When I was a kid, I came across a stack of comic books from the 1960s. While the comics themselves were intriguing, the ads in the back were what were most captivating to me, especially for the X-Ray Specs.
The advertisement suggested that the wearer would be able to see through skin or clothing, revealing bones or, more shockingly, underpants. The ads claimed that these spectacles would allow you to not only amaze but embarrass people, a truly powerful combination for anyone who wishes to assert and maintain even just a whisper of dominance over others.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that many people will now readily talk about their sex lives or their medical problems, even to relative strangers. So while our culture has relaxed around revealing some of the intimacies that the x-ray specs alluded to, there’s still at least one tried and true way to impress your audience or make someone feel truly exposed: money.
Our finances and class designations are the truly private realms of life that define much of our lives, and yet for many of us they remain the last frontier of prudishness.
How many of us live a life set firmly and safely in the upper or middle class, never deviating from a generally comfortable existence? From what I see, very few of us have never wondered if we will have enough to eat, a place to live, or buy shoes that fit. Some of us have skated between distinct class worlds, experiencing times of hardship and lack, and times of relative comfort.
We may not always realize it, but many neighbors live on credit, paycheck to paycheck, on borrowed time, and live with the gnawing feeling of always being right on the edge. The recent government shutdown momentarily illuminated the fact that a significant number of Americans are actually living closer to that edge than is readily apparent.
Yet, it’s not an accident that many of us posture to look wealthier than we really are, and go to great pains to never reveal how close to that edge we really are.
When I was 24, and my daughter was nearly 6, my friend Diana came to visit us. My new sweetheart was driving us all to see a movie, chatting about the absurdly high prices of movie tickets when something jogged Diana’s memory.
“Wait, you were on food stamps when your daughter was little, right?! You’re the only person I know who needs that!”
Her voice was sudden, painful, and loud; the sound ricocheted off the windshield and back into my gut where it landed like a kick. She was right, of course, but that only made it even more embarrassing for me in front of my new partner. She was breaking the secret cardinal rule: never out someone for being poor.
This wasn’t entirely her fault — Diana wasn’t familiar with the unspoken rules, just like I wouldn’t know the first thing about sailing, Diana’s family pastime. Diana didn’t know anything about the elaborate charades that people go through to appear that everything is fine, even when it’s not.
Many of us can pick up the little markers of class that are like dog whistles. Those within more privileged circles pick up on the subtle signals and phrases that are easy to miss if you’re from a different class bracket. These codes exist because we’ve all been repeatedly force-fed the myth of the American Dream, at best a broken promise and at worst a well-designed lie.
We’ve been trained to feel exposed for being one missed paycheck away from financial ruin to keep us quiet. Being broke is a supposed to be a clear indication that you just haven’t worked hard enough. What if the bootstraps we’re told we need to cling to and to climb on have snapped under the weight of a system stacked against the lower class? And who was supposed to provide these boots in the first place?
How interesting that the American Dream generally only seems to work for those who are able bodied, cis-gendered, white skinned men who had money to begin with. While there are celebrated exceptions, the reality is that the American Dream is perpetuated by people in power to keep the lure of financial security highly visible but infinitely out of reach.
This broken paradigm is fueled by our shame. The more we talk about the slippery precipice of the imperiled middle class, the more we can see that the problem is actually the system, not those oppressed by it. The shame is not in struggling, it’s in perpetuating these systems that keep so many of us running scared and covering up any evidence of our vulnerability.
The more we recognize that, the more we loudly push back on that insidious falsehood, then the less toxic power it has over us, and the less power these systems have to keep us complacent and relentlessly grinding with false hope. The more we scream it out loud, the sooner we can unchain ourselves from our humiliation and join in solidarity and recognize our common struggles.
Instead of nursing our own shame and that of others, let us commit to speak openly about our challenges, our privileges, and how our current system oppresses the poor, and keeps our communities divided. Perhaps we will find that when we air our dirty laundry everyone looks the same in their underwear.
Chelsea Kline is a women’s leadership-focused life coach whose early experiences as a Jewish, queer, low-income, single teen mom influenced her 25-plus years as a progressive reproductive rights and social justice activist. A graduate of both Smith College and Harvard Divinity School, Chelsea’s career is fueled by an unshakable belief in the strength of women, and utilizes compassion and humor to coach women towards being their most ferocious and fabulous selves.