Are You Snobby, Trashy, or Ladylike? Labeling Women in Different Social Classes

This is the second installment in a series about social class for the Modern College Woman column. Check out the introduction here.

Recently, a friend and I were paging through a copy of “True Prep” by Lisa Birnbach, when we stumbled upon an unfamiliar acronym.
 
Me: ‘NOKD’ is that ‘no can do?’
Friend: I think so
Me: But why did she spell it with a K?
Friend: I don’t know…
 
Ironically, our ignorance of the designation “Not our kind, dear” might as well have been a “HELLO my name is: not your kind.” After my initial relief that Lisa Birnbach does indeed know how to spell “can,” I was seized with a burning curiosity as to whether people actually use the phrase “NOKD” …so I googled it.

It turns out that NOKD has a few different derivatives. There’s the more blunt “Not Our Class, Dear” espoused on an indiscriminately derisive BlogSpot by Jeffrey King. For the passive aggressive type there is “Not quite our kind, dear,” best uttered when “quite” is forced through gritted teeth.  The comma before dear is a subtle reminder that the listener should behave in such a manner that they remain on the right side of the comma, not the left.

Isabelle*– a modern college woman from an urban area notorious for its flashy entertainment and nightlife—is familiar with the feeling of being superficially judged. At Bowdoin, she is well aware that her wardrobe does not conform to the prevailing “kind.”

“I live in the city,” Isabelle explains, “girls my age dress a certain way and it’s a lot different than girls my age with the same amount of money going to school in a different part of the country.” While Isabelle is scrutinized for her dresses and heels, her make-up, nails, and styled hair she points out the perspective that many New Englanders could easily be in her position.

“If someone were to come to my city wearing things that would throw up caution signs to me– flannel, big jackets, Bean boots, I wouldn’t go out of my way to be rude to them. That would be signal to me that they weren’t from here not ‘oh that girls is a rich snotty new England girl.’”

 Acceptance is relative to familiarity. I just got off the phone with my friend Liz*, she goes to Columbia. “I wanted to tell you something for your article,” she says. “I met this guy…he buys Gucci sweaters for his dog.” I can hear it in her voice—this is so alien to her, a close encounter with another kind. “He calls people he doesn’t like plebeians,” Liz adds, “He’s nice but he’s blind.”

He isn’t the only blind one. When the classes aren’t completely invisible to one another they are conflated and exploited based on their differences. Society gawks at the rich and the poor alike, but the lower class is particularly vulnerable to exploitation for entertainment purposes. Paris Hilton has very little privacy despite her wealth, but this is a choice she has made.

The upper 1% of our population is capable of affording extreme privacy. Can you say gated community? You’re never going to see an internet chain e-mail titled “People of Barneys.” Barneys protects its clientele in a way that Wal-Mart cannot, and the ability to afford a lawyer in our political climate is the equivalent of a Rottweiler. Obscenely affluent celebrities expect to be scrutinized because of the public nature of their work, anonymous Wal- mart shoppers in ill- fitting denim shorts do not.

At my high school the seniors started a tradition during spirit week. Instead of dressing for “Western Wednesday” they dressed for “White Trash Wednesday.” I watched the seniors stream in bedecked in pillow stuffed overalls falling off the reveal lingerie, bare- feet and muddy cut- off t- shirts and painted on bruises. In one case a baby carriage and baby doll. The school tried it’s best to punish these deviants, to explain the origins of the derogatory term and the inappropriateness of the portrayals. A teacher read aloud a list of costume characteristics that were grounds for being sent to the office– NASCAR paraphernalia, Budweiser symbols, camouflage, fake cigarettes and cigars, beaters, and Tims with the tongues flapping.  You see, as outraged as the administration was they still had no problem identifying which clothing and accessories were “white trash” and which weren’t.

 I asked Kaly, now a sophomore at MassArt, how she felt about the event in retrospect. Although not a participant, her negative view of the day has been strengthened in the past couple of years. “Looking back you realize where the teachers were coming from, its crude and not funny to poke fun at a lower class. Moving away from the situation [you realize] our financial and social standing made it funnier because we didn’t have to relate to it… I have much more respect for people that stood up against it… knowing what I know now I wouldn’t have laughed.”

Lanie, a sophomore at Clemson, explains how moving to a different part of the country gave her a new perspective. “I didn’t have much of a reaction, I thought it was rude though it wasn’t offending me personally. [Now] I go to school in a very southern school…things that would be considered “white trash” up here [New England] would be normal here so I would be more offended because I know people that dress like that.”

It seems that most MCW understand that living on a low income is no glorified WTP,  and being a minority and poor in America is a lot more than a catchy AutoTune, homeboy. But it is questionable whether this knowledge actually has import on our actions and relationships.

100 college women were asked to name the first adjective that came to mind when given a class label. For “poor woman” the most prevalent answer was “sad.” However, it’s not clear who is sad. Do we expect the poor to be sad, or are we sad for them? Is “sad” an adequate emotion to acknowledge the existence and lifestyles of our country’s poor? It seems that certain images elicit pity, while others lead to open mockery.

These words occurred most frequently in the survey to describe a “lower-class woman”

Most of the women who took my survey used words like “normal” and “average” to describe a middle class woman. Our kind. Perhaps most telling; however, were the results of the survey which supplied adjectives and asked for a split second class association.

This is how I found out that 86% of MCW surveyed associate being “mean” with the upper class. A whopping 0% believes that being ladylike is a quality of the lower class, and that of all the adjectives listed “sexual” is the most democratic. The middle class is driven, intelligent, and friendly. The upper-class is beautiful and lazy.

These words occurred most frequently in the survey to describe an “upper-class woman”

I’ll be the first to admit that it was a flawed survey. The first step in learning to be less blind is to realize that these adjectives don’t describe a “kind” but a kind of person—regardless of class. It seems that our society should be a little less NOKD and a little more free-to-be-you-and-me. In the words of Isabelle, “why fit in when you can stand out?”