As a devoted William Morris fan, it’s been a delight — in part — to see Morris & Co prints brought to high streets across the world by H&M and rendered instafamous. Morris’ beautifully stylized depictions of nature are almost ubiquitous now.

These mediaeval-inspired designs were originally produced for Victorian wallpapers and home textiles, and their imposing yet delicate grandeur established Morris as one of the 19th century’s most famous textile designers. Now the popularity of this clothing collaboration has launched his work into the international spotlight. But just what tradition is being celebrated by H&M marketing his work as iconically British? Just what are we losing when we strip an artist’s work of its political context?

In addition to being a poet and designer, Morris was also a revolutionary and friend of Marx and Engels. He was an idealist who argued that craftwork and cooperation would make wage labour obsolete and, far from being simply the “iconic [nineteenth Century] British wallpaper and fabrics brand” which H&M proffers, Morris’s company was run on collective principles and managed by his daughter May at a time when women were rarely afforded such power.

Capitalism has done to William Morris what it always does best to political creatives: de-politicized his legacy for profit. Admittedly his household designs have long been mass-produced and on sale in museums and homeware shops. But at least the mugs, coasters and tea towels were affordable symbols of affinity with Morris. They were often marketed within the confines of the designs’ history and therefore, by and large, did not so fully erase his politics.

Just what are we losing when we strip an artist’s work of its political context?
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H&M presents his maximalist, repeated homages to the natural world as emblems of British tradition and nostalgia, when in fact Morris used mediaeval aesthetics not to celebrate Britain, but rather as a protest in advocating pre-industrial values. The press, however, has followed H&M’s marketing wash, instead of looking to Morris’s actual political legacy.

Vogue termed it “another British heritage brand”; The Guardian, too, echoed the “heritage” language.

How does capitalism’s own tradition of depoliticization play out when consumers are clothed in imagery taken out of context but also place, having originally been created to celebrate home?

H&M is curating a selective history which conjures nostalgia for a Victorian era of Empire. They launched their Morris and Co collaboration with a campaign video boasting a grainy, faux ’70s aesthetic.

Skinny white women prance through what looks like the Scottish Highlands, a brook and a cottage to their backs. They wear silk scarves, maxi dresses, pussy bow tops: demure looks paired with classic jumpers and jeans. Then, in a move which reinforced the capitalistic juggernaut that is H&M’s marketing, the company then gathered influencers for “paid partnerships” at the Morris-decorated mansion Standen House.

This manipulation fits within fashion’s long history with the commodification of radical craft and the history of Morris prints is simply a case study of how mainstream consumerism subsumes radical aesthetics.

Two previous uses of Morris designs for clothing aimed to pay tribute to his anti-establishment politics by linking them to subcultural styles.

The first was in the ’60s when autodidact designer Mary Quant — inspired by Mod fashion and the sexual revolution — made a mini-skirt suit in Morris’ “Marigold” print. The second instance occurred in 2017 when fashion house Loewe released a capsule collection approaching Morris through punk style. 

However, both fell into the consumer culture trap where radical social movements were transformed into fashionable commodities for companies to profit from.

The aesthetics of subcultures — like punk for example, which communicates a rejection of the status quo and an alternative belonging — also resided within the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Arts and Crafts movement (of which Morris was a leader) in their distancing from Victorian production and values.

When aesthetics designed to be imbued with a certain meaning are donned as decontextualized fashion statements, those meanings are signaled without an actual affinity for movement, without a desire to belong or perpetuate the aesthetics’ accompanying ideals. This transformation — problematic in itself — is the process of reincorporation which leads to meanings being written over at best and bastardized or erased at worst.

William Morris’ creations were inspired by his belief in ordinary people’s value and rights
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Looking at the H&M collection, we can see nods to this lineage of aesthetic spin-offs, although they don’t directly mention the homage.

Their ’60s-esque mini dress uses the same print as Quant’s mini-skirt suit and their “Pimpernel” trouser suit recalls George Harrison in a “Golden Lily”-patterned blazer or John Lennon in “Chrysanthemum.” 

Morris’ politics inspired some subcultural affinity in the 20th Century but the sartorial trickle-down of these styles is mere commodification.

The anti-establishment message has disappeared when a mainstream brand like H&M calls him “iconic.” yet simultaneously ignores the radical politics he stood for. Indeed, when the company talks about “tradition,” they don’t even mean this tradition of subversive reuse. Instead, they invoke an abstract, white, and classist British status quo of countryside leisure.

Returning to the bigger picture of how fashion commodifies art, the connection between Morris’ radicalism and subcultural fashions like mods and punks is fitting — but not for the reasons the fashion houses intended.

Dick Hebdige, scholar of subcultural style, coined a term for the way capitalism seizes subversive aesthetics and turns them into a “fashion,” therefore making them apolitical, mainstream and profitable: “reincorporation.”

In his book Subcultures: the Meaning of Style he argues that youth movements develop their own style which puts across their criticisms of the existing order. The mainstream culture, however, incorporates their subversions within its own pre-existing world-view. In this way, the deviant meaning is lost. This sort of commodification happened to the styles of teddy boys, mods and rockers, hippies, skinheads, punks, etc., but it also happens today when far older styles with a political message are brought into vogue.

William Morris’s natural imagery — inspired by mediaeval styles because it sought to evade capitalism — now adorns the high street as season-appropriate florals.

Paying attention to the intended meanings behind art and design is important, especially when corporate fashion aims to depoliticize and commodify those visions’ intentions. Fashion is political, and the imagery it recycles, especially so.

William Morris’ creations were inspired by his belief in ordinary people’s value and rights; his words still appear on trade union banners today. Dismantling the homogenizing consumerism of fashion means celebrating the hidden radical histories erased by corporations, whether those be the politics of class, race, gender or sexuality.

So when you next see someone in that instafamous H&M x Morris & Co. maxi dress, they are — arguably — an inadvertent, living homage to a Victorian anti-Capitalist aesthetic and to those who sought revolutionary in the ’60s and ’70s.

There’s a thin line between buying pleasing patterns and communicating affinity of ideals, but if we celebrate and talk about these hidden histories we foster a critical eye and a celebration of the subversive role fashion should be allowed — and continue —to play.

