Poor is the New Black...

(I always joke that what I really want in life is a talk show called, "And That's What I Think" where essentially I will just talk about various things. I'm sure it would be the worst show on earth, and that's saying a lot, given what else is on the air these days. Today's blog post falls into that realm -- less self-reflection, and more ranting and raving about something that I care a lot about. A bit of a departure, so let's see what you think.)

The phrase, "Poor is the new black..." is not a new one, but it's at the forefront of my mind this week because I read an article that got my Irish up, something that is pretty easy to do, unfortunately. The article was a first person account of a self-described "poor person." And as a self-described "person who knows what being poor feels like," I could tell at word one that this person knew just about as much about being poor as I know about being rich. Hint, not so much.

I first learned it was chic to be poor when I arrived on campus at Yale. As someone who had spent the first 18 years of my life hiding being poor, it was somewhat shocking to me to see so many people talking so openly about it. The problem was, as I slowly came to realize, the people talking about being poor were not poor. Not at all. Many of them had famous last names that signify generations of, well, being rich. Those of us who were really working/middle/lower class were keeping our mouths shut trying to blend in and look like we had no money troubles in the world. But these classmates were quick to say, "Sure, my last name is (insert name here), but I have no money, my parents do. I personally am poor."

True enough, but any person who knows what it's like to grow up lower class, hey, even middle class these days, knows that there's a big difference between those who come from a comfortable background and those who don't -- and the big difference is that if you truly have no money, and your family is truly poor, there is no one coming to your rescue. If you have $20 to your name, you have $20 to your name -- and that has to pay for everything, not just beer.

I have never understood why people think it is hip to claim to be poor but I do believe that people have wide definitions of what "poor" means. Being truly poor means you have no safety net, you have no money in the bank, and you are living paycheck to paycheck, that is, if you are fortunate enough to have a job, something we can't take for granted these days.

One thing I do know is the more someone talks about being poor, the less likely that person is actually poor. People who are really poor don't have to talk about it -- they are poor, they know what it's like, and, although they shouldn't be, many are ashamed to be poor, so the last thing they'll be talking about is how poor they are.

As a fundraiser, I started noticing the trend a few years ago, right when the economy collapsed, that it suddenly became okay to say you couldn't afford to do certain things. On one hand, I think that's amazing -- we should all be open and honest and have no shame about things like that. I do it myself more and more and it's really liberating, instead of taking on an expense you can't afford or lying about it. But when I started having conversations with donors about how, surely I understand that they can't give this year, because private jet fuel has gotten SO expensive, I started realizing just how skewed our perceptions really are - how un-self aware we can be. I mean, the fact that he would even say that to someone working for a nonprofit organization (not exactly a high paying job), one trying to help people who, by and large fall beneath the poverty line, shows how disconnected people can truly be.

Now, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I would LOVE to know how expensive private jet fuel has gotten. I would love to roll Oprah style. I'm not ashamed to admit that if I could afford a private plane, I would have one. I would totally have a plane and I would go on totally random trips just because I could. I would visit each of you and take you for a drink, and get back on my plane and go to the next stop. All in one day. I would like to know what it feels like to be in the 1% -- if being in the 1% meant that I knew I was in the 1%, and not pretending to be something I'm not.

Even my definition of growing up poor is far "richer" than many. Even in the darkest periods, we had family who was always willing to help. And I grew up in a resort town where even the middle and upper class kids worked, so it wasn't so obvious who had and who didn't. We all worked and were bonded together against the "city people" no matter what kind of background we came from. And we didn't just work -- we WORKED. We all put in some serious hours after school and on weekends, and in the summer, most of us worked way more than what was legal for us to do so.

People often assume because I grew up in what they call "The Hamptons," that I grew up wealthy. Not so. First of all, you will never actually catch me saying "The Hamptons" because I think it's pretentious and no one who is actually from the area says that unless they are trying to explain where they're from and have tried through several other descriptors and failed (Hampton Bays, Out East, Long Island...) "The Hamptons" are actually several towns, and so, if you're from there, you're from that town, your hometown, not some nickname that someone made up to drive tourists to the area.

Sure, people vacation there, but people also LIVE there. They work, they raise families, they live in actual houses and not hotels. They might work to support the main industry, tourism, or they may actually have a somewhat normal job that could be found anywhere.

I won't lie: aside from the tourist invasion, it is a great place to grow up. Absolutely beautiful. When I was growing up, we didn't have a mall or even any major stores in town -- we had to go "up the island" or off the island to go school shopping at the mall. We didn't have chain restaurants or a movie theater in town. What we did have was the beach - the ocean, the bay - that people come from everywhere to visit. So, as far as places to grow up, not exactly at the bottom of the list.

And it did make me aspire to do better for myself, seeing people with so much money, it really made me want to, well, if not be them, be more comfortable myself. For me the secret to that was always education -- study hard, get a scholarship, and go to a good school, which is what I did. Especially when the general impression of people who visit a resort town is that everyone who lives there year-round is a bumpkin. I remember one summer, I was wearing a Yale hat, and some older gentleman stopped me and said, "Where did you get that hat? Did you find it somewhere?" To which I responded, "Yes, in the Yale Bookstore, on campus WHERE I GO TO SCHOOL." They're letting poor white women in now? What has the world come to...

Like everywhere in this country, it's getting harder to live there and get by. I live in Manhattan now, arguably one of the most expensive places in the world to live, and I'll go home to Hampton Bays and see items in the grocery store priced higher there than in Columbus Circle where I live. How is that possible?

I am not poor anymore, but I am definitely not rich. I make a decent salary, but I am still paying down student loans and trying to live in an expensive city -- since all of these were my choices, I try not to complain. I am lucky enough to actually be able to make choices when people who are truly struggling don't. Money can't buy you happiness, but it does buy you the ability to be able to make certain choices, choices that a large part of this country don't have the luxury of making. I think they call those "high class problems" and given the choice, I'd choose high class problems any day of the week.

There is no shame in being rich, poor, or anywhere in between. But there is shame in being so disconnected from the world that you don't know where you fall on the spectrum. To me, being rich isn't the problem, it's the lack of self-awareness and the lack of connection to reality and how people are truly living in this country that is shameful.

So I promise you, if I ever do have a private plane, I won't complain about it. And if I do, you have permission to slap me upside the head. Wait, not the head ... you can pinch me really, really hard.

(And that's what I think.)