Fans slammed Bethenny Frankel for saying a TJ Maxx cashier couldn’t afford a $70 makeup palette after the Skinnygirl mogul went viral for controversially giving an employee a bag of her used makeup products.
Frankel doubled down on giving away her barely used beauty products in a new TikTok Sunday – even though she admitted that she might be “getting canceled” for it.
Thousands of users shared their opinions in the comments of the new video, and one fan in particular asked why the TJ Maxx employee, named Consuela, “can’t afford” one of the items, a Patrick Ta palette.
“Bc (because) she is a cashier at TJ maxx,” Frankel replied.
Frankel’s response upset many fans who called her out for her “tone deaf” comment.
“That’s ignorant – a cashier at tj maxx can afford it if they save it. Comes across entitled and rude,” one user commented.
“Bethenny tone deaf. Stop it!” another person wrote.
“What is wrong with you lol,” someone else bluntly asked.
“Bethenny really just becoming Ramona Jr. more and more everyday #RHONY,” another user tweeted, referring to famously “rude” Ramona Singer.
“Beth has this holier than thou attitude like she is doing everyone a favor. The employee looks scared. Social cues were missed!” someone else noted.
In the original, since-deleted video, Frankel, 52, showed up to a TJ Maxx store with a bag of various products that makeup companies had given her, and she filmed herself as she went up to one of the cashiers and offered her the bag.
The employee appeared to be thankful but also hesitant and nervously told Frankel that she wasn’t sure if she could accept it because of the store’s company policies.
“I’ll get in trouble for taking it, we’re not allowed to take any kind of gratuity or gifts,” she said to the camera.
The “Real Housewives of New York City” alum sighed and left the bag with her anyway and told her she was going to “message” the company on Instagram to make an exception.
Frankel immediately received criticism from users who responded to the video online – including from her friend-turned-nemesis Carole Radziwill.
“Who sent this to me? Lol. I mean stop this nonsense . So much to unpack but I’m not getting paid to do this any longer. But here…one ‘word’: #whitesaviorcomplex,” Radziwill tweeted over a video of the TikTok on Friday.
“She looks petrified that Bethenny just made her lose her job,” one person tweeted.
“Why wouldn’t she take it to a battered woman’s shelter or something like that, this is so offensive,” another user wondered.
“Bethenny has done a lot of good things with her charity but this isn’t one of them. This is cringeworthy and tone deaf,” someone else commented.
Three days after the video went viral, Frankel addressed the backlash and confessed that she “did something very wrong.”
Frankel explained that various beauty brands send her products in different forms and shades, and she’ll often open the product, not like the color, put it back in the package and give it away to people.
“I don’t want them to go to waste,” she said in a TikTok on Sunday. “I think they’re beautiful. I give them to my staff, and my assistant and other people, and I always have bags in my car for random acts of kindness. If someone’s nice to me I just hand them something.”
Frankel then went on to claim that after the cashiers at the store had been “complimenting” her on the “nice” products she buys, they told her, “I wish I could afford it,” so she decided to give them a bag of other goodies.
Despite saying she would sort it out with TJ Maxx, Frankel ultimately had to go back, get the bags and regift them to employees at Restoration Hardware, who can accept gifts.
Frankel also slammed the “woke” and “pretentious” people who were saying she had a “white savior complex.”
“I may have white savior complex, because I brought perfectly good unused but opened makeup to people that I don’t think would be able to buy this level of makeup on their own, so I guess I’m being cancelled. What shall we all do? Thoughts and prayers,” Frankel concluded in the video.
Many fans defended Frankel in the comment section and expressed how thankful they would be if Frankel gave them some of the products.
“No good deed goes unpunished. Keep doing what ya do,” one popular comment read.
“wasting it would be the real shame. you’re doing the right thing,” another person wrote.
“Common sense has become uncommon. What is wrong with offering someone a gift. Keep doing you!” someone added.
“Don’t stop doing it. Honestly think it’s a lovely thing to do. Make up [sic] is so out of most people’s reach at the moment.
