Party Dresses and The Poor

~ Laura

Ran three miles. Came home and ate half a cylinder of Pringles, because I was too lazy to make oatmeal.

As I was running (and watching an interview with Amy Fisher on the Insider), I thought more about the TNR article on The Times Style section. Can you have a social conscience and still like nice things? Admittedly, I’m a very neurotic blogger, but these things worry me. Can you still love your hand hewn dining room table, your sassy boots, your new CD and also say that you care about the poor?

Feminism already grappled with a similiar question awhile ago. Bitch PhD probably has written about lipstick feminism before, but I’m too lazy to look through her archives. Libertarians with a social conscience, like my friend Jane Galt, don’t see any conflict between consumption and conscience. In fact, consumption brings relief to the poor. Me? I’m not that sure about the magic hand of capitalism, and I worry that liking party dresses and the patina in our old wood floors, while it may not directly lead to world misery, is at least a distraction.

Perhaps as a reaction to the TNR article, the Times has an article today on rich people who consume in all the wrong ways — MTV’s Super Sweet 16.

Published by Laura

11 thoughts on “Party Dresses and The Poor”

  1. Actually, I often worry that I should be consuming less and sending the money for Africa . . . and that by not worrying about it more, I am simply allowing habit to ratify a choice that I don’t morally support.
    Where we might differ is that I don’t think it does much good to make the decision about tradeoffs for other people . . . and that in fact, I think that the history of charity in improving the lives of the poor in other countries (the ones I’m most worried about, since relatively speaking, even our homeless people have it pretty good) is pretty sketchy.
    But that can be an easy libertarian or economist cop-out–development aid doesn’t work so I won’t send it. The World Bank is a pretty miserable failure, but I could nonetheless improve the miserable life of some poor person right now by donating a cow through Bothar–and maybe I should. Instead, I have cable, a few new clothes, and dental work. And, in the past week, a really obscene number of good sushi dinners.
    At this stage I have no answers as to how much luxury we’re allowed–only questions–which is why I don’t blog about it much. But I’m happy to join you in a discussion of just how much we should wallow in our liberal guilt. 😉

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  2. Mmmmm. Sushi.
    I wish there was a formula for how much materialism and consumption we were allowed before crossing that line into piggishness. In terms of your consumption, I think dental work is definitely a necessity. And, well, cable is pretty necessary, too, because the new season of Entourage is coming up. And sushi is food — certainly nothing that can be eliminated. So, I say you’re good.
    Until recently, we never really had any money to spend, so this debate is itself a luxury.
    We need a new bed. Thanks to some smart blog commenters who solved the structural problems with my bed, my mattress is now on the floor. I suppose that is fine. If I wanted to be really austere, we could keep that system. But there are some really cool mid-century headboards at ABC Carpet, which I could rationalize for their aesthetic beauty. Trouble is I can rationalize a whole lot in the name of art.

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  3. My data is somewhat out of date, but I think you are misunderstanding how lower-income Americans spend their money. As a family proverb (which I am mangling) says, always buy luxuries–you can live without the necessities. My family’s version of this was lavish yearly group vacations, with austerity the rest of the year. The items chosen by other people for splurges vary, but the things that come to mind are party dresses (!), other clothes, cars, trucks, quinceaneras, weddings, funerals, and horses (for country people). Aside from the funerals, I think it clear that these expenditures give the purchasers a great deal of joy.
    The Bobo pattern of consumption seems different, at least judging by the items Laura and Jane have mentioned, as well as by David Brooks’s descriptions, which strike me as painfully accurate. I don’t have the book at hand, but from what I recall, Bobos are most characterized by their huge spending on expensive versions of items that are normally necessities.

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  4. I need to rationalize my charity giving. I should just pick one really effective charity and give a decent amount to them rather than smaller amounts to random charities.

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  5. joe,
    That’s a very good idea. In the past I’ve been impulsive, and it has been very annoying to watch my smallish donation come back to me in the form of endless appeals. If you give generously to a few places, a lot fewer trees are going to get killed.

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  6. only vaguely related to your point jo(e)/amy P … A friend of mine did a study on liberal and conservative charitable foundations, and she found that there were far more liberal ones than conservative ones. But that meant the liberals ones were all fighting over the same pot of money and had much less to do things with. The conservative foundations had less competition and were able to undertake more ambitious projects.
    Wow. that had almost nothing to do with your point, but I am going to post that comment anyway.
    Amy, I really have to read the Brooks book beyond the excerpts I have seen here and there. I do think that Brooks nails suburban culture.

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  7. Laura,
    Oh, you have to read Bobos in Paradise! It’s so good, it’s positively painful. As I recall, the chapters on religion and politics are weak, but Brooks nails Bobo consumption patterns and the aesthetics. I deeply regret his NYT job. There are few things more talent-killing than writing a regular column.

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  8. I’ve tried to solve this problem (somewhat) for myself by making wise consumer choices. For example, if my money supports influential, responsible companies that treat their workers fairly and harvest resources sustainably, then my consumption of their product is supporting that ethic. I won’t shop at, say, Wal-Mart.
    I’m a knitter, and there are some fairly successful yarn companies (such as Manos del Uruguay) that started as village cooperatives and grew into profitable businesses. I recently bought some recycled silk yarn produced by a women’s cooperative in Nepal. I believe in small business loans and market opportunities for people who live in stagnated economies. What they need are consumers – someone to jump start their moneymaking. Then in turn, they will have the resources to pour into their communities, as well as a stake in the outcomes.
    It’s complicated. What I just wrote sounds like some wacky version of trickle down economics, but I really don’t mean it to be. I’m not advocating that we not have charities or political groups working in places that are stuck. I guess what I’m saying is that they are simply stuck, and that given the least bit of opportunity and the tools to use it, and a bit of safety from forces that encourage chaos and oppression, people can generally seize the initiative.
    The problem is that it’s a hard thing to do all of those things – make sure people have opportuniy, the tools to use it, and the safety to operate with an eye towards long term planning. Especially the last one on the list. I don’t know what charity is capable of that. And while we can send troops in to places to try to provide safety, I don’t trust that that actually works or that, given that there are troops someplace, that all the other conditions necessary for a country’s economy to grow productively stay in place.
    I’ve also stopped giving $10 and $15 there and have started combining my pleasure vacations with volunteer/charitable contributions. Still being a rich American, but trying to at least travel responsibly and in a way that actually respects and benefits the places I’m visiting.

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  9. I honestly think my personal struggles with materialism are the greatest of my life. It doesn’t even mean I have to be consuming, even just desiring things is part of the struggle. I love to decorate. I am very frugal about it. I am much more impressed if you tell me the chair I complimented you on was found in a dumpster, than if you paid $3000 to have it custom made. But still I am buying things (no matter how great the deal) to beautify my surroundings, while others struggle for the basics.
    I give to charity. My children’s school. The ACLU. Catholic Worker. But I don’t think it balances the opportunities I enjoy, just by the grace of being born into a middle-class family. Yep liberal guilt, Catholic liberal guilt even.

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