“Sexual violence isn’t about sex; it’s about power.” This phrase has been repeated again and again and again and has recently resurfaced in conversations, public and private, throughout rape culture’s arguable year of reckoning.

This statement is at once a reassurance and a protest: the aim of sexual violence (including harassment and assault) is not the act of sex itself, but the power one asserts through the act. But the more we pass this phrase around, the more we establish a false binary wherein there is such a thing as sex untouched by power dynamics, a “pure” sex that is safe from the threat of power.

What’s insidious about this phrase is that it assumes we have stable and agreed upon definitions of fraught terms like “sex” and “power.” The phrase ushers us past the physicality of sex and violence all together in favor of an abstraction.

Power remains diffuse in this formulation, only showing its “true colors” in the faces of the bad people who abuse it and the institutions (the fast food industry, Hollywood, academia, the District Attorney’s office…) that enable it. The conventional wisdom demurs: sexual mores may change, but the quest for power is forever and there will always be bad people. That’s just the way it is.

Admittedly, the phrase can be employed in good faith—to say rape is “about power” is to make the necessary claim that institutional power facilitates and perpetuates abuse. Those with power—even and especially those who make their dime critiquing power—will close ranks to protect their hierarchical kin. But we don’t need to avoid talking about sex if we want to understand power. Instead, we can ask how power is part of sexual asymmetries and the demands of intimacy.

Sex disappears in this binary. The framework implies an unrigorous sex-positivity wherein sex is inherently good, as opposed to power, which is inherently abusive or predatory, the corrupting agent that ruins an otherwise consensual sexual experience.

The conventional wisdom demurs: sexual mores may change, but the quest for power is forever and there will always be bad people.
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As Charlotte Shane points out in her evaluation of recent publications and films on rape culture, consent is only a binding agreement insofar as the power differential between participants is even-keeled.

“Properly introduce consent to a potential date rapist, and you’ll be rewarded with a sexually law-abiding citizen,” explains Shane about this logic. The consent framework and the sex/power line go hand and hand, both concealing the need to think about sex at all, let alone ask when sex is ever unburdened by power differentials.

As if straight sex is ever free from the curse of its coercive history. As if queer sex can ever be enjoyed without the knowledge that someone wants to, and perhaps could, punish you for it. Making room to think about sex, as Shane acknowledges, means “admitting that the capacity for rape is determined by man-made conditions rather than some inborn evil.”

Sex isn’t necessarily the chaotic good to power’s lawful evil at all. In fact, Emily Yoffe argues in her essay, “Understanding Harvey,” that when we assume sexual violence is only a question of power, we refuse to look at darkness in sexual desire. That is, abusers don’t do it merely because they can get away with it, but rather, because they have a particular desire that power gives them the ability to fulfill. Power is the means by which that desire can be satisfied. If abuse is not about sex, then desire drops out of the equation, and the exercise of power is the only thing to be reproved.

As if straight sex is ever free from the curse of its coercive history. As if queer sex can ever be enjoyed without the knowledge that someone wants to, and perhaps could, punish you for it.
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But even in Yoffe’s more careful examination of the sex/power framework, she still works from the premise that power only ever belongs to those who abuse it, not to those who are victimized by it. Too often, this assumption is behind the sex/power framework.  

To say “it’s not about sex, it’s about power,” is to fetishize power and proffer it as the abusive kind of power that only exists when it is stolen, and therefore only ever belongs to the few.

A variation of “it’s not about sex” can be found in two articles from the early days of #metoo: Atossa Araxia Abrahamian’s essay, “The Problem Isn’t Sex, It’s Work” and Rebecca Traister’s similarly titled, if qualified, essay, “This moment isn’t (just) about sex. It’s about work.”

Sarah Leonard has also employed the phrase “The fact is that sexual harassment is more about power than sex” to argue that, under capitalism, sexual harassment is inevitable, given the imbalance of power between boss and worker.

Examining sex and power in terms of work is an excellent way of getting at what we mean when we say “power,” even though it still sounds an awful lot like “it’s not personal, it’s business,” and even if we’re still not saying “class.”

In the workplace, sexual harassment is a specific form of exploitation because what it does to the body cannot be collected for profit; there is only the abuser’s pleasure in cruelty.

Sexual violence targets the most vulnerable across lines of race, class, gender, immigration status, ability, and age, as well as workers in particular conditions of precarity, such as undocumented workers, those in the gig economy, and sex workers. It is a means of claiming ownership of the worker’s body beyond what they can produce as labor.

Our body is our first and most visceral relationship, even more immediate than anything else the boss steals (like time or wages). Sexual violence in the workplace, too, is a kind of theft. Work steals so much of our body from us: our posture, our eyesight, sometimes our fingers or limbs. But unions have yet to win tickers in the workplace that count “X days without unwanted touching” or worker’s compensation for therapy necessitated by incessant humiliation.

Sexual violence in the workplace is a violation which proves that the worker’s body is not only exploitable in every way, but also that workers do not have the right to consent to any of the conditions in which they work. To say that this reckoning is “about work” does not give us a framework to understand sex’s particular relation to power and labor. That is, it doesn’t account for the specificity of sexual violence, what makes it, as Law and Order reminds us, “especially heinous.”

Reluctance to talk about sex when we talk about sexual violence also makes it easier to leave sex workers out of the story of workplace harassment. Sex workers have a 45-75% risk of physical violence, contrary to ill-informed claims that sex workers can’t experience rape or that rape is merely “theft of services”.

Our body is our first and most visceral relationship, even more immediate than anything else the boss steals (like time or wages).
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In this collective moment of reckoning, something like solidarity has been shaping up: a rally for International Whore’s Day against SESTA/FOSTA, the quickly organized week of protests against Kavanaugh, a hexing, and more to come. There is power in solidarity. But the binary nature of the sex/power framework doesn’t allow for a definition of power which encompasses the ability of the victimized to fight back and demand transformative justice.

Between people, power is the ability to make change or to stop change through work over time. It is also the ability to either obfuscate or clarify the forces that enact it. The danger of the “it’s about work” phrase is that it has the ability to distract our attention from sex and the structures with which it may be difficult to personally identify with.

