kate:
“My third problem is thornier, but one I’ve given a lot of thought to as someone who uses a cleaning service to save my own sanity but is incredibly uncomfortable with exploiting poor women (sometimes of color, sometimes not) to do so. And that is: what alternative is she offering? Her thesis seemed to be (in the Harper’s piece) that privileged white women should clean up after their damn selves, so poor women of color don’t have to do it.”

i thought this, too. but what about the people who make the fabric for clothes you wear? or who assemble the dishwasher you installed? or who made the components of the vacuum you use to clean your carpets? these are all low-paid jobs for women and children who are largely found in the southern hemisphere. we exercise our privilege with machines, too, it’s just largely invisible to us.

disclaimer: i am also a guilty tipper. whenever i go out to eat, i tip way more than is customary. i’ve never worked in a restaurant (though i have worked in a coffee shop), but i know what that life is like. and i cannot imagine myself as the asshole who tips 10% or less.

AndyJo:
” I remember PBS had a series called “1900 House” (modern people lived for 3 months as if it were 1900) where the lady of the house had an epiphany of feminism and fired her maid so the maid could be free to develop herself and not be subservient. If this HAD been 1900, she would have been freeing her to be a streetwalker. That’s better?”

i thought of this, too! right away, i thought – her guilty conscience is getting in the way of reality. and at the end of the series, it proved true: she was so thankful for her clothes washer. “minimum effort, maximum result.” without thinking *who* had made the parts for and assembled the washer, she was able to take advantage of it without guilt. but it’s not a logical freedom from the oppression of other peoples, as the story of stuff illustrates very well.

now for my guilty confessions.

LilahMorgan:
“On the other hand – and to give her a bit of credit – she does make one important point early on in the book and throughout which is that her, well-educated and with a PhD, was never recognized as “special” by her employers, never did a better job than anyone else, and never managed to get herself anymore ahead than anyone genuinely in the situation. Which is one aspect of the book that I hope some of the “Anyone can work hard and succeed!” crowd picked up on that I’m not sure would have gotten through otherwise.”

Arwen:
“Having been poor and having worked those jobs, I really liked N&D, because a lot of people DON’T get it.

…

It’s not entirely true that it’s just the Fat who feel like they get what they deserve. Poverty can work like that too: that if you’re just “good”, you’ll someday be “comfortable”.

…

I think if you do read N&D as narrative as opposed to theory, it can be very fulfilling in a visceral, payback sort of way, exactly because it’s the process of a privileged person having her privilege (voluntarily) ripped away.”

sweetmachine:
“I think if you do read N&D as narrative as opposed to theory, it can be very fulfilling in a visceral, payback sort of way, exactly because it’s the process of a privileged person having her privilege (voluntarily) ripped away.

Arwen, I think this is a good point, and I imagine that’s what a lot of people found affecting about the book, whether they were feeling it as a kind of payback way like you, or as a kind of playing along/also getting privilege ripped away like a lot of the reviewers I read. ”

i wasn’t surprised by anything B.E. had written on the topic… but the way she *framed it* WAS thought provoking – because so many people (i call ‘em Bootstrappers) honestly and truly believe, deep in their hearts, that this could never happen to them – that poverty is strictly the stomping grounds of the lazy and (willfully) uneducated. to go out there and actually do the work of the service-industry and report back to her comrades that yes, it really is impossible to move out of it from within – well, that was valuable. in that way, it was an important piece of work. i don’t know many actual poor people who’ve read it, as most would have no need to do so. but i very much hoped that it was a perspective from which people like my parents could perhaps finally grasp that being poor is not equivalent to being morally inferior.

with that said, though, i agree with fillyjonk that this is a hugely disappointing essay from someone who really ought to know better – and someone who should be able to organize her writing better, at the very least. she was able to convey the being poor was not itself a moral failing. why she wasn’t able to extend this same logic to people who have more fat on their bodies than she does, i don’t know – but there are exists a depressingly large majority of folks who believe this with her. i’m trying to have patience, even with people who don’t seem to deserve it.

The interesting thing is, this type of job is not much different than the other types of jobs we’re discussing here; when it comes down to it, I’m talking about a job that features the handling of animal excrement, and yet it is job that, at least in the area where I’ve worked, seems to be done primarily by white people. But the other domestic service industry jobs in my area do seem to be done primarily by immigrants.

I’ve always found this interesting, that white people in my geographic area, at similar wages and similar workplace situations, seem to be more interested in animal care jobs than they are in house cleaning jobs, and I wonder about the possible reasons why.

During the economic downturn of 2000-2003 or thereabouts, my mom tried to take me to various area motels to get work as a maid. She and her sister had done a lot of hotel maiding in high school and college. I didn’t get a single callback. I was very sad that I couldn’t find a job.

Ladies and any gentlemen, you shouldn’t feel any sort of guilt for providing someone who only currently is of less means than yourself work and a wage. It’s food on their table, shoes for their kids, and the dignity of having earned. If you can hire an independent housekeeper from local recommendations (which is how my mom worked), and pay her/him a fair wage and treat her/him with the respect that any employee deserves, then by all means go for it.

I dislike the writing of BE for reasons already mentioned in the discussion.