After what looked like a delightful weekend in New Orleans with her parents, memes of young Blue Ivy have been circulating showing her staring down from a balcony at all the people who are not part of the Carter family.
The gist of most of the jokes is Blue Ivy’s fictional contempt for the non-multi-millionaires non-Beyoncé-DNA-sharing muggles. This got me thinking: Does Blue Ivy Carter know she’s rich?
I’m sure she’s aware her family is special—all the cameras, the red carpets—but is she aware they’re worth close to a billion dollars rich? I won’t pretend to know her life, but she and her parents do spend time with a lot of similarly affluent children. When all your friends are balling like it, it’s probably harder to figure how highly unusual this existence is.
On the other hand, the girl is just five years old. This was a thinking-heavy day for me because then I wondered: when do kids realize how much money their families do or do not have?
When I was in the 5th grade I think I thought my family was rich because I liked our house and I had toys and stuff. Then one of my friends told me about the clock tower at her house and I was like, “Oh, we good, but we ain’t that good.”
The Jezebel staff went down a minor memory rabbit hole trying to figure out the ballpark range of when children begin to grasp money and class, and now it’s your turn. When did you first realize how much money your family had? Any child psychologists in the house would be very helpful right about now. Let’s discuss.