frugalsquirrel
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- Joined
- Jun 20, 2005
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Thanks! As you can probably guess, this stuff has been on my mind lately, and it's very refreshing to be able to bat these topics around with other people who "get it" while being pretty much in the same boat I am.
What's really ironic is hardly anybody seems to realize you don't need logos and a huge amount of money to look "right enough" to play the Manhattan Society game. It often comes down to a question of personality and time. Since I make my own schedule, I can work as much or as little as I want...I was lucky enough to find roomates in East Williamsburg, so my rent is only $350 a month--and I still get to spend all my time in Manhattan. I work hard enough to pay six months of rent at a time, forget about it, and have almost unlimited leisure for half a year.
Volunteer in the afternoon? Sure. Lunch with the Ladies? No problem. Fencing lessons, make my own jewelry, night class at Julliard, take in the new exhibit at the Met, kick back in Central Park with a good book? You bet.
I can joke that instead of being an "independently wealthy lady of leisure" I'm actually an "independently impoverished lady of leisure--" but independent and leisurely all the same. LOL!
My other biggest expenses have been membership in two private "society clubs", which gave me the chance to meet people who've offered to propose me for membership in more clubs than I could possibly afford. (Union League, Metropolitan, New York Athletic, etc.) As long as you "look right" and know how to make interesting conversation, people usually won't think to ask. And when they do, I try to be upfront about it and laugh it off... people seem to respect the fact that I'm doing things my own way.
Pretension is the kiss of death, so why not work your relative poverty as the angle that's going to make you memorable and different? Besides, I sometimes suspect when I say "Williamsburg" they must be thinking "Million dollar condos in the Gretsch Building" instead of "crappy three-story walk up in an industrial zone." No need to go out of my way to correct this misapprehension, but if it came down to it, I wouldn't lie.
Time is so much more important to me than money...and believe me, I know how to pinch a penny till it screams the safeword. Hetty Green ain't got nothing on me! But unlike Hetty, I splurge in the places that make the difference. Why have five bad outfits when you could have one of the very best? I don't do casual, ever. Why? One very simple reason: *Because I don't have to*. Baudelaire was right. Dress is a conscious choice and existential statement. If I eschew t-shirts and khakis to go all-out to look like I just stepped out of 1953 Vogue, it's nobody's business if I do.
If the choice is between wearing used Herrera and Louboutin, stringing my own pearls, volunteering in exchange for tickets to major charity events, getting my hair done at Bergdorf as a hair model-- while simultaneously having the equivalent six days a week off... instead of getting the exact same things new/full price and spending all my time working or having to put up with a boring rich windbag, there's no toss up. At the end of the day, I look fabulous and my time is my own. What could be better than that?
It seems you can't really talk about materialism and making an impression in "the right clothes" without at least mentioning the most unpleasant subject of weight. In fact, the ugly three-hundred-pound gorilla in Manhattan Society's collective closet is the raging epidemic of eating disorders. (Actually, it might be more apt to call it a very sleek eighty-seven pound gorilla...but you get what I mean!)
Sad but true, the quickest way to boost your social prospects is to lose twenty pounds, health be damned. It seems like most everybody here either starves, throws up, snorts coke or smokes, or some ungodly combination of all of the above. (If you don't believe me, try going to the Bergdorf Goodman bathroom around one o' clock some afternoon. Not a pretty aural and olfactory environment, to put it politely.) There's just no reward to be had in liking yourself the way you are. Case study: I have a friend who's a professional model. I've been trying to encourage to get better eating habits and quit smoking, since she's been getting sick and faint from losing even more weight. But hey, guess what? She just got a new contract for a jeans company after being spotted at a club. Who do you think she's going to listen to now.
After I moved to Manhattan, I went from a size 10/12 to a size 4/6 just by being less sedentary and cutting carbs. The sick thing is, even though I love the way I look, I think and worry about it far more than I ever did when I was bigger. Why does it have to be so hard to feel good about being a 4/6 just because everyone around you is a 00/0! Insanity!
All the same, I refuse to harm my metabolism and endanger my health, no matter how much pressure there is to take one of the tried-and-true self-loathing shortcuts. I guess there's nothing to do but keep eating the right things and working out. Another sick thing is that so many people are so jaded, they assume it's normal to have some kind of disorder unless you explicitly specify otherwise. People have offered me coke (and I don't mean the beverage), asked "So. Do you eat?" and once, when somebody saw me eating with a normally healthy appetite, actually had the gall to ask me if "I keep it down"!!! You can't win for losing.
Oh well....great posts, guys.
~L.
