Refinery29's "A Week On $25 an Hour" Article

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Part of a series on Millennials. [View Related Entries]

Overview

Refinery29's "A Week On $25/hour" Article refers to an article published by lifestyle website Refinery29 by an anonymous source relating the exact details of how she lives in New York City on $25/hour pay. Initially, the headline failed to disclose that the person's parents covered a lot of her expenses, which led to backlash on social media for failing to disclose the author's privilege.

Background

On July 15th, 2018, Refinery29 published an article titled "A Week In New York City On $25/Hour"^[1] as part of its "Money Diaries" series. In the article, an anonymous 21-year old millennial student who also works as a marketing intern in HR details exactly how she spends her money. She admits in the article that her parents cover major expenses like health care, student loans, and cell phone service, and that she lives in a one bedroom/one den apartment with a roommate and pays $2,100 a month. Her week also includes a trip to the Hamptons, a luxurious area for affluent New York City residents.

Developments

After the article was published, it received backlash from social media users who felt that the author benefitted from wealthy privilege and it was not relatable to the economic statuses of most millennials. Twitter user @tessabahoosh tweeted screenshots from the article, stating "you should not be writing about money," gaining over 30,000 retweets and 106,000 likes (shown below, left). User @prof_gabriele tweeted that the woman's only expenses were "MoviePass, a Brazilian (specifically a Brazilian "sugaring," a type of hair removal), and a gym," while her parents paid for everything else, gaining over 450 retweets and 2,200 likes (shown below, right).

Backlash to the article was covered by multiple outlets, including Twitter Moments,^[2] MarketWatch,^[3] The Mary Sue,^[4] and Buzzfeed.^[5] Vice^[6] wrote a contrarian piece to the backlash, saying the outrage was misguidedly directed at the writer when people were more mad at her lavish, unattainable lifestyle. Some Twitter users defended the piece, or were at least less angry in their responses. Writer Roxane Gay called the piece "adorable," gaining over 2,800 likes (shown below, left). User @socarolinesays stated that a lot of people received money from their parents, including much older people, and that Refinery29 should cover them (shown below, right).