Two Writing Options
In a 4-page typed essay, support or refute the argument that your matriculation through college, and the major you have chosen (or not), is inextricably entwined with the class status anxieties analyzed in Paul Fussell’s Class. In other words, argue for or against the idea that fear of falling short of America’s status system—a code system that is much more complicated than income level alone—is a significant driving force in your college studies. What evidence is there, or not, that you are beholden to class status codes? What evidence is there, or not, that you have rejected America’s class status script and have carved your own path, so that you love learning for its own sake? Are you an aspiring bourgeois consumer? Are you an “X person”? Explain. Successful essays will show a clear and accurate reading comprehension of Paul Fussell's Class by integrating the book's major principles into your essay. You must have a Works Cited page referring to Class, and two other sources.
Alternative Option:
In a 4-page essay, defend, refute, or complicate Fussell’s assertion that class is not as mobile as the American Dream purports it to be; rather, social class is more fixed like a caste system. Successful essays will show a clear and accurate reading comprehension of Paul Fussell's Class by integrating the book's major principles into your essay. You must have a Works Cited page referring to Class, and two other sources.
One. Why does the middle class aspire to be more upper-middle class than upper or top-out-of-sight?
Because it’s a “familiar and credible fantasy: its usages, while slightly grander than one’s own, are recognizable and compassable, whereas in the higher classes you might be embarrassed by not knowing how to eat caviar or use a finger bowl or discourse in French.”
We can’t aspire to something we can’t imagine even if as an abstraction we know there’s a higher tier of wealth.
Sometimes people can’t fall in love with someone who’s “too beautiful” for the same reason that this “too beautiful” person represents a sort of alien planet that lacks comfort and familiarity.
Another factor that compels the middle class to aspire to the upper-middle-class is that the UMC dress codes, car acquisitions (Mercedes), and timepiece choices (Rolex) are synonymous with Success.
Wanting to look UMC also compels the middle class to aspire to UMC body types and UMC gestures and body language.
The code for UMC body language is polite superciliousness, arch assuredness, confident mindfulness, and calm self-possession. Additionally, the UMC have “controlled precise movements.” They don’t swing their arms when they walk.
Two. How does one’s zip code or American location define one’s class?
Living in a UMC town compels one to find an elite part of the coast, especially in the North East.
Also an absence of fast food franchises, religious fundamentalist churches, and bowling alleys in one’s town evidences that one lives in an UMC zip code.
UMC people never live in towns where there are churches featuring people “speaking in tongues” or doing “healings” in which the afflicted stand up from their wheelchairs. Such “miracles” happen in lower class zip codes.
Miracle zones are places where there is desperation and a lack of education that compel their inhabitants to seek “miracles” rather than viable ways of achieving self-empowerment.
An UMC person will not see a “holy image” in one’s oatmeal or peanut butter toast and then try to sell such image on eBay.
Another sign of a UMC town is that you won’t be able to find copies of the National Enquirer and similar tabloids in the local markets.
Three. What is Fussell’s collective psychological analysis of the middle class?
He writes, “The middle class is distinguishable more by its earnestness and psychic insecurity than by its middle income.”
We can infer, then, that being middle class is more of a mentality than it is an economic level.
A digression: When we use middle class as a noun, there is no hyphen; however, when we use the term middle class as an adjective, that is to modify a noun, we hyphenate.
Examples
I am a member of the middle class.
She has middle-class aspirations.
Back to Fussell:
Fussell writes the middle class mentality can by characterized by the following:
They are terrified about how people will judge them, so they are very image conscious.
They are “obsessed with doing everything right.”
They are obsessed with table manners and general dining etiquette.
They are obsessed with “offending” others, thus are avid consumers of deodorants, mouthwashes, nose and ear hair clippers, dandruff shampoo, "plush" toilet paper, and pretentious toiletries such as balms, unguents, lotions, and salves, suggesting the use of an old-fashioned apothecary.
They suffer from “status anxieties” and become sycophantic whenever they are in the presence of “important people” with grand titles such as doctor.
Wanting the sycophantism of the middle class, many professionals seek the “doctor” designation, including those who are not physicians. Dentists, professors, chiropractors, and religious divinity commonly use “doctor” to elevate their status in the presence of the middle class.
The middle class suffer from “status panic,” an affliction that comes from the obsession that they are constantly being judged under a watchful eye of some collective middle class.
The middle class loves pretentiousness such as sending invitations with curly cues and rococo designs and writing that screams “Anglophile” aspirations: “In honour [using British spelling] of our daughter we are delighted to request the pleasure of your company for our daughter’s graduation . . .”
Because the middle class is eager to conform to corporate culture, they “grow passive, their humanity diminished as they perceive themselves mere parts of an infinitely larger structure.” They know deep down they are interchangeable parts of a machine.
Because the middle class is treated like an interchangeable slave and knows they are tiny in the big corporate scheme of things, they compensate their inner sense of smallness with grand displays. We read, “the middle class lusts for the illusion of weight and consequence. One sign is their quest for heraldic validation . . .” We see such examples as embossed certificates of excellence, monogrammed bathrobes and towels, slippers, personalized license plates, and other tawdry signs of “personal distinction.”
More than any class, the middle class has the strongest inclination to be snobs. We read, “Worried a lot about their own taste and about whether it’s working for or against them, members of the middle class try to arrest their natural tendency to sink downward by associating themselves, if ever so tenuously, with the imagined possessors of money, power, and taste. ‘Correctness’ and doing the right thing become obsessions, prompting middle-class people to write thank-you notes after the most ordinary dinner parties, give excessively expensive or correct presents, and never allude to any place . . . that lacks known class.”
Longing to be seen as an “elite,” the middle class are fond of memberships to clubs, guilds, associations, and other entities that require “special invitation” and “exclusive membership.” Of course, such longs contribute to their snobbery, the flip side of sycophantism.
Another way to enjoy membership to an exclusive club is to buy high status purchases like Mercedes and Rolex.
The middle class is fond of business clichés like “the bottom line” and “at the end of the day” and “think outside the box.”
Four. What pastime unites men in the United States regardless of their social class?
Sports, games, and competitions of various sorts bring American men together. There is something about a defining manliness in the realm of sports that all men can agree upon. And there is something alluring to men about living vicariously through their sports heroes.
Five. How do economics affect body weight?
The richer we are, the skinnier we tend to be. The poorer we are, the more obese we tend to be. Being poor creates stress, which creates a “fat hormone response.”
Six. Why do proletariats tend to wear clothes with trademarks?
Fussell writes, “By wearing a garment reading SPORTS ILLUSTRATED or GATORADE or LESTER LANIN, the prole associates himself with an enterprise the world judges successful, and thus, for a the moment, he achieves some importance.”
I would argue that the middle class engages in the same kind of “identity branding”:
A Mini Cooper is “hipster.”
An Apple computer is both “hipster” and “creative class.”
A keychain with Porsche or BMW means “player.”
Seven. What are the characteristics of upper class fashion?
They wear expensive clothes, but rarely buy new ones, preferring to wear old high quality clothing.
They avoid being too neat and almost appear to be in a state of “studied casualness.”
Muscular men don’t look good in suits so it’s hard for a muscular man to look high class. A muscular man in a suit looks like a retired athlete, bouncer, cop, military, tough guy, mobster, etc.
Being thin in a good suit is a sign of being high class.
There are many superficial cues that point to high or low class. We have become obsessed with making sure we have the “right cues.”
Is the Dream of Class Mobility a Myth?
Class mobility may be a mythology in America that results from "The More Factor."
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