Hmm...

[ksmith]

So yesterday, justinelavaworm discussed a panel she and matociquala, among others, participated in during which discussions of class were attempted/danced around/not quite followed through on. Then I saw this line in today's entry in Jane Espenson's blog:

You know how, in this country, the most visible, and most reliable, indicator of a person's social class is the condition of their teeth?

and I started thinking about outward indications of social class.

Not sure about teeth. A former manager, who came from upper-middle PacNorWet money, had one of the worst sets of choppers I had ever seen. But then, he had a casual attitude about a lot of things, including money. In a way, this casualness typed him as surely as Jane's perfect teeth.

Hands are supposed to be another indicator--their condition and the style of manicure. Shoes. Hair style. Weight.

I don't have time to go into this now, and I'm not sure what I'd say if I did except that I find it all pretty interesting.

Comments

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

This is very much an American thing. Here (UK), it's no indicator at all (you may remember the Simpson's episode featuring the English smile...)

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

I recall reading something years ago about the ?lime? content in the soil being responsible for the deterioration of English teeth after about age 50. I don't know how true that is. But sterling choppers don't seem a marker, no. Is it true in the rest of Europe as well? I've seen it over here, frankly. It all depends on one's culture, and in some cases, whether or not one has a deep-seated fear of dentists.

Markers that money can buy--it's a coin toss as to whether they indicate social class or some other form of luck. But the casualness of my former manager seems to me to be more indicative of an environment where monetary concerns just didn't crop up. Attitude, and responses to various situations.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

Lime isn't constant throughout the soil - I think it might just be wear and tear and a fear of dentists! We certainly don't go in for as much cosmetic work (although we are beginning to), partly because of cost. I have an overbite, mainly corrected by a childhood retainer (that always sounds like some old family servant), and a dodgy misplaced tooth on my lower jaw. Both could apparently be corrected, according to a fomer dentist, by breaking and re-setting my jaw. At this point I decided to go for the ugly look, as we fashionistas like to call it.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

I do know someone who went through the jaw breaking/resetting. The jaw was also shifted forward slightly to lessen the receding appearance. After that came the braces. Overall, the difference in appearance was visible, but not profound. I never asked her if she felt it was worth it.

[torrilin.livejournal.com]

Teeth are an indicator, but they're not exact. My BF eventually scared up the guts to ask me if I'd ever had braces, because my teeth are a bit uneven. And well, no, I haven't had braces. I have a tiny overbite, and three gappy spots on my upper jaw, because I only have 2 adult incisors. The level of natural fix my body did is good enough, so even my dentist was not particularly keen on trying to fix further.

On the other hand, I had a dentist who was good enough to ID the problem, and watched it closely.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

My two lower incisors grew in crooked, and crossed over slightly. My mom had asked whether I needed braces, and dentists told her no. I was in my 30s when I got them fixed--wore a retainer for a couple of months--oh, the pain of the few few weeks-- then had a permanent retainer installed.

It never bothered me growing up. It did as I got older. Even if it had been a strictly cosmetic fix, I'd have had it done.

[torrilin.livejournal.com]

It bothers him more than it does me I think. The teeth work, and because of the missing teeth, the overbite can't be fixed any more than it already is. The rest just makes it easier to floss *g*. I'm just glad that I ended up being the only one of my siblings who didn't *need* braces, instead of having to have them because they did have serious structural problems (and they had all their teeth!).

If the gaps start to bother me, I'll get it fixed.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

More important than the appearance aspect is how the overall bite is affected, and how that can affect the alignment of the jaw. TMJ and all that. My mom has that, and it can be painful.

[torrilin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the problem in my case is they really can't do anything to functionally correct the overbite. They can make my teeth look more even, but the overbite is a deeper structural issue, since I just don't have the teeth I'd need to make things even. Like a lot of things with my skeleton, it's badly designed *just* enough to drive doctors nuts, and not badly enough that any repair attempts will do much besides hurt a lot without actually making things better for me.

[fairestcat]

You know how, in this country, the most visible, and most reliable, indicator of a person's social class is the condition of their teeth?

As someone whose spent a significant portion of her adult life in need of dental care and without dental insurance I think this one is remarkably accurate.

Hair style is another good one, and weight. Actually not just weight but eating habits too, what you can afford, what is the norm. It's depressingly true that eating healthy is often more expensive.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Yup. Decent fruits and vegetables--when they can be found at all (do NOT get me started on the taste of the average US tomato and I have had garden-grown as well, thanks)--are not cheap.

Then there's the luxury of time. Healthy cooking often takes more time than people have.

[torrilin.livejournal.com]

Most tomatoes are wretched. You'd think they'd taste better in CA, but they don't mostly. A lot of other vegetables do taste pretty good still tho. Shopping seasonally helps a lot to cut costs, and eating frozen or farmer's market produce helps too. And both frozen and farmer's market veggies tend to taste better than the average supermarket produce I can buy, even in CA. Shopping seasonally and using farmer's markets tends to take more time or planning than just hitting the supermarket tho.