If we admit that sexual violence is about sex, that sex is always entangled with power that enables and perpetuates abuse, there might also be less hand-wringing over cases that trouble our perceptions of who commits sexual violence: a Holocaust survivor who made startlingly accurate films about psychosexual horror, say, or a queer, allegedly feminist professor.

For those who have been exploited and hurt—what is their power? Is it a comfort to be told that a physical act of violation was actually about power? Will it heal bodily injury, or prevent those with PTSD from dissociating during consensual sex? Will it return our time? There are so many explanations for why people engage in bad behavior. How many of them are satisfying? Who really wants, as Yoffe proposes, to “understand” Harvey?

What if instead of—yet again—examining the psyche of damaged men (that Yoffe begins with the nineteenth-century Austrian psychologist Kraft-Ebbing suggests that this fascination was not born in “our” era of prestige television and true crime podcasts), we spoke to the vulnerable ones about their own darkness?

What if we were to consider to their relationship to power?

There is a reason why we encounter this framework in thinkpieces but rarely in testimony. In the stories I’ve heard and read and told and wrote since the early days of #metoo, we observe our own bodies as though floating above, find bruises that change color but never fade; we trace and retrace our footsteps and still don’t know how we ended up face down.

Sometimes, talking about it feels compulsive, as we detail our trauma to anyone who will listen, like the Ancient Mariner interrupting a straight wedding or the vengeful ghost of It Happened To Me. Other times, the hurt is compartmentalized, the dazzling feats we accomplish make it unclear if we push ourselves in spite of our hurt or because of it.

For those who have been exploited and hurt—what is their power?
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And yet, not every incident of sexual violence has the effect of trauma. Sometimes, the offense is mundane, a waste of time, as Melissa Gira Grant has written. “Our conflict is not over sex,” she stresses, “or with men in particular or in general, but over power.” I agree that sexual violence is a theft of power, but our conflict over who possesses power does extend into the sexual.

Sexual violence is very much about sex—it is a particular way of hurting someone where they will stay hurt, since their wounds are discouraged from being publicly bandaged.

Acknowledging that it is about sex allows us to treat our wounds and to tell stories of healing, as #metoo founder Tarana Burke urges us to do. It allows us to admit that even if it wasn’t personal to them it was personal to us, and most of all, it allows us to feel like we can move forward without relying on individualistic conceptions of strength and empowerment.

The phrase obscures the uncomfortable truth that “sex” and “power” are not incommensurate terms. By ignoring this truth, we make it harder to create a world in which sex doesn’t hurt and power isn’t exploitative. Instead, power can be the means by which we refuse, or by which we work together to negotiate what we want.

Crazy Rich Asians is being touted as the hit romantic comedy of the summer and a cultural win for Asian-Americans, but not everyone feels that way; the dialogue surrounding this charming and effervescent rom-com has been divisive and complicated.

The criticism Crazy Rich Asians has received for its promotion of the model minority myth and moments of anti-blackness are completely valid, but we also need to be realistic about the role pop culture plays in pushing a truly progressive agenda and the timeline in which that agenda unfolds.

As a poor, fat, queer, mixed Filipina-American, I didn’t relate to Crazy Rich Asians either, but as a person who studied film and works in the entertainment industry, I know better than to look for my story in the mainstream. This movie is not all of Asian American representation. It’s the introductory course that gets Hollywood interested in more complex lessons about our community.

It’s easy to focus our hatred on a tangible product rather than at the larger system. The Joy Luck Club was the last major American film with a majority Asian American cast and it was released 25 years ago. This film too—which is decidedly more serious and more relatable to a larger group of Asian-Americans, continues to receive hypercritical ire for not doing “enough” for the community. But Amy Tan, the author of The Joy Luck Club, and Kevin Kwan, the author of Crazy Rich Asians, have a responsibility as artists to share their truth—however small a slice of truth that is—and it’s unfair to demand that these singular pieces of art speak on behalf of all of Asian America.

This is a complex community—representing 21,655,368 individuals with ancestral ties from over 40 countries— comprised of multiple ethnic groups, social classes, and intersectional experiences.

We need to be realistic about the role pop culture plays in pushing a truly progressive agenda and the timeline in which that agenda unfolds.
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When Kwan wrote Crazy Rich Asians, he was drawing from his experience as a wealthy Singaporean-American. In a video op-ed for Harper’s Bazaar titled “These are the Real Crazy Rich Asians,” Kevin Kwan says, “How much of my book is based on reality? About 150% of it.” This is the world he lives and knows. For Kwan to write a book based on any other Asian-American experience, but his own would be hollow and disingenuous. To expect more denies the validity of his experience and sets a dangerous precedent for other marginalized writers.

We already have to hide certain facets of our identities when navigating this bigoted world, we shouldn’t have to hide our truth from our own communities. All art deserves criticism, but it’s important to evaluate where that criticism is coming from. Our community’s resentment with Crazy Rich Asians and The Joy Luck Club has less to do with the actual films and more to do with the painful truth that Hollywood continues to deny our multicultural and multifaceted existence.

Crazy Rich Asians was never going to be a radical criticism of capitalism, white colonialism, and racism in the United States. The gatekeepers of Hollywood benefit from upholding those systems; to take aim at these systems would take aim at their own power. Despite its self-purported  progressive reputation, Hollywood is a business—a business that made $11.7 billion in 2017—and is still keenly focused on making a profit. And that profit is believed to stem from a film’s ability appeal to the whiter—ahem, wider—American audience.

The disillusionment felt by many Asian-Americans shows that marginalized people are hungry for representation in Hollywood and that they don’t fully understand the trials of filmmaking in a system as bigoted and bureaucratic as Hollywood’s.

There are three major parts to the film production process,  and a film can die at any of these points: Development, Production, and Distribution. For a major motion picture, every step of this process can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. This goes to pay writers, talent, crew, executives, lawyers, and everyone else involved in the making of the film as well as costs for costuming, location, and props.

It’s impossible to find out how many scripts get passed over by the power players in entertainment, but here are figures from a small facet of the industry.  The Black List is a “an annual survey of Hollywood executives’ favorite unproduced screenplays” founded by Franklin Leonard, a Black Hollywood executive that wanted to get the industry to take chances on scripts that kept getting passed over. Along with the annual survey, the Black List has become a place where unrepresented writers can get feedback and industry eyes on their work.

