Money Can’t Buy Happiness

Cross-posted at Blueberry Shake.

What is class? According to Wikipedia, the different levels of class in the US are upper, upper middle, upper lower, working and lower. But as I am sure many people know, class has a lot more to do than with how much money you make. Your age, ability, how you look and where you live are important factors in deciding your social class.

Financially, I’m pretty sure I’m part of the lower class. (My tiny paychecks have dreams of growing up and becoming grown-up paychecks!) And the poor are divided into two parts – good poor and bad poor. Good Poor are poor people who don’t like being poor, and make attempts to climb up the social ladder. They make a lot of effort to dress nice and make their homes nice. They are also usually properly grateful to charitable organizations, and have an almost reverent attitude toward wealthy people. Good Poor do not like taking “handouts.” Good Poor attempt to enhance their image by cute little sayings, like my favorite one – “Money can’t buy happiness.” I think that’s official Good Poor speak. Because money not only buys happiness, it buys time, health and entertainment. Money can be the tipping point between life and death. Money can buy children. Money can keep your marriage stable, or prevent a parent-child relationship from breaking. Money can buy heat and air conditioning. Money buys transportation and education. To value money as anything less than necessary and good is ludicrous. Enough money to buy health insurance? Enough money to prevent the 60-hour work weeks? Enough money to give your kids a better life, or to take care of an ailing parent? These are not just necessary things, these are things that can make the quality of a person’s life monumentally better. Sleeping on a pile of money might not make you feel better, but using that money to buy a nice bed? Not fighting with your spouse or roommate or kids about money?  To put it succinctly, Good Poor put a lot of effort into masking their poverty. Mostly out of shame, since Good Poor are very aware that their social standing is not something to be celebrated.

Bad Poor are a lot different. Bad Poor, unlike Good Poor, have no interest in changing their social standing, for a variety of different reasons, some more noble than others. Bad Poor flaunt their poverty by wearing cheap clothes and not maintaining a “proper” appearance. They often make forceful demands on charitable organizations and government programs and criticize or even insult people who have wealth. Bad Poor will not only take handouts, but will likely brag about it to other people.

I have come to realize that I am Bad Poor. What makes me Bad Poor is that I’m not ashamed of my social standing. I won’t work extra hard to maintain the house I live in “for the neighbors.” I won’t be extra nice to the neighbors because “they probably think this is a crack house.” I will tell people how I lied to the food stamp office to get food stamps because I want them to know they can, too.

I left shame behind a long time ago. As I began learning about feminism, and then racism, classism and ableism, I realized that the fundamental core of many of these social injustices was shame. I will not be ashamed of being a woman. I will not be ashamed of being fat. I will not be ashamed of being poor. I will not be ashamed of living off handouts. But Bad Poor is not my only class descriptor. See, I’m white. So Bad Poor + Whiteness = White Trash.

The beer, the stained shirt, the trucker hat, and the handle bar mustache all scream one thing – White Trash. South Park has it’s faults, but it’s pretty good at capturing the image of what White Trash people are supposed to look like. And the White Trash people on South Park act the part, too. They’re un-educated, stupid, dirty, bad parents and live off unemployment. It’s a pretty accurate description of White Trash.

Women have to be very careful with their appearance if they are at all concerned about their social status. See, regardless of how much money a woman makes, where she lives or what her education level is, her social status – class – can plummet with one bad outfit. Just like the Virgin/Whore dichotomy, women have to try and balance the Trashy/Classy dichotomy, as well. A woman can be Trashy, or she can be Classy. This can get convoluted, because these two descriptions depend on not just clothes, but makeup, hair and weight. See, if a woman is fat she must try all the harder to remain Classy. One midriff-baring top and she’s Trashy. Short-shorts? Trashy. Tank top? Eh, that’s a fuzzy one. If it’s a Classy tank top, with thick straps and little cleavage, than she stays Classy. But a tank top with spaghetti straps, with fat arms and gross fat boobs ew ew ew – that’s Trashy. But if a fat woman stays covered, and tries extra hard to be feminine and Classy, then even if financially she is technically Lower Class, her social class will remain high.

We may wish to deny it. We may make an effort to overlook it in our personal lives, but Class is important in this country. Maybe it would be easier – cleaner – if Class was strictly financial, but it’s not. Because we don’t walk around with sandwich boards advertising our annual salary, so strangers must guess by our appearance, how loud we talk, what people we are surrounded by, and where we live. We’re taught as children not to judge a book by it’s cover, but we’re taught as adults to do just that. We revere the wealthy and devalue the educated. (I’m looking at you, non-money-making English degrees!) We worship the beautiful and ignore the kind. And it’s very convenient that if a person is wealthy and/or beautiful, these are traits that can be shown (flaunted) on their physical body, whether through appearance (beautiful) or expensive accessories, like clothing, jewelry and cars (wealthy.) But if a person is educated and/or kind, then some detective work actually needs to be done. We need to talk to these people, ask questions and get to know them. That’s much more difficult than judging people from a conveyor belt.