14 Celebrities Who Were Accused Of "Pretending To Be Poor"

Gwyneth Paltrow once told Elle UK, "I am who I am. I can't pretend to be somebody who makes $25,000 a year." Lately, however, many celebs — including Gwyneth herself — have seemingly not shared the same sentiment.

Here are 14 times celebs got called out for "cosplaying the working class":

1.To promote her new snack brand at Walmart in 2023, Charli D'Amelio put on a blue vest and worked the register.

In the comments and on Twitter, people — including Walmart employees — called her out:

Twitter: @QUEENP0P

ITV / Via Twitter: @iHad2reInvent

2.In the 2023 Netflix docuseries Beckham, Victoria Beckham claimed to have grown up working class — only to be called out by her husband David.

3.In 2022, Grimes told Vanity Fair that her then-partner Elon Musk — aka the richest person in the world — "does not live like a billionaire" and "lives at times below the poverty line."

She continued, "To the point where I was like, 'Can we not live in a very insecure $40,000 house? Where the neighbors, like, film us, and there's no security, and I'm eating peanut butter for eight days in a row?'"

A few weeks later, Elon Musk told TED, "For sure, it would be very problematic if I was consuming billions of dollars a year in personal consumption. But that is not the case. In fact, I don't even own a home right now. I'm literally staying at friends’ places — if I travel to the Bay Area, which is where most of Tesla engineering is, I basically rotate through friends' spare bedrooms."

He continued, "I don't have a yacht, I really don't take vacations, so it's not as though my personal consumption is high. I mean, the one exception is a plane, but if I don't use the plane, then I have less hours to work."

Both of them received criticism for comparing choosing to live cheaply to actually living in poverty.

Twitter: @sommermae_

Twitter: @SanElDestructor

4.Kid Rock is known for his "working class persona." In his 1998 track "Cowboy," he sang, "I'm straight out the trailer."

However, according to the Daily Beast, he was reportedly raised by millionaire parents on a six-acre estate in a wealthy county in Michigan.

5.On New Year's Eve in 2020, Blake Shelton debuted a new song called "Minimum Wage." The chorus goes, "Girl, your love can make a man feel rich on minimum wage."

Ahead of the song's release, he told Carson Daly, "I can't speak for everybody else, but I had a great 2020. Even though a lot of bad stuff happened personally for me, I got engaged to Gwen Stefani, and I don't care what else happened besides that. That made it a great year."

In light of the record unemployment and financial losses many people faced as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people felt the song was out of touch.

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Twitter: @cecemado

In response to the criticism, Blake told CMT, "I just feel like these days, there are people out there who don't want to know the truth. They just want to hear what they want to hear, and they want to pick a fight. No matter what your intention is, no matter what the truth is, they want it to be something that they can be upset about so that they can get on social media and try to grab a headline. With 'Minimum Wage,' at first I thought, 'Wow, I guess I just, I've missed something here.' And the more I read into this, I realized this was really not real. Whatever this backlash is is just four or five people that probably don't know anything about country music. They clearly hadn't heard the song or read the lyrics. If they had, they couldn't feel this way about the song. It's literally a love song about how if times are tight and you ain't got much money — as long as you have love and you're happy — at the end of the day, that's all any of us can really hope for. You got it if you got that. That's all that matters. And if that's offensive to you, then we’ll just have to agree to disagree."

6.In 2020, Kourtney Kardashian Barker and Travis Barker staged a photoshoot in an Indiana truck stop.

In the comments, people mocked them for pretending to be "normal":

7.In 2019, Kim Kardashian posted a series of Instagram pictures of her family taken at Shangri-La, music producer Rick Rubin's recording studio in Malibu.

Some commenters accused her of "pretending to be poor."

8.In 2022, following backlash to her private jet usage, Kylie Jenner shared a TikTok of herself taking her daughter and two of her nieces to Target.

Some fans accused her of trying to seem "relatable" as "damage control."

9.To promote her Cloud Macchiato drink in 2019, Ariana Grande posed in a Starbucks uniform for since-deleted social media posts.

A since-deleted (and memed) viral tweet called her out, saying, "Don't you love when billionaires cosplay as the working class?"

10.Ed Sheeran worked a Starbucks shift to promote his album Autumn Variations in 2023.

He faced some similar backlash to Ariana's.

Ed Sheeran / Via Twitter: @KrolsCircus

Ed Sheeran / Via Twitter: @adorecarina

11.In 2021, Kacey Musgraves fulfilled her "lifelong dream of working in a snowcone stand" by handing out free treats to fans in Nashville. Sharing pictures on Twitter, she called herself an "essential worker."

Catherine Powell / Via twitter.com

In the replies, fans called her out for comparing herself to actual essential workers during the pandemic.

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Catherine Powell / twitter.com / Via Twitter: @GrahamMcLernon

12.In 2019, vloggers Catherine Paiz and Austin McBroom, aka The ACE Family, released a video called "WORKING AT A RESTAURANT FOR 24 HOURS." On Snapchat, she said, "Guys, we are literally working right now, at a restaurant. Austin has been making food for the past hour, and I've been taking orders."

They faced backlash on Twitter.

Catherine Paiz / Via Twitter: @demonicaquarius

Catherine Paiz / Via Twitter: @chrissyteigen

13.In 2021, Terry Crews did an Amazon ad where he worked in one of the giant online retailer's warehouses to promote its job openings.

Many commenters called him out for partaking in the commercial in light of reports of the company's unsafe working conditions and workers reportedly being denied bathroom breaks.

14.And finally, in 2015, Gwyneth Paltrow faced backlash over her "food stamps challenge," with many criticizing her grocery haul as unrealistic and impractical for actual SNAP recipients.

Twitter: @GwynethPaltrow

Time called her challenge "poverty tourism," and Vox said that it "fails to capture the grim reality of being a low-income American."

In a Goop post, Gwyneth said, "As I suspected, we only made it through about four days, when I personally broke and had some chicken and fresh vegetables (and in full transparency, half a bag of black licorice). My perspective has been forever altered by how difficult it was to eat wholesome, nutritious food on that budget, even for just a few days — a challenge that 47 million Americans face every day, week, and year... I know hunger doesn’t always touch us all directly — but it does touch us all indirectly. After this week, I am even more grateful that I am able to provide high-quality food for my kids. Let’s all do what we can to make this a basic human right and not a privilege."

She also encouraged fans to donate to the organization she promoted through her challenge, the Food Bank for New York City.