The Black List “has hosted more than 55,000 screenplays and teleplays” since it started and of those 55,000 only 338 were put into production. Only 6% of the movies that were hosted on the site made it into production, and that’s coming from a place that wants writers to succeed.

With Crazy Rich Asians, the source material was already there in Kwan’s bestselling book. In August 2013, Nina Jacobson, the founder of the production company Color Force, bought the adaptation rights to Crazy Rich Asians only 2 months after the book was released. Once the rights were bought, it would be logical for production to start soon after. Well, that’s when the production entered its personal “Development Hell”— an industry term for a project that’s stuck in the development stage for years.

Crazy Rich Asians didn’t start production until 2017 for many different reasons, including a scheduling conflict with lead actress Constance Wu, due to her role on Fresh off the Boat. Roadblocks like this aren’t uncommon for productions, especially feature films. All of the normal struggles that a feature film faces—script, crew, actor changes, going over-budget, licensing issues, etc.—are heightened when the film centers on people of color. It is a lot easier to say no to a film that doesn’t have a profitable precedent, so it’s remarkable that people kept saying yes to Crazy Rich Asians at all.

As a poor, fat, queer, mixed Filipina-American, I know better than to look for my story in the mainstream.
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When people see Crazy Rich Asians in theaters, the logos of the production companies flash before their eyes and the first few names aren’t recognizable to most American moviegoers—SK Global (made up of Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, and Ivanhoe Pictures), Color Force, and Starlight Culture Entertainment. The last logo to fill up the screen is the iconic Warner Bros. Studios shield, with the words “Distributed By” above it. This demarcation as distributor—and not as a production company—is extremely important.

Jacobson knew that if she wanted to make Crazy Rich Asians a reality, she would have to go outside the American studio system for funding, hence the partnership with Ivanhoe Pictures, a U.S.-based Asian film investment group. Starlight Culture Entertainment, one of the other production companies involved, is a giant Hong Kong investment company with stakes in multiple industries aside from entertainment, including chemicals, environmental protection products, and gambling. These production companies are the ones that believed in Crazy Rich Asians.

They are the ones that work on adapting the material and creating a package (attaching a director and producer to a script to make it more marketable). They are the ones that bring their creative assets to distribution companies to get more funding and guarantee that people will get a chance to see it.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros. and Netflix were the two distributors that the creative team behind Crazy Rich Asians had to choose between. Kwan and Jon Chu, the film’s director had to make the final decision. They ultimately chose to go with Warner Bros., despite the lesser offer, because they wanted the cultural impact of a theater release.

As a traditional distributor, Warner Bros. backs the project and sends it out to their distribution channels— theaters, rentals, and personal copies—hoping to make a profit (or at least their investment back) in ticket, DVD, BluRay, and digital download sales. Warner Bros. shares of the profit come back to them, so they can continue the cycle with another film.

The disillusionment felt by many Asian-Americans shows that they don’t fully understand the trials of filmmaking in a system as bigoted and bureaucratic as Hollywood’s.
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It’s not shocking that Netflix was willing to give Crazy Rich Asians a trilogy deal right off the bat. Netflix, and other digital subscription based distributors, have taken more chances on projects that feature marginalized characters than traditional studios because of their business model. They don’t have to gamble on ticket sales to make their money back—they already have a well of money from subscription fees to draw from. But if Kevin Kwan and John Chu had chosen the initial Netflix payday over Warner Bros. smaller budget, Crazy Rich Asians wouldn’t be a cultural touchstone that sold out theaters for multiple weeks.

The initial goal of any film is to make the backers’ investment back, but the stakes are even higher with minority-lead films. The experiences of people of color are automatically politicized, and subsequently othered. Studio executives don’t think general (i.e. white) audiences will relate to characters of color. They don’t believe that the stories of marginalized communities will succeed (even when it’s been proven they will time and time again).

Girls Trip was only given a $20 million budget (even with the star power of Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Regina Hall, and Tiffany Haddish) and it ended up making $140 million gross—seven times its budget back. Warner Bros. believed in Crazy Rich Asians enough to back it, but gave it a relatively small budget of $30 million considering the high-profile actors and the lavish backdrops, costumes, and set pieces that the story demands. In its first two weeks, Crazy Rich Asians, more than doubled its budget in box office revenue, proving that it wasn’t such a risky bet after all.

The American film industry has largely failed us since its inception in 1907, and will continue to fail the most marginalized of us. Supporting major releases—even begrudgingly—helps convince major studios and distributors to bet on more of our stories. All the odds were stacked against Crazy Rich Asians—a fun, apolitical, rom-com with light-skinned Asians that speak King’s English. It took years of community building and pushing against Hollywood gatekeepers to get this film made. It took allies with power to bet their good standing in the industry on the stories of people of color. It took the cultural groundwork of The Joy Luck Club, Fresh off the Boat, and every bit of honest representation in between.

If people still aren’t content with our victories in the mainstream, seek out and support the underground! There ARE independent filmmakers making the most brown, queer, anti-capitalist Asian-American films you can imagine—like the 2017 short film Salamagan (dir.  Elisah Oh) currently on the film festival circuit.

Organizations like CAAM, CAPE, Kore, and 18 Million Rising, are dedicated to uplifting diverse Asian-American artists through funding, fellowships, film festivals, screenings, and promotion through social media. CAAM’s film festivals feature some of the biggest names in Asian-American entertainment right alongside new talent (and they’re taking submissions right now!)

Many of these organizations have events with actors, writers, directors, and producers at all talent levels because they are meant to uplift our community through art and mentorship. I urge you to take all your anger, disappointment, and pain at Hollywood and Crazy Rich Asians and put that energy into artists and projects you want to see succeed.

Kwan told his story with Crazy Rich Asians. Now, let’s go share our own.

It’s not that I want to burst the Queer Eye bubble. I adore its heart-warming loveliness and energetic embrace of diversity, and the way they fill their subjects with confidence fills me with joy. But behind those French tucks and that exposed brickwork lies an uncomfortably materialist message. Queer Eye might seem a liberal millennial dream, promoting messages of self-care and acceptance, but the solution to its participants’ problems is often just to throw money at them. In Queer Eye it’s okay to be gay and it’s okay to be a man with feelings—but only if you have all the right stuff to go with that.

