Elle Decor Slammed Over Tone-Deaf Luxury Home Essay

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

Elle Decor readers are up in arms over an essay that the magazine published on its website earlier this month titled "I Made A Huge Sacrifice To Buy My Dream Home." The huge sacrifice, according to writer Sarah Scott, was deciding not have any more kids in order to be able to afford the family's current lifestyle. As one can imagine, that premise did not go over well with some readers, as evidenced by the tornado of furious Facebook comments that follow the post.

In the essay, Scott writes that even though her uterus "literally ached" to carry another child, she and her husband decided that they wouldn't be able to have a third child and keep the luxury home that they were currently living in. "Understandably, something has to give and unfortunately, in this case, it's our mutual dream of having another child," Scott writes.

The sacrificial sentiment was not shared in the comments section, where readers tore the piece to shreds. Here's a sampling of the response that the essay got:

"BAHAHAHAHAHAHA. The Onion should pick this up."

"By Jove you've done it! The Whitest article ever written!"

"Oh my god what an absolute stupid stupid fool. How was this even published. I hope one day you truly understand what it is like to struggle. And feel compassion for women who can't actual have children! Was this article just written to brag?"

"How awful life must be. When I sit in my tiny rented house after a long day of work, waiting for my husband to finish his (sometimes 15 hour) work day so we can draw up more budget plans so we know if we can afford the IVF or ICSI that we will need in order to have children, I will now be so thankful that at least I'm not living the terrible life that you are."

In some cases, they yelled directly at Elle Decor for publishing the piece. "I think Elle Decor has taken a wrong turn," one commenter wrote. "These are NOT the kind of posts that I want to see—AT ALL—on a DESIGN site. Don't keep it up."

This isn't the first time that the Elle brand has drawn ire over personal essays. One piece published recently on Elle.com about a woman who had dyed her hair blonde and then chronicled all the ways in which her life subsequently got better had to be updated with a note from the author specifying that she does not, in fact, believe that going blonde is better therapy than actual therapy.