#1 The Look
For the past year I've been opening up the reality of my life to a small group of friends. This year I want to go further. Each month, I hope to share with my greater community an insider's look at the way poor people don't have the choices taken for granted in our society. In these essays, I'm not looking for help for my family, I'm looking to help good people understand how what is simple in solvency becomes layered in complications with poverty.
#1: The Look.
First impressions are real. When we look at the people we know, we "see" them through a filter of our experiences with them, and unconsciously we "see" their kindness as beauty, cruelty as ugliness. When we meet people for the very first time, our brain rushes to guide us in how to interact with them (are they safe? are they trustworthy?) based only on their appearance. Within seconds after we meet someone new, everything they say and do is coming to us through the filter of our unconscious first impression
Being poor often means shockingly little control over what one looks like... and that translates directly to less influence over how other people interact with us. For some months I've been straying perilously close to what I call "The Look"-- the one that is invisible to loved ones and shouts to everyone else.
The Look says that you are a loser at life. You are a low quality human being. In the land of opportunity, you are defective, unreliable, undesirable, trash. The Look is deadly. You not only don't get the job; you don't get the interview. Police don't believe you. Social workers don't believe you. You don't merit detailed directions when lost, or sales help when making an important purchase. Solvent parents will tell you that *nothing* is harder than negotiating good school support for a special needs child; parents with The Look don't even get a meeting. A young child with The Look is presumed neglected; an older child is presumed degenerate, and all children with The Look are presumed to have no future-- a self-fulfilling prophecy as The Look affects what programs are considered and how discipline is administered. Medically, The Look means doctors don't bother trying to explain what they are thinking, openly use threats and outright lies to try to get your compliance, and always, *always* assume you are on drugs and lying. The Look is a potent factor in why medical error is the third leading cause of death in the United States
In a culture that still gives lip service to Puritan ideals, it's easy to lose track of the resources poured into maintaining a "conventional" appearance. Laundry detergent, like dish soap, is a necessity food stamps don't cover; chapstick and deodorant an indulgence. We have shampoo and conditioner because my family dropped some off on their last visit. Professional hair salons and nail parlors and gyms hold the same place in my life as the Tiffany jewelry store downtown-- just another window to walk by. Whole aisles of the store become foreign territory with poverty. Obviously there will be no therapy for my thinning hair and reddening face. DSHS got us a "hygiene voucher" once and I went crazy and bought acne medication. We still have it-- I dole it out in drops like liquid gold, too little to do any good. Should have stocked up on more dish-soap and laundry detergent. Those "save the planet and save money!" list of tips friends forward me are always good for a laugh. "Your hair will clean itself if you give up shampoo!" puts me in stitches. "Use half the soap you're used to" and "cold water gets things just as clean!" Ha-ha. Try it. Try it month after month after month; try it with things you can't afford to replace. When we come back after a few days with family the first thing I have to do before my nose readjusts is go to my closet and smell my way through my "clean" clothes to find which actually pass mainstream muster and which get a vinegar soak to try to save them.
Cleanliness and clothing cease to be separate categories in poverty. Dry cleaning isn't an option, so neither are clothes that need it. Ditto for ironing (if you own one, if it's clean, if you have a safe place & time to set it up...) Oh, and just *try* getting a man's pants off him for washing when he only has one pair. My background gives me an edge in identifying cloth capable of lasting longer than the six to eight washings the fashion industry aims for, but that only helps when I've got money in my pocket and something to choose from on the thrift store rack. Thrift store shopping has changed since the Great Recession; Monday morning the shelves look like locusts descended over the weekend. I used to do well on dollar days; now good things fly out the door without ever hitting half off. With demand so high, secondhand prices have soared and the thrift giants have gotten much more picky about keeping only the top dollar donations; most of what people in my situation could use is sold to the African markets. Tailoring takes affluence. Finding a precise fit or a flattering style is like finding money on the ground. Mostly, we all end up in the same knits, pulled "one size fits most" over the same flab particular to starchy meals. Once they get stretched out of shape, our clothes don't layer, they heap.
Things end up stained faster than we can replace them. We're more likely to collect tears from our junker cars, patched-up homes, and laborious jobs... and neither mending skills nor supplies come cheap. We're always out of sync with how everyone else is walking around. We look "half-stripped" when we keep our expensive things like bras and coats tucked away for Times that Matter. We become moving lumps when we go about our business carrying *everything* we may need that day on our bodies in whatever ramshackle assortment we've patched together... because we can't afford to eat out, can't pop into a store for something like a safety pin, can't leave it all in the car if we don't have one and can't leave anything in the car if the doors or windows are still broken from the last break-in.
There's not a lot of pep in poverty. We fall into our seats. We slump. We look totally exhausted on a normal day, because we are. We are all too aware that we are not presenting our best, that our discount luck is being weighed against the sartorial taste of those who can just buy what they want. Whatever confidence we may have had gets chipped away after a hundred painful experiences with strangers assuming the worst of us. If self-disgust takes root, if an edge of desperation and defensiveness grows, then our very eyes and emotions begin to turn people away, and The Look becomes self-perpetuating.
I once watched a Greyhound bus driver kick off a pregnant woman at a locked small town station because she'd started oozing blood. She'd spent the last two days working nonstop to save what she could from eviction, and the smell of the blood on top of the scent of stress and sweat on top of the mess of her was too much for him to take, so he left her on the sidewalk in a town where she knew no one, with no money and no chance of medical attention, just the hope that in three and a half hours the next driver would let her ride. That is life with The Look.
My closest brush with The Look came as a new mother. Like most women, pregnancy and birth left me with a changed body, and my appearance the lowest priority of our new expenses. The unbelievable amount of thought and work I put into trying to "pass" middle class doesn't show. Who sees the hours checking Craigslist for free haircuts from student beauticians, only to learn the hard way they all want someone already attractive and put-together to show off a style that takes a costly ton of product to maintain? There's no visible sign that the simple black skirt that makes all my outfits "work" took four -years- of thrift store hunting to find. It's been three years since I've been in the YWCA basement where a voucher buys you thirty minutes to try to find three matching outfits a coat and a bra among the secondhand "professional" offerings in one overstuffed little room-- but I still know the rules and tricks by heart. None of these-- my persistence and hardwon skills and knowledge-- have made a big difference. Instead, I'm looking relatively good again thanks to a Hanukah gift necklace, a friend's closet purge, another friend buying me bras for my birthday last year. I am blessed with a wardrobe I can make work, because I am blessed in my Connections.
And Connections is another area of life poor people generally can't control.