Of course, Queer Eye is not the only makeover show that does this; much of the appeal of the genre is in seeing transformations that you could only dream of, while creating pathos by giving these expensive overhauls to those most in need of it. The premise is always that this new house/wardrobe/garden/car will solve the participant’s problems and change their life. Extreme Makeover and Ten Years Younger use pricey cosmetic surgery as their tools, while Property Brothers and Grand Designs pour their money into lavish refurbishments of houses. Perhaps Gok Wan’s How to Look Good Naked, premiering in 2006, made makeover TV’s materialism the most literal when he asked the female participants to stand half-dressed in shop windows at the end of each episode to show how much their body confidence had grown.

Queer Eye might brand itself differently from the classic makeover show, but its materialist focus is the same. The Fab Five—Jonathan (grooming), Tan (fashion), Bobby (design), Karamo (culture) and Antoni (food), the team of queer experts who guide the transformations on the show—are always ready with good advice, personal anecdotes and a sturdy shoulder to cry on. They insist they are there to help their “heroes” be their best selves, and lead honest, empowered lives. Yet in the world of Queer Eye it doesn’t matter if someone is struggling to come out to their family or needs to rekindle a romantic relationship, the solution is a fancy new wardrobe and a designer haircut. The big reveals of each episode still relate to a flashy makeover of their clothes, hair, and house, with a sidelined section on their “cultural” development (still as vague as it was in the original iteration of the show) and how they’ve learned to cook one incredibly simple dish using reasonably expensive ingredients. To become a better person you need to have expensive material goods and be attractive, no matter your social background.

Queer Eye might brand itself differently from the classic makeover show, but its materialist focus is the same.
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Take William from Season Two’s “A Decent Proposal” as an example. William works at Walmart, as does his girlfriend Shannon, to whom he is planning to propose. Quite clearly they’re not going to be living a highflying lifestyle. The couple live in a trailer home that’s been decorated with love, if not expensive taste. Yet the Fab Five’s reaction to the home is classist, and shows real misunderstanding of living on a low income. When they first enter Bobby seems scared to touch anything and a sofa that was bought for $30 at Goodwill is deemed a rip off. But what shocks the Fab Five the most is that William and Shannon are using furniture that Shannon had previously owned with her ex. To them this is terrible, unacceptable, a cause of William’s difficulty in romantically committing to Shannon; perhaps it’s merely that, on a low income, the couple don’t have the option of turning down perfectly good furniture for emotional reasons.

Only Antoni seems to acknowledge that they work so much they might not have time to create the perfect home environment for themselves. William and Shannon seem like a sweet couple who deserve a bit of luxury; but surely the waxing, dermatology consultation, and expensive clothing the Fab Five advise aren’t a standard that two Walmart employees can keep up? The finale of their episode is a showy proposal at an open-air cinema, complete with fancy picnic and a cheesy film made with the help of the Fab Five. It’s adorable, its loving, and it made me cry—but isn’t it the love between William and Shannon that matters, not the financial ability they have to put on a huge proposal?

When Are We Going To Get Over Biphobia?
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It’s a recurring theme throughout the show that the wholesome encouragement and message of self-confidence must be accompanied by the purchase of new material items. Season One’s opening episode “You Can’t Fix Ugly” centres on Tom, who has gone through multiple divorces and is still in love with his ex-wife, Abby. He clearly needs a confidence boost and perhaps some lessons on how to show a romantic partner you care, but alongside these the Fab Five also do the standard appearance and house makeover. Apparently his recliner chair is disgusting (it kind of is) and his house is a mess (it also is), so it gets a huge redesign from Bobby. Wouldn’t it be better if the Fab Five just tidied up what Tom already has, rather than buying brand new expensive items? Instead it’s repeatedly made clear in the episode that this physical transformation is crucial to a successful relationship, betraying the materialist heart of the format.

It’s the fact that so much of Queer Eye is brilliant that makes its central failure so underwhelming. The program has been lauded for how it tackles modern masculinity, encouraging men—whether they be bearded divorcees, nerdy comedians, or Burning Man addicts—to acknowledge their emotions and feel free to be vulnerable. Even the gruffest are hugging left, right, and center by the end of their makeover, proudly telling those closest to them how much they love them. Queer Eye does men’s rights the feminist way, allowing men to do the things they feel their gender identity has told them they can’t. It’s also tackled racialist police violence in its first season, and had a trans participant in its second season. I’d never claim Queer Eye provides the most radical or comprehensive analysis of these issues, perhaps particularly in the case of its race debate, but it doesn’t shy away from talking about difficult issues.

Wouldn’t it be better if the Fab Five just tidied up what Tom already has, rather than buying brand new expensive items?
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Yet Queer Eye’s materialism and consumerist ethos undermines its good work and laudable intentions. Toxic masculinity, racism, and discrimination against LGBTQ+ people are deeply tied into the capitalist materialism at the heart of Queer Eye’s makeovers. A capitalist society is always willing to let individuals suffer if it makes the boss at the top just a tad more money. LGBTQ+ people are often the victims of this; we see that when the price of AIDS medication increases because of the greed of pharmaceutical companies, or in how LGBTQ+ venues are being pushed out of London and other big cities as property owners hike up inner-city rent. By combining liberal TV with materialist values, Queer Eye reflects the trend of “pink capitalism,” in which companies profit from targeted inclusion of the LGBTQ+ community, whilst simultaneously benefitting from the ways heteronormative capitalism exploits queer people.

The history of pink capitalism is a sad reflection of how quickly businesses will jump upon a radical social movement. As widespread homophobia declined around the 1990s, businesses recognized the spending power of LGBTQ+ people—particularly gay men. Queer couples often benefited from two paychecks and no children, sometimes making their disposable income uniquely high. At the same time, openly queer people became less likely to be turned away from well-paying jobs and, eventually, LGBTQ+ culture even became trendy and desirable to those who didn’t identify as anything but straight.

If Not For Capitalism, Would I Still Have Been Abused?
theestablishment.co

Western cosmopolitan culture is now welcoming to queer people, and for a business to be anything but welcoming too—at least in the public eye—is often detrimental to their success. Never is that more obvious than during Pride season, when everyone from Spotify to Burger King to Google will jump on the queer bandwagon in the hope of appealing to an audience that broadly accepts diversity. Sure, its nice that companies no longer overtly hate queer people, and that queer employees get a chance to organize and march with company floats, but the LGBTQ+ community aren’t merely consumers. As backlash to the commercialization of pride will tell you, Pride started as a protest not product placement.

