Breana Newton, a authorized coordinator in Princeton, N.J., who posts recurrently about books on TikTok, was one of many individuals who responded to Ms. Blalock’s video. “I’m going to point out you bookshelf wealth,” Ms. Newton, 33, says in a video of her personal. “Prepared?”
She then offers viewers a short tour of her dwelling, displaying books all over the place — on cabinets, in overflow piles right here and there, and strewed throughout the mattress. Absent is the sense that the rooms have been staged, or that the books had been purchased with the consideration of how they’d look on Instagram.
In an interview, Ms. Newton stated that she anxious traits like bookshelf wealth encourage overconsumption. This yr, she added, she is attempting to not purchase any new books.
One other critic of the development, Keila Tirado-Leist, stated in a response video: “Who does it profit to always have to call and qualify and connect wealth to any type of model or home-décor aesthetic?”
Ms. Tirado-Leist, a life-style content material creator in Madison, Wis., likened bookshelf wealth to “quiet luxurious” and “stealth wealth,” kinds which have just lately made social media waves.
Nonetheless, she was understanding that what drives a home-décor development like this one is a want to create a house that feels, effectively, homey. In one other video, she described the concept of layering — that’s, slowly buying items and constructing as much as a completed look, quite than attempting to purchase a bunch of issues abruptly in an effort to chase a development.
“Styling a house takes time,” Ms. Tirado-Leist stated.
One other TikTok person put it extra bluntly in a response to Ms. Blalock’s video: “Bookshelf wealth doesn’t imply you have got books. It means you have got built-ins.”
