Becca Bloom, a 27-year-old billionaire heiress and social media sensation, has ignited a fierce online debate after sharing her controversial views on gender equality and who should pay on dates.
The Viral Video That Started the Controversy
Dubbed the reigning 'RichTok' Queen, Becca shot to fame on TikTok by showcasing her opulent lifestyle, including £380,000 shopping hauls, meals prepared by a private chef, and her £3 million wedding in Lake Como, Italy. With a following of seven million, her content typically features luxury holidays, designer unboxings from Hermes and Chanel, and even feeding her Scottish Fold cat salmon sashimi and caviar.
However, her latest video, which has been viewed more than five million times, shifted focus from wealth to relationships. In the clip, she stated, "Here's what men don't understand about equality. You think equality means splitting the bill. Women live in a society where equality has never existed in the first place."
She argued that because women, on average, earn 80% of what men do for the same full-time job, a 50/50 split on a date represents a larger portion of the woman's income. Becca concluded that her husband paying all their bills is the "bare minimum" expected.
Backlash and Online Cancellation
The internet's reaction was swift and largely critical. Many users felt her immense privilege made her an unsuitable messenger for this argument. One TikTok user commented, "I will not be lectured on equality by this billionaire. Not now, not ever."
Becca did not take the criticism lightly, firing back with, "When someone can't challenge the point, they challenge the existence of the person who made it. Thanks for the case study." Another commenter acknowledged it was a "decent message" but lamented that it came from the "wrong messenger."
A Life of Privilege and Entrepreneurial Success
Becca's background is one of significant wealth. She is the middle child of Simon Yiming Ma and Heidi Chou, who co-founded the IT services company Camelot Information Systems in 2000. She was raised in a 14,000sqft mansion in Atherton, California, where the median house price is £6.1 million.
Despite her family's fortune, Becca is also a successful entrepreneur in her own right. She founded two companies before graduating high school: Hearth Wireless Chargers and StudiPal, an online tutoring platform. She sold StudiPal at the age of 18 for £152,000. She has also worked a client-facing job at a finance technology firm for the last three years.
She now lives in San Francisco with her husband, David Pownall, a former Google software engineer who now works as a tech lead manager at Amazon. The couple got engaged in June 2023 on a private boat in Positano, Italy, with a nearly 10-carat diamond ring, before marrying in their lavish Lake Como ceremony in August.