Unfortunately, in a capitalist society, everything costs money, and sometimes chucking a whole load of cash at something can make a difference. Season One’s “Hose Before Bros” and Season Two’s “God Bless Gay” both involve the Fab Five getting involved in community projects, helping with a fire station’s fundraiser and doing up a church’s community center respectively. But even then shouldn’t the state be funding fire stations and community centers, not Netflix? And for the individual transformations, the focus upon stocking their lives with shiny new things just seems lazy. It reinforces the worst messages materialist capitalism has for us and this show has the potential for more than that.

While the Fab Five do sometimes incorporate old belongings into the makeovers, wouldn’t it be powerful if this happened more? Queer Eye could tell us that the foundations of a new life are all around us if we just have the right mentors, adding rather than detracting from the other inspiring messages the show has to convey. In 2018, let’s separate materialism from self-worth and make life transformations about more than pricey goods and services. In choosing not to do this, Queer Eye falls into the trap of complying with capitalism, not challenging it. It’s time Netflix changed this—and we got the heartwarmingly subversive Queer Eye we deserve.

Two years ago, I caught fire at one of the eight jobs I was working at the time. The scars from the second-degree burns on my hip are still slightly visible. I consider myself lucky.

But today, I’m still troubled by what could have been.

My injury happened on site at a catering event. It was 4:30 p.m.; I had been at work since 5:00 a.m. and was scheduled for another shift with another company at 5:30 p.m. Before the pain of my pants being literally on fire could even reach my brain, I was panicking about being able to make my second shift. If I called out, would they believe me? Would I jeopardize future shifts with them?

The second thread of my panic: Would I be able to perform in 24 hours? I had been preparing for the opening of a four-night run for months. How was I supposed to dance with the skin on my right hip burned off?

I missed my second catering shift but wound up performing the next night. It hurt but was fine. Somehow, my employer agreed without question to pay for all of my medical bills. It was easier for them (and probably for me) to process my receipts and cut me checks outside of the Workers Compensation Board than to slog through the system.

How was I supposed to dance with the skin on my right hip burned off?
Click To Tweet

Still, I began having conversations with legal assistants about whether this could be a viable workers’ comp case. When the tears stopped and the painkillers kicked in, I felt confident. I was a dancer. Who knew how this might affect my future projects? I luckily just caught the deadline to file a claim to the board within 30 days of the injury.

As it turned out, this probably wouldn’t have made a difference. I was naive, and so was the sympathetic legal assistant I spoke to for over an hour. Lawyers at multiple firms all agreed I had no case. If I could earn income otherwise, my employer owed me nothing. All of a sudden, having multiple skills was an obstacle, not an advantage. When I asked for compensation for the pain and suffering I experienced, they offered me $75 on the condition that I sign an agreement barring me from suing them in the future. By paying for my bills, they were paying me to shut up. My pain and suffering wasn’t worth a measly $75; my silence definitely wasn’t either.

I’m Done With The Faux-Woke Exploitation Of Marginalized Writers
theestablishment.co

Stories like mine are common because freelancers are everywhere. In 2017, the Freelancers Union and Upwork released the results of a comprehensive study on the independent workforce. They found that over a third of the U.S. workforce freelances (57.3 million people), bringing $1.4 trillion to the economy each year.

Today’s WeWork iteration of a freelancer has been filtered through Silicon Valley’s branding as someone who sips coffee in a co-working space while coding fancy things on their computer. But freelancers have and will continue to be people who also take care of and educate your children (Care.com), cook and serve your food (restaurants and catering), clean your homes (Task Rabbit), drive you around (Lyft, etc.), and do the temp work that offices don’t want to pay someone full-time to do. We are part of the grease that keeps the United States functioning.

It is no coincidence that many artists have found themselves freelancing. It can offer folks a reasonably steady (if seasonal) stream of income that can facilitate the time and headspace to create things. Nearly every artist I know refers to their side hustles as the income for the work they actually want to do. The gestational phases of an artist’s process often evolve unsupported by a direct paycheck or audience. Having one’s work recognized in the field requires this time, and it’s not surprising that so many artists choose and are well-suited for the gig economy lifestyle.

But under this guise of flexibility, employers are actually serving us disposability. My budding “reputation” as a 5-star cater waiter was super important to me in 2016 — it brought me more and better shifts, better assignments on shifts, and kept me thinking I was on track to earn raises. Of course, when I asked for a raise I was told no; instead of giving me what I deserved, they could just find someone else to pass the same tray of hors d’oeuvres for less. In a capitalist economy, employers are going to trim wherever they can to pay workers less — lower salary and no benefits. As long as the work gets done, who cares if we can barely make ends meet or prepare for an emergency fund?

All of a sudden, having multiple skills was an obstacle, not an advantage.
Click To Tweet

Not only are artists often contributing to many sectors of the economy without adequate pay, we’re constantly justifying the value of our artistic work to everyone who makes a passing judgement. With direct earnings from babysitting or bartending, someone’s “value to society” is made tangible and obvious. But how do you quantify the impact of a poem not yet written or a song not yet performed?

With the federal budget allocating more than 3,600 times as much funding on the military as on the NEA, the United States’ per capita spending on the arts is miniscule compared to other wealthy nations. Again, artists’ participation in the gig economy is convenient for the economy and for artists. But working multiple jobs can only increase the likelihood of an injury, which, combined with the lack of a safety net protected by law, can be devastating, not just for an individual but for the loss to society of art that wasn’t made.

I spoke to Elisa Clark, a former dancer with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater who has been navigating the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board since getting ankle surgery in 2017. Even though she was an employee of one of the largest dance organizations in the United States, she has still struggled to get the treatment she needs. Her lawyer told her, “The system is designed to wear you out. Most people just give up because it’s a headache. But stay persistent.”

