Tiffany Trump and the awfulness of the baby shower

Tiffany Trump’s baby shower photos emerged this week, a Peter Rabbit-themed extravaganza thrown by her sister Ivanka in a Palm Beach mansion, so lavish that Beatrix Potter would have needed a second mortgage to attend. Think balloon arches as big as monuments, themed cocktails and swag bags worth more than your monthly car payment.

This Sunday, I had so much fun hosting a Peter Rabbit-themed baby shower for my sweet sister Tiffany! We showered her with love and had the best time celebrating her and baby-to-be!

Every detail was inspired by Beatrix Potter’s world — from bunny tails to garden treats — to… pic.twitter.com/PTI3OHXyEk

— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) April 8, 2025

But Tiffany’s showy shower reveals something beyond just tone-deafness among the rarefied class of people with billions of dollars, or presidencies, in the family – it spotlights how baby showers themselves have morphed more broadly from modest celebrations into full-throttle wealth and status flexes. These once-intimate gatherings thrown by your great-aunt in the living room now resemble extravagant weddings requiring their own party planners, unrecognizable from their original purpose of preparing new parents for the practical realities ahead. Welcome to 2025, where your unborn child’s social debut outweighs the importance of your birth plan.

The Instagram baby shower, where there are 45 million posts with the hashtag, is by far the most popular of the many new garish social media birthing rituals, popularized by the likes of Beyoncé (who spent $500,000 on one) and Meghan Markle (who reportedly spent $200,000 on Archie’s). Gender reveal parties, my personal bête noire, have cost my friends who throw them thousands of dollars, with three-tier cakes custom made with pink or blue frosting, and in some cases fireworks. The ultrasound printout isn’t even dry before the Pinterest board for the party is created. Then there are the baby registries. Gone are the days of asking for a couple of onesies and a box of diapers – the last three registries I’ve been sent have been full of multiple $200 items on an Amazon wishlist that get sent straight to the recipient’s house, sometimes anonymously.

But the key to a successful shower, in the eyes of social media, is less about the unborn child and more about the guestlist and the images generated. And while the Trumps, America’s first family of subtle-as-a-sledgehammer opulence, didn’t invent the phenomenon, they have perfected it. The spring flowers, rabbit-shaped hors d’oeuvres, macaroons and Ivanka’s $1,000 dress were less of a celebration of new life and more of a boardroom-approved brand extension.

The event served as a public rebuttal to the longstanding rumors of Ivanka and Tiffany’s feud, which reportedly eased sometime during Trump’s first term, with a source telling People, “They used to not get along but now they’re bonded over their shared trauma of being the most hated kids in America.” The shower also acted as Don Jr.’s girlfriend Bettina Anderson’s debut into the Trump clan, which, despite their relationship being six months long, took a while because, reportedly, “Donald Trump, specifically, hates her [Anderson].”

The Tiffany-Ivanka dynamic has long fascinated Trump-watchers. Tiffany’s recent re-emergence, along with Ivanka’s declaration that she does not “plan to be involved in politics” this time around suggests a quiet power shift within America’s First Family. While Ivanka spent years as the polished First Daughter, complete with her own West Wing office and carefully curated public persona, Tiffany remained relegated to occasional Christmas photos and clunky campaign appearances where she seemed perpetually out of focus. Forget the Trump dynasty celebrating a new heir, the baby shower — with its calculated opulence and strategic photo opportunities — was a carefully orchestrated declaration of Tiffany Trump’s renewed relevance.