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“I don’t think most Americans, in their heart, want to be given something,” Ivanka Trump told Fox News’ Steve Hilton in an interview about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal proposal earlier this week. “I’ve spent a lot of time traveling around this country over the last four years. People want to work for what they get.” (In addition to an outline on how to achieve net-zero emissions in the next decade, the Green New Deal proposal would also create millions of new jobs and offer a guaranteed federal job at a livable wage; one recent poll found 71 percent of Americans supported a hike in the federal minimum wage. But OK, Ivanka.)

It’s a rich observation from a woman who has quite literally been given not just “something,” but much, much more wealth and privilege than most Americans will ever see. On Fox, Trump went on: “I think that this idea of a guaranteed minimum is not something most people want. They want the ability to be able to secure a job. They want the ability to live in a country where there’s the potential for upward mobility.”

It was a comical, if tragic picture: Trump after all has a guaranteed job (working for her father’s real estate empire and in his White House) and a rather maximum wage (she and her husband Jared Kushner have made at least $82 million in outside income as they serve in the White House). What qualifies her to speculate about what Americans in desperate financial situations with which she has zero experience do and do not want?

I know just how rose-colored her vision must be. Early in my own career, I had an obvious leg up. My mother is a famous writer, and so when I decided to write, too, I began miles ahead of the usual start line. I sold my first novel at 19 for way more than I would have if my mother weren’t Erica Jong. I knew better than to believe that talent alone got me to where I am now. Nepotism is deeply unfair, and anyone who says otherwise is blinded by their own delusions.

Someone who did not benefit from nepotism? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who wasted no time and minced no words in her response to Trump on Twitter. During her now-famous primary campaign, she wore actual holes into her shoes as she and her staff knocked on 120,000 doors. The contrast could not be starker: Ivanka Trump has worn glass Manolo Blahniks since birth, but somehow convinced herself she pulled each up with (custom, probably) bootstraps. Ocasio-Cortez was so determined to walk in her constituents’ shoes—to understand their needs and dreams—that she shredded her own.

Unlike Trump, AOC wasn’t gifted a cushy job in her father’s real estate business. Before she was elected, she worked as a waitress and a bartender. One has to imagine that the woman who knocked on all those doors and worked late shifts might know a little more about what the average American wants than the daughter of real estate impresario who married the heir to another real estate fortune does.

Wealth can insulate a person from the real world, but alas no rich person has figured out how to make it fend off negative press. In Vanity Fair, Bess Levin wrote, “Ivanka Trump comes from a long line of assholes who confuse inheriting money with hard work.” In the Daily Beast, Erin Gloria Ryan wrote, “Ivanka, like her father and siblings, was born on third base and thinks she invented baseball.” The critiques were written, retweeted, and amplified far and wide.

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Like many Latina women, I got my ears pierced when I was a baby—my mother took me to the pediatrician to have it done less than a month after I was born. (According to her, there were many other new moms and infants in line at the doctor’s office to do the same.) She says I cried through the night afterward, but she kept the earrings in because, as Puerto Ricans say, Antes muerta que sencilla. Better dead than plain.

I’ve worn earrings ever since—mostly hoops, the cheapest pair my mom could find at the mall still made from real gold. And I had to be careful with them: One time, after I lost mine, my mom tightened a butterfly back so hard on my new earrings that we needed tweezers to take them off. But I loved these hoops. They were a rite of passage, one that Latina mothers offered their daughters as a symbol of their womanhood. I was raised to always be accessorized, no matter the occasion.

To me, my hoops were an heirloom, until I learned I’d have to set them aside to be taken seriously in certain circles. When I decided to take my ballet dancing seriously, I ditched the hoops for a pair of stud earrings (or dormilonas, as we call them back home)—the former represented a heritage of salsa and more rowdy dancing, which had no place in professional ballet. I stopped dancing when I was 17, but I kept the feeling that, if I wanted to be perceived as polished, my accessories needed to be more delicate.

PHOTO: Shutterstock

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez on the House floor on January 3.

My mother embraced hoop earrings for all occasions. But there are Latinx folks that are a little bit more careful, even conservative, about hoops because of the stereotypes people assign to what we wear. “My parents wouldn’t ever let me wear them because they felt it would put me into a box, being that I’m Latina and my family is from the Bronx,” says writer Thatiana Díaz, 26. “I know that my mom had a fear of being put into a box and not being taken seriously as an immigrant.”

Briana Mendez, 25, who now works in brand partnerships, had that happen to her growing up in the suburbs in Florida. “I’ll never forget getting made fun of in middle school for wearing hoop earrings that were gifted to me—I was called names and felt extremely belittled,” she says. “After that day, I stopped wearing my hoops and opted for pearl studs to fit in with the more preppy girls from my neighborhood.”

I rediscovered hoops when I moved to New York. I wanted to keep Puerto Rico close to me, so I decided to embrace those cultural touchstones: the nameplate necklaces, red lipstick, Puerto Rican flag paraphernalia, and yes, hoop earrings. I kept coming back to the pair my mother handed to me as a child because they reminded me of her unapologetic femininity. They made me feel more like a woman—a Latina woman.

But I still felt like there were certain places I couldn’t wear them, or couldn’t be accepted wearing them. So when Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Bronx-born Puerto Rican Democrat from New York, was sworn into Congress wearing a white pantsuit, a red lip, and big gold hoops, it wasn’t just a good look—it was a radical act.

PHOTO: Getty Images

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez taking her oath.

In true AOC fashion, the outfit was a collection of references, honoring the women who paved the path for her to take her oath on Capitol Hill. “Lip and hoops were inspired by Sonia Sotomayor, who was advised to wear neutral-colored nail polish to her confirmation hearings to avoid scrutiny. She kept her red,” she tweeted. “Next time someone tells Bronx girls to take off their hoops, they can just say they’re dressing like a Congresswoman.”

https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1081284603850174467

I saw myself in her that day: Throughout my professional career, I’ve stepped into spaces of privilege where I felt I wasn’t meant to belong—but instead of pushing aside my heritage to fit in, I insisted on wearing it boldly. Like Ocasio-Cortez, I feel it’s good to remind people (and all of Congress) when there’s a Latina in the House. I wasn’t the only person who, on that swearing-in day in January, felt she had more in common with a congresswoman than I’d felt in a lifetime. “To see a Latina woman like myself—making history and headlines, and being celebrated—own her whole look, her whole identity, gave me joy,” says Victoria Leandra, 22, a producer and writer.

For Latinas in positions of power, something as simple as wearing hoop earrings can feel like a small rebellion against the status quo. Among the corporate-gray suits and nude manicures, they announce our presence, loud and proud.

PHOTO: Getty Images

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez on the House floor.

And people are cheering for her to continue wearing her signature earrings. “Seeing AOC proudly wear hoops in Congress made me realize that…I should embrace what I love to accessorize myself with and never feel ashamed of it,” says Mendez. “Hoops should be destigmatized as unprofessional.”

Ocasio-Cortez is a reminder to celebrate who we are and what we can achieve, that Latina women do have a place in the boardroom, the court bench, and even Congress. She proved to me and other Latina women that you shouldn’t have to sacrifice identity for the sake of professional success.

Says Díaz, “I plan to wear my hoops for interviews, meetings, and any professional setting to make the statement: I’m a Latina, I’m from New York City, and I’m dressing like a congresswoman.”

Frances Solá-Santiago is a writer and video producer from Puerto Rico based in New York. Follow her on Twitter at @frances_sola.

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