When seeking treatment, the Board has a 30-day window to respond to a claim. “From my perspective, it seemed that Workers Compensation was more focused on finding reasons to deny treatment, rather than help injured workers get back to work,” said Clark. In one instance, the doctor’s notes were deemed insufficient. In another, they just never replied. “It seems like if you have a claim, you are bound by the rules, but the Board doesn’t seem to follow the rules that apply to their response.”

For Many Freelance Writers, Food Stamps Are The Only Way To Get By
theestablishment.co

As of May 2018, she was still waiting on authorization for further exams. While her recovering ankle may meet the legal requirements for mobility, it certainly wasn’t mobile enough for a full return to the kind of dance work she was performing, and was continuing to get offers for while on the mend. At each visit, her doctor had to measure her disability as a percentage, quantifying an experience that is always relative to the body at hand.

Beyond being a dancer requiring a greater range of motion than the average person, Clark said, “As a person, I can’t do things equally. We as dancers know that any significant imbalance can cause a chain reaction of additional injuries and/or long-term physical issues.” But the law’s consideration of disability doesn’t seem to take into account this inevitable future.

Even athletes, people whose virtuosic able-bodiedness are central to their work and are recognized by society at large, don’t seem to have it much easier. In 2014, the NFL won a legal battle that barred most pro players from filing workers comp in California. The NCAA conceived the term “student athlete” to skirt workers comp obligations for the players that bring in billions but receive none of it. Cirque du Soleil has had performers become injured or even die because of their work, and here too, workers comp support has been capped by state laws. The advent of the workers’ comp industrial complex mirrors other systems that have grown out of an economic system (see the military, prison, medical industrial complexes) where workers’ rights have been steadily eroded in favor of corporate profits.

Let’s not have these glitzy displays of physical ability erase the fact that all work is embodied. Crunching numbers, sketching on a notepad, and editing film all engage our bodies in some way or another. What separates an injured freelance artist from a salaried worker is that the system at hand fails independent contractors at large and erases the specific nature of an artist’s work from consideration in the medical care provided. That a body can be contorted to do something else that generates income exploits the versatility of freelance artists and further negates our creative work. Rarely do artists generate the entirety of their income from their work, but that doesn’t make the art less integral to the communities it reaches. What makes a rich arts culture isn’t just the hyper-successful celebrities. It’s a society that supports artists at every stage of their career and takes full care of its artists when injuries arise.

When Predators Exploit Freelance Writers
theestablishment.co

So how’s a multi-skilled freelancer supposed to navigate the system designed to exploit us with its inconsistent red tape?

Clark suggests organization as a strong defense: “Saving all my receipts, doctor’s notes, pay stubs, etc, to show exactly how much I earned during the time following surgery. It seems that the more organized I was with the facts, the less the ‘system’ could argue with me.”

You could also demand a contract. The “Freelance isn’t Free Law” that passed in NYC in 2017 only protects workers earning over $800 in a 4-month period. Still, asking to sign a contract with an employer for any project can facilitate self-advocacy, clarifying terms for all parties involved on not only benefits but timely compensation.

The artists-service organization Fractured Atlas suggests that most insurers won’t support workers comp for project-based, temporary work. So the responsibility ultimately falls on freelancers to advocate for this support in contracts because employers are unlikely to want to front the costs.

The Actors Fund offers the kind of collective safety net for artists that should be required by law. Beyond careful recordkeeping, contracts, and the support of organizations, are there possibilities for the kind of union that are starting to re-surge among pro athletes?

That a body can be contorted to do something else that generates income exploits the versatility of freelance artists.
Click To Tweet

With artists, our networks are so interwoven, the possibilities for organizing could be easier in some respect. A big part of being an artist is consuming and participating in the work of our peers, resulting in many tight pockets of communities. But with so much work happening off books, and work in temp industries being seen as so replaceable, it’s easy to feel demoralized about our collective power.

But this also happens if we zoom in too tightly on artists alone, who statistically tend to come from more privileged backgrounds in order to bear the risks intrinsic to this lifestyle. When considering the broader workforce that comprises the gig economy and the shadow economy, it’s of no surprise that most workers are of color and many are immigrants, who face further systemic challenges to getting care in event of an injury. It’s important to acknowledge the difference between those who willfully participate in the gig economy to make room for their art and those whose primary viable options are boxed in by the shadow economy. It’s easy to imagine all the people who don’t have the means to even be considered for entry into the exclusive world of sanctified art.

But we need to imagine what this world could look like. Recognizing the intersectionality for artists of color, immigrants artists, disabled artists can uplift not only our artist work but our collective possibilities for organizing in a system where workers and consumers both lose. The food-deliverer protests in the UK and Australia can provide some examples here. If we imagine how many of those workers are also artists, how many of the workers around us all the time are also artists, it becomes harder not to sense how artists are everywhere all the time, trying to get through the day so that they can make their work.

No one’s going to pay us to organize, but to protect the longevity of our bodies and all of the work we contribute, it’s another hustle that deserves our attention.

Two years ago, I caught fire at one of the eight jobs I was working at the time. The scars from the second-degree burns on my hip are still slightly visible. I consider myself lucky.

But today, I’m still troubled by what could have been.

My injury happened on site at a catering event. It was 4:30 p.m.; I had been at work since 5:00 a.m. and was scheduled for another shift with another company at 5:30 p.m. Before the pain of my pants being literally on fire could even reach my brain, I was panicking about being able to make my second shift. If I called out, would they believe me? Would I jeopardize future shifts with them?

The second thread of my panic: Would I be able to perform in 24 hours? I had been preparing for the opening of a four-night run for months. How was I supposed to dance with the skin on my right hip burned off?

I missed my second catering shift but wound up performing the next night. It hurt but was fine. Somehow, my employer agreed without question to pay for all of my medical bills. It was easier for them (and probably for me) to process my receipts and cut me checks outside of the Workers Compensation Board than to slog through the system.

How was I supposed to dance with the skin on my right hip burned off?
Click To Tweet

Still, I began having conversations with legal assistants about whether this could be a viable workers’ comp case. When the tears stopped and the painkillers kicked in, I felt confident. I was a dancer. Who knew how this might affect my future projects? I luckily just caught the deadline to file a claim to the board within 30 days of the injury.

