Kamala Harris wore $800 Tiffany earrings to the debate. Who cares?

I’m a classy traveler. I love discounts, but they’re only for the classiest things I can afford. For my birthday this year, I booked a suite at Baltimore’s Ivy Hotel, a grande dame of a Gilded Age masterpiece in Mount Vernon that costs more than $1,000 a night.

Some people I told about it were shocked that I was spending so much money on an overnight stay about two miles from home. I tried to explain that the price included breakfast, parking, afternoon tea and an open bar, until I realized I was trying to justify my money to people who weren’t contributing anything. Instead, I just said, “I wanted to go, I could afford it, so I did.”

We don’t know if Vice President Kamala Harris purchased the gold and pearl Tiffany earrings she wore during Tuesday’s debate with former President Donald Trump or if they were a gift, but they still raised many questions.

Initially, it was claimed that they were Bluetooth transmitters (which is not true). After this nonsense was debunked, the controversy turned to whether a so-called woman of the people should own $800 earrings.

“Instead of spreading conspiracy theories, why not point out that most Americans would kill for $800 in their savings account, not their ears, and that she’s lost touch with reality in that regard,” wrote one X user. To that, I say, whatever. To paraphrase Harris herself, this mindset is part of an old, hackneyed script that tells women to be cautious with their spending, which is not the case for men. We’re past that.

In an excellent essay in Medium about the gendered lens through which society has historically characterized spending, author and social scientist Katie Jgln notes that women tend to buy more household items, including groceries, despite historically making less money. The expectation seems to be that when we open our wallets, we’re doing so for other people, and if we don’t, we’re acting irresponsibly. We shouldn’t own nice things, and if we do, we shouldn’t talk about them.

No. This is an echo of the subplot of Parks and Recreation, where it’s OK to treat yourself every now and then. Because you can.

Leyla Krikor, 49, a frequent traveler and scuba diver from Burtonsville, said a former boss told her, “Everyone thinks you’re showing off when you take these vacations. Wouldn’t you just go on some of these trips?” Can you imagine the cheek? Krikor thinks the guy was giving her advice on how to be more likable, “but it’s not my problem that other people are jealous of what I do,” she said. “Other people have nice cars. That’s my thing. I spend money on things that are important to me, and I deserve it.”

Yes, that’s right! As long as your bills are paid, you can spend your money on things that bring you joy without needing permission. I surveyed women like Krikor on social media platforms about what they proudly spend their hard-earned money on, and they listed things like travel, jewelry, luxury bags, and high-end jeans. This is not a new phenomenon, says Renee Wilson, owner of Bijoux Jewels in Baltimore, whose customers are mostly women.

“She [women] work so hard today and of course they should buy something. It’s not just frivolous or emotional. It’s an investment. The price of 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 makes a very telling point. According to FinanceBuzz, a Capital One survey found that men spend just as much as women, and spend 40 percent more than women. Yet, says Jgln, “women are portrayed as frivolous or wasteful,” while men are portrayed as “‘financially savvy guys’ who would never spend money on stupid things.”

Chantelle Washington, 51, of White Marsh, believes the problem for successful women – especially unmarried ones like herself – is a lack of societal control. “Men have a hard time accepting that there are alternatives to marriage,” says the self-described “equal opportunity squanderer” on handbags, shoes, travel or “a side table that is ridiculously expensive 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 that I had a really good time doing it. I don’t understand why we have to live small to make someone else feel better.”

Washington’s observation that monitoring women’s money is about control is one of the reasons I believe the so-called “trad wife” movement is on the rise. When she bought her first house and invited her family over to look at it, “my aunt said, ‘Now all you have to do is find your own man. Now all you need is a husband.’ There’s always someone trying to tell us how to live and move in the world. I’m not sorry for that.”

The same thing happened to me when I bought my first home as a 28-year-old single woman. A family friend told me to buy “a small condo” instead of the townhouse in a historic neighborhood because what if I met someone soon who didn’t like the house? The idea that I should base big purchases on the opinion of a nonexistent man was… stupid. But this is not an isolated case.

We don’t know how Harris got her earrings because, as I said, that’s none of our business. Both she and her husband, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, make so much money that it’s no big deal to spend $800 on a beautiful pair of earrings – which, by the way, are less than the average price of pearl earrings at Tiffany’s.

Barbara Vick, 55, a longtime DMV resident who now lives in Roanoke, has her own Tiffany story about how she bought herself a ring as a reward after getting a new job.

When she entered the store with a friend, “none of the men working there even noticed 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 asked, ‘Do you need help?'”

Sure enough, Vick did, and five minutes later she walked out of the store with her beautiful new ring. The saleswoman got a commission. She believes the men “thought we were just gawkers, two women just looking at Tiffany rings.” What they didn’t know was 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 too often women forgo small pleasures because they could spend the money on the kids or shopping and think they should be taking care of someone else,” she said. “The vice president can do whatever she wants with her money. That’s about the amount I paid for that ring all those years ago. I loved it and wanted it.”

And that’s all there is to say.