The book was loaned to me for a bit. Required reading for Gender Studies or some such…a former friend tried really hard to convert me, “you like theater, come see these monologues with me.”
I found it really unsettling.
Babs pops into town disguised, pretending, faking >>> with $5000 “to get set up.” Gets a “low-income” job which she writes about in diary form as though research notes. Describing characteristics of her co-workers and their personal lives. Yk… “researching poverty.”
[o.o] Based on the search results, Barbara Ehrenreich held 6 different types of jobs during her research for “Nickel and Dimed”:
- Waitress
- Hotel maid
- Cleaning woman (working for a maid service)
- Nursing-home aide
- Wal-Mart sales clerk
- Hotel housekeeping
She actually held multiple jobs in each location she visited. In Key West, Florida, she worked as a diner waitress, then took a second waitressing job before switching to hotel housekeeping In Portland, Maine, she held two jobs simultaneously—one with a maid service and another at a nursing home In Minnesota, she worked at Wal-Mart.
One of her key findings was that one job was not enough to live on—you need at least two if you want to live indoors.
^-.-^ right… At the time my little family was living on $12,000 a year. I had odd jobs to make ends meet. Cleaning is one of my employable skills, cooking, serving, organizing. There were little windows of opportunities when the kids were at school and I wasn’t attending school meetings. Plastering, sanding, and painting are also employable skills. Mowing…
(Side note: I’ve been mowing for money since I was 12 years old. Collected bottles for refund money before that.)
So here’s Babs… popping in to slum (verb not noun) for research. At any point, she had what was left of the 5k set up… she could also bail out and go home… call a college professional peer for a loan… Heck she probably had family and extended family she could call on…
What was the word for bad acting again? Monodrame?
Loaded with privilege she’s larping poor to learn something by taking a job (effectively from) those deprived of those exact kinds of privileges that make her research possible.
This is a mobius strip of absurdity spoofing reasoning.
There was similar training with the Board of Directors got “to understand class differences.”
I’ll show you when I find those notes again.
Just as a wealthy or middle person has never had cause to learn how to syphon gas,
a low income person doesn’t have a cause to own a passport.
Me: the only one in the room knowing this is Obvious, fighting giggles….
Seeing looks of epiphany on … oh yeah … the wealthy and middle class members of the board…
As though those “beneath them” suddenly became VISIBLE!
So busy not seeing them on purpose for so long…!
This is where the Critical Studies highlights the flow of power… punching up… punching down.
Me: – why all the punching??
Bit more helpful if we just Talk. Human to human. Yk?
One of the BIg Ugly Class Prejudices
is assuming Income [high or low]
equates to [unearned/underearned]
and thus Those people are [immoral/criminal.]
It’s like Mad Libs just run it through a couple times switching out the words.
It flows both ways.
Taught to hate what you are not,
imagining you will never be
on the other end of the polarizing divide.
And IF you ever get there you wont know what to do
on the other end (wealth/poverty) because you’ve
been taught to see Those people
(on the other side of what you are)
as corrupt to begin with.
This one is the Marxist mobius of absurdity.
((BTW You know who paid his rent? Not him. Nah …he was larping poor too.)
One has to be extraordinarily pre-loaded-to-judge (pre judge & DIS)
to view what is fundamentally resource access differences
through distorted stereotyping and moralizing.
About the Art: I am making a special holiday map for one of the other Alchemist (mini challenge) and setting up this Butler and Housekeeper (by elbobo19) which reminded me of Adventure Quest (one of my first mmos) There were quest-giving NPC’s upstairs Butler and Housekeeper at Bludrut Keep, which made the costume available (for Founders.)
Once destroyed the rattlebones spread out covering the floor in the area, then slowly pull into a center point and poof back into the intact rattlebones, combined with the sweep animation that came with the broom…. I had the timing down! I spent weeks pretending to clean up after the adventurers.
It’s the little things that amuse me!
Traveler Chimiru 
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