The Fantasy of Being Rich.

Kate Harding’s November 2007 blog post, The Fantasy of Being Thin, really resonated with me. I just discovered it, after linking from the also-evocative, more recent post from Mean Asian Girl (The Fantasy of Being White), which details her personal struggles with self-hate and the dissonance between who she was and who she (thought she) yearned to be.
Both of these excellent articles are part memoir, part social critique. While reading them yesterday night I realized that I not only identify with them because I have struggled with both Harding and M.A.G.’s Fantasies (years with an eating disorder and some intricate skin color/racial identity issues). I identify with them because of another particularly relentless one: The Fantasy of Being Rich.
Now I don’t mean rich like the Bush family. I’ve always had a particular affinity, due to my urban very white liberal community as an adolescent, for the upper-middle class. This was a community I identified with, thanks to my teenage trade-in of a fundamentalist Christian background for the “artsy” and “queer” districts in town to act out all my teen angst and tactile wonder. This fantasy has a strong racial dynamic, but that’s a whole ‘nother conversation, so back to my point.
I was middle class, much to my disappointment. This fantasy has gotten worse as I’ve grown older. Now at twenty-two I am what you would call “working poor,” thanks to various financial shitshows over the past two years. The desolate feeling that quivers through me every time I think of what I can’t afford, how terrifying an illness or accident seems, and how much I yearn for a sense of independence and comfort, drives me to fantasize about the woman I “would” be if I had money.

You know who she is. The woman with the cute modern loft and the Vespa/Prius who has a beautiful, open kitchen filled with organic local food. She has The Best Job. She has The Best Partner, who also has plenty of disposable income and is just as progressive and enlightened and drinks the best wine. The woman who is effortlessly beautiful because she is never stressed. She is never scared because she lives in the safest, friendliest, yet most diverse neighborhood in town. She is a better writer, more punctual, more confident, more stylish. She’s more social, she’s healthier, she speaks French and Italian. She has access and optimism. She has a fulfilling life. She didn’t get kicked out of her university for financial reasons. She totally graduated and is working on her master’s. She doesn’t feel simultaneously trapped and discarded.
Surprise surprise, the majority of the women I project this fantasy onto are members of feminist and/or progressive spheres. Like Rachel Maddow, Naomi Klein, and even Feministing’s editors. Kate Harding’s blog explicitly details this sect of individuals: “urban, liberal, feminist, latte-drinking, overeducated, intellectual, unapologetically p.c. amrican patriots.” An edited version of the people who Christian Lander pokes fun at in his blog and book “Stuff White People Like,” (Samhita’s excellent response is here). When I read Harding’s blog description, I think, “I’m all of these things, more or less. But I can’t afford a cell phone, I work for tips, and the only health care I have is Planned Parenthood.”
I am not saying that Feministing’s editors are the kind of people “Stuff White People Like” is poking fun at, and I am not trying to imply that Harding’s blog is elitist. Projecting an inaccurate and simplistic fantasy on others is problematic. With this Fantasy of Being Rich, I assume that upper-middle class people do not have their own struggles, anxieties, and shortcomings. I am assuming that I would be a “better person” and have a “fun, simple life.”
The most difficult thing about this is, money does provide access and power in our capitalist system. Money determines where you live, what kind of care and protection you receive, what public and private forums you have access to, what you eat, where you go to school, or if you go to school at all. Our system is pervasively classist as well as sexist, heteronormative, transphobic, racist, and dis/abelist (plus I’m probably missing one!). It makes sense why I fantasize about how fabulous it must be to have money power.
Sometimes I think that if my family were just a little more wealthy and perhaps a little less black, I would have graduated college this spring, which makes all sorts of well-educated soy-chai-drinking well-dressed shiny employment benefits fantasies dance like sugarplum fairies in my head. That line of thinking is self-destructive, but easy to perpetuate, thanks in part to our rabid consumer culture.
Kate Harding says in her post, “the message we’re sending is that you’re actually allowed to love your fat body instead of hating it, and you can take steps to substantially improve your health without fighting a losing battle with your weight. ” This is a vital message, and one of the many reasons I love Shapely Prose in particular and the fat acceptance movement in general.
I think we all would be much happier loving ourselves, regardless of current physical appearance/abilities, sex, gender, orientation, color, race, and yes, class. I am working hard to better my situation, yes, but not because I believe my life will be perfect when I am more financially comfortable. I want to invest in who I am and who I actually could be. I will never be this flawless Vespa-riding foxy radical womyn who has The Best Job and The Best Partner, who never feels trapped and never fears. There is no such person, even after I attain more financial security. I will always be flawed, loud, loving, flaky, wonder-filled me.
Does anyone else relate to this Fantasy of Being Rich? If so, how do you deal with it, considering our consumer culture and capitalist system?