So this post is LONG overdue, but not only do I have to get this done for a grade but this topic was actually really interesting to me. For this topic's week (yes I meant that, not this week's topic) we studied how class can affect family life.
There was yet another movie that kept coming back to my mind, but instead of a cheesy church musical it was F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. I love this story because it perfectly depicts a world obsessed with materialism and wealth, and the main character, Jay Gatsby, is the illustration of what can happen when climbing the social ladder becomes one's #1 priority. The sad part-or maybe I should say the ugly truth- about the story is that the story also reveals a truth that not many people know or understand, and that is that if you don't start out with the high class life, you'll never be accepted into the high class life. There's a series of fascinating videos that are all compiled into a documentary made back in the early 2000's, possibly even late 90's, called "People Like Us" that investigates and interviews all kinds of people from different parts of America from all different classes (these links are my personal favorites, most intriguing to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvibi2Cph-E&list=PLC6D871A2A8C3C8EF&index=3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf2dScTlvOQ&list=PLC6D871A2A8C3C8EF&index=7). The story that made the biggest impact on viewers was the story of a woman named Tammy who lives in a small town in Ohio with her 3 children. They live in a trailer with hardly any appliances or furnishings, and Tammy has been working at Burger King for almost two decades. They don't have a car so Tammy walks 10 miles to work and 10 miles back every single day, two hours each way by foot. She revealed that she wanted to be a teacher and she hoped to go to college and get a degree so she could teach at an elementary school, but according to the latest video made four years ago, she's still working at Burger King, still walking for hours a day. The follow-up, 'where are they now' video showed the kids living a similar life to their mother; some got into drugs and lost jobs, got their girlfriends pregnant in high school and now have a child to take care of, and have low-income/minimum wage jobs. It was sad to see this story because watching anyone barely getting by and living a poor lifestyle is hard for anyone to see, and you naturally take pity on them. Watching Tammy made me think about the 18 months I spent in Nevada as a missionary, and to be completely honest with you one of the things I remember the most about my mission was the concept of social class.
In the beginning of my mission I started off in Elko, a quaint little town somewhat close to the border of Utah, and this place seemed to have low to middle class people. I saw mostly the same social demographic in the ward in which I served, but there were plenty of times we'd be out knocking doors in the trailer park part of town, 'the other side of the tracks', meeting people who were hardly ever well-educated, they didn't always have straight teeth, they spent a lot of time just sitting outside, it wasn't hard to differentiate the type of people who were lower class and the people who were higher class- not just because of where they lived, but because of their choices of behavior and the way they generally carry themselves. The longer I was on my mission, I progressively moved up the social ladder, in a sense; I gradually moved from a relatively poor area to areas filled with people of higher and higher class, so by the time I was ending my mission I was knocking on heavy double doors with statues of lions or pillars behind us- I felt like the houses we were visiting were mansions! As a missionary, you meet dozens of different people every day, and you come away with thousands of stories to tell about the fun and crazy people you come across. But one thing I decided to observe specifically was the differences in lifestyles of how people lived; when people come over, how do the kids react, are they respectful and inviting, do they yell for mom or dad to come? When guests come over for dinner do they bother to set the table, does one of the family members invite you to sit down in their living room to make polite small talk before the meal, is the living room cleaned up at all, do the family members take any notice of the general cleanliness of the home? How do they talk to each other and/or to strangers? How do they start and end conversations on the phone? Do they mumble or slur their words? Do they tend to talk about negative things and complain? How do they dress? How often do they smile? Does their aura seem warm and inviting or reserved or even cold? I tried to look at everything and decide what things I liked or did not like, and I also compared what I saw to the home I grew up in.
I never in my life considered my family to be well-off, and I still don't; I think both of my parents are hardworking people who have very high expectations for themselves and their children, but they've never shown any kind of desire for materialism or wealth. Despite having 8 kids, my parents always provided for us and we never went without food or clothes. I still remember while my mom and I were driving around running errands and we were coming home, I was thinking about how my mom was willing to buy me a new dress that day even though we didn't intentionally go into the department store to get me anything. I guess at that age I was starting to think about things associated with money, and I tried to articulate a way of asking my mother why she was willing to do that. I'll never forget how she responded to me, even though I don't remember verbatim what she said, but I remember that she expressed her desire to make sure her children looked nice. She said there was no reason all eight of her kids couldn't wear nice dresses and suits to church and "every once in a while" get a new pair of shoes, or wear clean cut shirts and well-fitted pants to school. She said that she believes appearance is important (still does) and that if we look good, then we'll feel good. I've never forgotten that conversation because it changed the way I looked at my family; I saw my appearance as even more important than before, that not only was it important to me to wear something shiny or made me feel like a princess, but I realized that my appearance actually meant something. My choice of appearance was a symbol of who I was.
This topic has been on my mind a lot because it presents (again) an ugly truth about society. Gatsby may have climbed his way up to the top of the social ladder through selling booze and going to the right schools and getting the right connections, but even after spending a lifetime of climbing, he was never accepted by those who'd already been partying at the top rung. The same is true today; no matter how much you study and primp and prep yourself to become part of a higher social class, it's REALLY REALLY REALLY hard to be accepted at the top by those who have been living there all along.
My personal takeaway from all this is not that I want to try climbing any kind of social ladder to challenge that theory, but that I want to make sure that no matter what class I am or marry into, I want my behaviors to be uplifting to others; I want to build a home and family life that's inviting and accepting of all others, that makes people feel comfortable but not necessarily luxurious.
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