Is sympathy finite? The Rolling Stones suggested that we might extend this tenderest of emotions towards ‘Old Nick’ himself, but I’m not so sure. Can we really just keep feeling sorry for people infinitely, and expect it never to run out? How about empathy – that favourite buttonhole bloom of the slippery self-adoring? Are we required to have empathy with every delicate little flower who claims victimhood or may we sternly put our judgemental hat on and decide ‘No, you’re an over-privileged self-pitier – back of the queue!’
Is it better for nepo-babes to be nice and in denial, or brazenly revelling in it and therefore more honest, but also nastier?
I considered this recently when made aware of a Good Housekeeping interview with the fragrant Ella Mills, blogger and proud owner of the Deliciously Ella brand, who is sometimes branded a ‘nepo baby’ due to the bad bit of luck of being the great-granddaughter of the supermarket founder Sir John Sainsbury: ‘I passionately wanted to do Deliciously Ella on my own. Of course, it didn’t take journalists long to link the dots and I felt so bad in retrospect.’ Whether she felt bad about being a Sainsbury or because she didn’t advertise the fact that she is a Sainsbury is unclear. Also, I was tickled by the ‘bad in retrospect’ bit. So, not feeling bad about it at the time, but in retrospect feeling really bad about it? I once knew a posh left-wing black girl who said to me about enjoying her time at public school ‘I liked it at the time – but not in retrospect’. It’s like having a time travel machine solely for adjusting emotions which might in the current Victimhood Olympics climate seem unfashionably cheery and resilient.
‘I knew people would say I was just a nepo baby, but you don’t sell 100 million products because 40 years ago Sainsbury’s went public. At the same time, having that connection meant I had a subconscious wish to do something quite different, against the odds, as my great-grandfather had done.’ Ella may be one of the pioneers of ‘clean eating’ but that’s a prime piece of foot-in-mouth action; this second ‘I’m special because my antecedents were special’ sentence reminds me of what I brusquely wrote of the Bangles’s Susanna Hoffs in this very magazine:
‘I don’t think that the rebel streak of “I’m going start a band” would have happened had I not been raised by my artsy mom and free-thinking dad,’ she gloats, ignoring all the offspring of labourers and wage slaves who basically invented rock’n’roll. Still, she certainly fits in with the moneyed brats who’ve colonised it these days.
The very special Miss Mills has been delighting us since the mid-2010s, when she found internet fame flogging – sorry, sharing – her ‘wellness’ ‘journey’ with us, as she ‘bravely’ cut out meat, dairy and gluten. This didn’t go down well Nigella Lawson (battle of the nepo-ultra-babes!) who opined on Woman’s Hour that ‘behind the notion of clean eating is an implication that any other form of eating is dirty or shameful’. Ella seems a non-confrontational type – one might gripe that given her privilege, that’s a very easy way to be – telling Good Housekeeping that that ‘I don’t have it as bad as some people who’ve been trolled, but I’m aware that a fair share of people don’t like me, for sure. I accept that if you have a public platform and you share your opinion with the world, the world is quite right to have an opinion back.’
There’s a new nepo-related problem I’d never thought of before; is it better for nepo-babes to be nice and in denial, or brazenly revelling in it and therefore more honest, but also nastier? I’m thinking of Hailey Bieber wearing a NEPO BABY T-shirt and the amusingly named Entitled Sons, a ‘rock’ band made up of the four offspring of the TV ‘personality’ Sarah Beeny. I’m inclined to favour the latter, as it’s extremely hard to feel sorry for those born into privilege, however nice, when the situation is getting more extreme. In 2022, billionaires made more through inheritance than entrepreneurship for the first time. It’s now reached the point where when I read that a famous person’s offspring has taken a non-showbiz/media job – like Gordon Ramsay’s son being a Royal Marine Commando, or Bruce Springsteen’s a fireman – I feel actually nonplussed for a moment. Is there a ‘rift’ in the family, perhaps? No, just an independently-minded kid with a decent helping of initiative. So it can be done; maybe those nepo-babies who put their hands up to avidly taking the road more red-carpeted are less cowardly than the ones who pretend it was just an accident.
It used to look odd when entertainers hung out with royalty, remember John Lennon in that 1963 Royal Variety Performance, to an audience containing the Queen and Princess Margaret, cheekily requesting ‘For our last number I’d like to ask your help. Would the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewellery’. But it simply doesn’t anymore, as fame itself is increasingly hereditary. It used to be quite the novelty when someone followed a parent into showbiz; I’m old enough to remember the emergence and heyday of Nancy Sinatra, who was regarded with a kind of awed confusion by the general public. It’s his daughter – and she sings, too! Now we fully expect the spawn of the famous to follow them into the racket, even if they display no talent whatsoever. Indeed, if talent is present, as in rare cases, it seems confusing and almost outrageous.
Though I’m cross on behalf of the working-class kids who would have been good at it but will never get a chance to know the fun and ease of a life in the journalism trade now that it’s totally clogged up with nepo-baby hacks, privilege wouldn’t personally have suited me. As I wrote here last year: ‘Unlike hacks with famous names, I will always have the knowledge that I made it on merit alone. This is a crucial element in self-respect, a thing without which, in my opinion, life isn’t really worth living. Nepo-babies, despite their apparent good fortune, will forever be one of life’s plus ones, knowing that everyone believes they’re only where they are because of what their name is. In the long run, what kind of effect does this have on people? I’m sure that nepotism saps the souls of those who profit from it.’
Self-esteem is a gift I’d never have swapped for a bit of what is vulgarly known as a ‘leg-up’ at the beginning of one’s career – but, having said that, I certainly won’t be wiping a tear from my eye over the plight of any self-pitying nepo-baby any time soon. My sympathy is certainly finite, and I’ll be keeping it for more suitable cases.
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