(UPDATED) Someone Bust Out The World’s Tiniest Violin For Another Rich Woman Whining About ‘Having It All’

Wanting to get into the whole “Amazingly Rich And Successful Working Mothers And How Much Pressure We Are Under” conversation, Natalie Massenet, the founder of Net-a-Porter (You know, that online shopping website that sells $2,454 jeans that we all shop at, lolcryingforever) was recently quoted as saying:

But Natalie Massenet revealed at the weekend that she deeply regrets launching her online fashion business when pregnant with her first child, Isabella, now 13.

She confessed the experience left her so “traumatised” that she waited six years before having her second daughter, Ava.

At the Vogue Fashion Festival, Mrs Massenet said: “When I started writing the business plan, I was also pregnant. And, I think, fuelled by hormones and delusions that if I could build a baby, why not a business?

What, exactly, is Ms. Massenet “deeply regretting” here? Is it her daughter? The fact that she now owns a business worth $350 million dollars? You guys, someone needs to explain all this very slowly to me. I can see being a working mom and regretting leaving your infant at daycare and not being able to spend more time with your baby or regretting having to return to work or regretting not being able to make the choice to stay home and not work because you have to work to afford milk but our friend Natalie here was married to a French investment banker at the time and she started her business out of her flat in Chelsea, which is not exactly the slums of London. It wasn’t like she started her business because if she didn’t start a business her babies wouldn’t be able to wear socks.

I know I sound like I want to take all these super rich women and not let them be part of the whole “Being a working mom is hard” conversation and I sort of do! Because working at starting your own business where you sell six thousand dollar purses is so totally different than what so many um, real world working moms are doing, working at jobs where they make six thousand dollars in a few months. Yay for women being successful and wealthy business owners of course, but I have a hard time understanding that level of “regret” when it seems she started her business out of desire, and not utter necessity. I’m probably sounding classist and not like a good feminist here but it’s hard for me to feel a lot of sympathy for this lady when I’m too busy having sympathy for women who work because if they don’t work, no one gets a well-baby checkup.

Yes, being a working mom is hard no matter what your net worth is, but I think the blow can be cushioned a little by knowing you can afford to take a day off or simply afford to hire more employees or else buy yourself a nice little cheapo Alexander McQueen frock. While the rest of the working moms in the world celebrate by paying the water bill so they can take a hot shower, wheeeee!

UPDATE: 

Ms. Massenet’s PR people reached out to tell me she was misquoted above, and what she did say was:

”˜I made a dreadful mistake or opportunity I’m not sure, of doing both of them at the same time, and it was enormously hard. Actually having a business that I loved and a baby that I loved at the same time kept me enormously balanced.’

(Photo: WENN)