I still can't figure out why more Californians don't glory in lemon and lime deserts tho... The lemons I get when they're in season are mindblowingly good.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

The tomatoes we used to buy from the farmers markets when I was in high school... I can't describe the taste, the aroma. Eating one was a religious experience. I used to eat them like apples--they didn't even need salt.

Asparagus is usually pretty good. Pears are hit or miss.

A good lemon curd filling is to die.

[torrilin.livejournal.com]

I'm spoiled. Before I moved to CA, I grew up about a 15 minute drive from a fruit orchard and veggie farm that had an on site farmers market large enough to treat as your grocery store's produce section. Their pears? To *die* for. Their apples? Ditto. Peaches (provided there were no late frosts or severe droughts) that blew your mind. Everything smelled like itself. The raspberries sucked, but only in comparison to the wild ones. Darn things are sooooo perishable. The tomatoes were nowhere near as good as a friend's homegrown ones, but they still had scent and flavor and made supermarket ones unpleasant. I'd never tasted a truly good lemon til I moved out here, so I thought I didn't like them.

Now I know better.

A fresh Eureka lemon (the same thing you get in grocery stores everywhere) has a skin that may not be anything close to all yellow, but it'll smell flowery and lemony, and just rolling it on the counter before you juice it will leave scent on your hands for hours. Some Meyer lemons (little thin skinned lime sized things) will knock you over with scent from a couple feet away.

[mt-yvr.livejournal.com]

A similar vein of things... skin art.

I work in a hospital, I my job is computer technical support. I wear jeans, biker boots, sometimes (like today) I wear tank tops. And I've got a few lines of skin art. (lol)

I've been asked a couple of times, in those odd silences of elevator rides wherein total strangers seem compelled to talk, which renovation or construction project I'm part of. When I smile and point at my staff badge and mention my job there is usually a moment of brain twitching. Of course that's because there is a perception of the 'kind of person who has tattoos' as well as 'does construction work'.

Indicators of class are more and more shifting from "what they used to mean" to something else. It fascinates me, though, that you've not once denied there's a class structure. I have a hard time talking with some friends as they seem determined to believe there is no such thing.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

There is a class structure. There is some ability to move up (and down), but other things seem to be bred in the bone.

I mean, I live in a country where we deny the existence of class while at the same time we co-opt another country's royals and try to create our own (boy, that didn't work, did it?). Given the apparent human preference/need/whatever for hierarchy and measuring sticks and competition...it would be a wonderment if we didn't have class structure.

[mt-yvr.livejournal.com]

(nodnodnod) We sooo agree here. It's been my point for ages, despite what Canadians might like to think about themselves in our efforts to distance our culture from others, we ARE a classist society.

But then I more and more believe that there would have to be an incredible shift to remove classes from society. It almost appears inherent.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

I don't see a classless society emerging unless we completely retool attitudes toward merit, money, clout, influence, and status. Beauty. Given that we're social animals, I don't see it happening...unless a certain upper class retools worker bees to be content with their lot. I think we'd see more support for stem cell research if industry felt they could use it to build a better worker.

I'm only half-kidding.

I enjoy stories about class differences. Austen is all about that. Dominic Dunne's books. Walter Jon Williams touches on that a little bit with his Allowed Burgler novels--a burgler trainee copies the way his aristo boss speaks, but realizes toward the end that he will never learn all the nuances necessary, that he will never 'pass' in that society.

I touch on it a little bit in the Jani books with the accent differences. Earthbound vs colony. The odd inconsistency may creep in, but I always try to make sure that Jani says "maybe". Lucien, Evan van Reuter, and anyone from a Family will say "perhaps."

[mt-yvr.livejournal.com]

See, I'd noticed that in the books. (grin) I'm learnin', I is.

And I'm only half kidding when I agree they probably would.

I guess one of the reasons it fascinates me is that I've run through several different classes in my life. My father was born poor Irish trash in NY city, married the daughter of Old Moneyed family that slowly was sliding into upper middle class. So I grew up with the strong push to live as upper class (which they achieved as Michael - father - became acclaimed for his career) and yet there was always an underlying fear of poverty. And living in rural areas, much of my childhood was surrounded by people who were born of labourers.

And so on. I've never enjoyed a particular class over an another, but I feel comfortable in almost any setting.

I think it's why I tend toward writing characters that could live in wealth and privilege.. but don't. A sense of perspective seems to be something hard to hold on to, I personally value it in people.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

My dad was blue collar. Mom was pink collar. Farmers, shopkeepers, and working stiffs on both sides. One distant relative on my dad's side apparently used to own land that either became an important intersection in Buffalo NY or part of the University. In any event, they apparently sold the land for a fraction of what it was worth because they were of the type that believed that a penny in the hand now was worth more than a dollar in 20 years.

This tells you all you need to know about my dad's side of the family.

One distant relation fell off a boat and almost drowned in the Niagara River. Turned out she was weighted down by a money belt filled with gold coins.

I watch from afar. I find it fascinating. Certain accoutrements--a good handbag, a good coat--give me a sense of security in meetings.