What's really ironic is hardly anybody seems to realize you don't need logos and a huge amount of money to look "right enough" to play the Manhattan Society game. It often comes down to a question of personality and time. Since I make my own schedule, I can work as much or as little as I want...I was lucky enough to find roomates in East Williamsburg, so my rent is only $350 a month--and I still get to spend all my time in Manhattan. I work hard enough to pay six months of rent at a time, forget about it, and have almost unlimited leisure for half a year.
Volunteer in the afternoon? Sure. Lunch with the Ladies? No problem. Fencing lessons, make my own jewelry, night class at Julliard, take in the new exhibit at the Met, kick back in Central Park with a good book? You bet.
I can joke that instead of being an "independently wealthy lady of leisure" I'm actually an "independently impoverished lady of leisure--" but independent and leisurely all the same. LOL!
My other biggest expenses have been membership in two private "society clubs", which gave me the chance to meet people who've offered to propose me for membership in more clubs than I could possibly afford. (Union League, Metropolitan, New York Athletic, etc.) As long as you "look right" and know how to make interesting conversation, people usually won't think to ask. And when they do, I try to be upfront about it and laugh it off... people seem to respect the fact that I'm doing things my own way.
Pretension is the kiss of death, so why not work your relative poverty as the angle that's going to make you memorable and different? Besides, I sometimes suspect when I say "Williamsburg" they must be thinking "Million dollar condos in the Gretsch Building" instead of "crappy three-story walk up in an industrial zone." No need to go out of my way to correct this misapprehension, but if it came down to it, I wouldn't lie.
Time is so much more important to me than money...and believe me, I know how to pinch a penny till it screams the safeword. Hetty Green ain't got nothing on me! But unlike Hetty, I splurge in the places that make the difference. Why have five bad outfits when you could have one of the very best? I don't do casual, ever. Why? One very simple reason: *Because I don't have to*. Baudelaire was right. Dress is a conscious choice and existential statement. If I eschew t-shirts and khakis to go all-out to look like I just stepped out of 1953 Vogue, it's nobody's business if I do.
If the choice is between wearing used Herrera and Louboutin, stringing my own pearls, volunteering in exchange for tickets to major charity events, getting my hair done at Bergdorf as a hair model-- while simultaneously having the equivalent six days a week off... instead of getting the exact same things new/full price and spending all my time working or having to put up with a boring rich windbag, there's no toss up. At the end of the day, I look fabulous and my time is my own. What could be better than that?
It seems you can't really talk about materialism and making an impression in "the right clothes" without at least mentioning the most unpleasant subject of weight. In fact, the ugly three-hundred-pound gorilla in Manhattan Society's collective closet is the raging epidemic of eating disorders. (Actually, it might be more apt to call it a very sleek eighty-seven pound gorilla...but you get what I mean!)
Sad but true, the quickest way to boost your social prospects is to lose twenty pounds, health be damned. It seems like most everybody here either starves, throws up, snorts coke or smokes, or some ungodly combination of all of the above. (If you don't believe me, try going to the Bergdorf Goodman bathroom around one o' clock some afternoon. Not a pretty aural and olfactory environment, to put it politely.) There's just no reward to be had in liking yourself the way you are. Case study: I have a friend who's a professional model. I've been trying to encourage to get better eating habits and quit smoking, since she's been getting sick and faint from losing even more weight. But hey, guess what? She just got a new contract for a jeans company after being spotted at a club. Who do you think she's going to listen to now.
After I moved to Manhattan, I went from a size 10/12 to a size 4/6 just by being less sedentary and cutting carbs. The sick thing is, even though I love the way I look, I think and worry about it far more than I ever did when I was bigger. Why does it have to be so hard to feel good about being a 4/6 just because everyone around you is a 00/0! Insanity!
All the same, I refuse to harm my metabolism and endanger my health, no matter how much pressure there is to take one of the tried-and-true self-loathing shortcuts. I guess there's nothing to do but keep eating the right things and working out. Another sick thing is that so many people are so jaded, they assume it's normal to have some kind of disorder unless you explicitly specify otherwise. People have offered me coke (and I don't mean the beverage), asked "So. Do you eat?" and once, when somebody saw me eating with a normally healthy appetite, actually had the gall to ask me if "I keep it down"!!! You can't win for losing.
Oh well....great posts, guys.
~L.
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It's true, some poor Asian girls are pawning their souls at a sewing machine for a pittance while Big Brand rakes in the profits, but that's better for them than prowling the STD-infested streets and selling themselves. They need to get themselves out of poverty, one step at a time, maybe even one generation at a time. and be assured that with an emerging middle class, education and better access to knowledge, legal rights will follow.
A skinny little boy no older than 4 ripped off his shirt to wipe the windows of the car I was in, with an expression of pain on his face I still can't get out of my head. I've been to China and seen extreme poverty, I thought it'd be only slightly worse, but I was really shocked. I can't even imagine having the stomach to face Africa, with its millions starving to death.
