish wealth, everything changed."
Why exactly is religion relevant here?
I'm all for the demise of the Yummy Mummy, but can we bid a joyful adieu to the Brazen Daddy as well? From my vantage, I've seen a whole lot more of this species flaunting their now-ephemeral hedge fund, private equity and sundry gambling-esque wealth.
Actually I'm also tried of hating on rich people. If any one of us were super rich, we'd be doing the same things and talking the same way. I say live it up and enjoy it! And not all rich people are ignorant to their wealth compared to the rest of the world, and many rich people give loads and loads of cash to the poor.
I've been saying it all along -- there's nothing wrong with this country a good depression won't cure...
Your article was interesting to me. The Yummie Mummies you wrote about remind me of the horrible good-for-nothings on Bravo: "Real Desperate Housewives"~women who are niether desperate NOR housewives!
I think any Yummy Mummy should give their time and treasure to the poor. Then I'll believe they are "REAL"-. Not Stepford-botox-robots.-BTW: I am a REAL homemaker(HATE "housewife") who, with her husband, volunteers and is raising her kids to do the same. Wow-nobody cares or writes about us real ones, do they?
Confession: I read the first paragraph of these posts...and then skip down to the comments. Those are the best part. Then I scan back up to the photo of the author and think....pwned.
Just speaking for myself. I have never once met an obnoxious billionaire. Nor a noxious one. Nor a one.
I guess I'm just lucky.
I personally love these rich bashing articles. Even one $7500 purse is too many. Even if you earned it. Even if you used to be poor. By the way, the losers who say they used to be poor were always middle class, or you would have the sense not to spend thousands on purses. You would remember the bad times and never want to go back to them. It's funny to see the people feeling bad now. The real miracle is that the rich haven't been Marie-Antoinetted already. Also can I be your nanny?
so why accept an invitation to a dinner party with boring, shallow people?
Yeah? So who among us will turn down the 300 million dollar lottery if we win it?
I had to write an article once about the most expensive private school in my area. The teens, bright and serious, had recently met other teens from the area. Specifically, from my old high school in the inner city.
They said that it was interesting to meet these kids and how important.
"After all," they said, "these are going to be our employees one day and we have to learn how to speak their language."
Forgive my grammar lapse above---my phone rang. Please don't bother pointing out that I was a paid writer and actually hit "send" on the above.
Thank you.
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