As it turned out, this probably wouldn’t have made a difference. I was naive, and so was the sympathetic legal assistant I spoke to for over an hour. Lawyers at multiple firms all agreed I had no case. If I could earn income otherwise, my employer owed me nothing. All of a sudden, having multiple skills was an obstacle, not an advantage. When I asked for compensation for the pain and suffering I experienced, they offered me $75 on the condition that I sign an agreement barring me from suing them in the future. By paying for my bills, they were paying me to shut up. My pain and suffering wasn’t worth a measly $75; my silence definitely wasn’t either.

I’m Done With The Faux-Woke Exploitation Of Marginalized Writers

Stories like mine are common because freelancers are everywhere. In 2017, the Freelancers Union and Upwork released the results of a comprehensive study on the independent workforce. They found that over a third of the U.S. workforce freelances (57.3 million people), bringing $1.4 trillion to the economy each year.

Today’s WeWork iteration of a freelancer has been filtered through Silicon Valley’s branding as someone who sips coffee in a co-working space while coding fancy things on their computer. But freelancers have and will continue to be people who also take care of and educate your children (Care.com), cook and serve your food (restaurants and catering), clean your homes (Task Rabbit), drive you around (Lyft, etc.), and do the temp work that offices don’t want to pay someone full-time to do. We are part of the grease that keeps the United States functioning.

It is no coincidence that many artists have found themselves freelancing. It can offer folks a reasonably steady (if seasonal) stream of income that can facilitate the time and headspace to create things. Nearly every artist I know refers to their side hustles as the income for the work they actually want to do. The gestational phases of an artist’s process often evolve unsupported by a direct paycheck or audience. Having one’s work recognized in the field requires this time, and it’s not surprising that so many artists choose and are well-suited for the gig economy lifestyle.

But under this guise of flexibility, employers are actually serving us disposability. My budding “reputation” as a 5-star cater waiter was super important to me in 2016—it brought me more and better shifts, better assignments on shifts, and kept me thinking I was on track to earn raises. Of course, when I asked for a raise I was told no; instead of giving me what I deserved, they could just find someone else to pass the same tray of hors d’oeuvres for less. In a capitalist economy, employers are going to trim wherever they can to pay workers less—lower salary and no benefits. As long as the work gets done, who cares if we can barely make ends meet or prepare for an emergency fund?

All of a sudden, having multiple skills was an obstacle, not an advantage.
Click To Tweet

Not only are artists often contributing to many sectors of the economy without adequate pay, we’re constantly justifying the value of our artistic work to everyone who makes a passing judgement. With direct earnings from babysitting or bartending, someone’s “value to society” is made tangible and obvious. But how do you quantify the impact of a poem not yet written or a song not yet performed?

With the federal budget allocating more than 3,600 times as much funding on the military as on the NEA, the United States’ per capita spending on the arts is miniscule compared to other wealthy nations. Again, artists’ participation in the gig economy is convenient for the economy and for artists. But working multiple jobs can only increase the likelihood of an injury, which, combined with the lack of a safety net protected by law, can be devastating, not just for an individual but for the loss to society of art that wasn’t made.

I spoke to Elisa Clark, a former dancer with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater who has been navigating the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board since getting ankle surgery in 2017. Even though she was an employee of one of the largest dance organizations in the United States, she has still struggled to get the treatment she needs. Her lawyer told her, “The system is designed to wear you out. Most people just give up because it’s a headache. But stay persistent.”

When seeking treatment, the Board has a 30-day window to respond to a claim. “From my perspective, it seemed that Workers Compensation was more focused on finding reasons to deny treatment, rather than help injured workers get back to work,” said Clark. In one instance, the doctor’s notes were deemed insufficient. In another, they just never replied. “It seems like if you have a claim, you are bound by the rules, but the Board doesn’t seem to follow the rules that apply to their response.”

For Many Freelance Writers, Food Stamps Are The Only Way To Get By

As of May 2018, she was still waiting on authorization for further exams. While her recovering ankle may meet the legal requirements for mobility, it certainly wasn’t mobile enough for a full return to the kind of dance work she was performing, and was continuing to get offers for while on the mend. At each visit, her doctor had to measure her disability as a percentage, quantifying an experience that is always relative to the body at hand.

Beyond being a dancer requiring a greater range of motion than the average person, Clark said, “As a person, I can’t do things equally. We as dancers know that any significant imbalance can cause a chain reaction of additional injuries and/or long-term physical issues.” But the law’s consideration of disability doesn’t seem to take into account this inevitable future.

Even athletes, people whose virtuosic able-bodiedness are central to their work and are recognized by society at large, don’t seem to have it much easier. In 2014, the NFL won a legal battle that barred most pro players from filing workers comp in California. The NCAA conceived the term “student athlete” to skirt workers comp obligations for the players that bring in billions but receive none of it. Cirque du Soleil has had performers become injured or even die because of their work, and here too, workers comp support has been capped by state laws. The advent of the workers’ comp industrial complex mirrors other systems that have grown out of an economic system (see the military, prison, medical industrial complexes) where workers’ rights have been steadily eroded in favor of corporate profits.

Let’s not have these glitzy displays of physical ability erase the fact that all work is embodied. Crunching numbers, sketching on a notepad, and editing film all engage our bodies in some way or another. What separates an injured freelance artist from a salaried worker is that the system at hand fails independent contractors at large and erases the specific nature of an artist’s work from consideration in the medical care provided. That a body can be contorted to do something else that generates income exploits the versatility of freelance artists and further negates our creative work. Rarely do artists generate the entirety of their income from their work, but that doesn’t make the art less integral to the communities it reaches. What makes a rich arts culture isn’t just the hyper-successful celebrities. It’s a society that supports artists at every stage of their career and takes full care of its artists when injuries arise.

When Predators Exploit Freelance Writers

So how’s a multi-skilled freelancer supposed to navigate the system designed to exploit us with its inconsistent red tape?

Clark suggests organization as a strong defense: “Saving all my receipts, doctor’s notes, pay stubs, etc, to show exactly how much I earned during the time following surgery. It seems that the more organized I was with the facts, the less the ‘system’ could argue with me.”

You could also demand a contract. The “Freelance isn’t Free Law” that passed in NYC in 2017 only protects workers earning over $800 in a 4-month period. Still, asking to sign a contract with an employer for any project can facilitate self-advocacy, clarifying terms for all parties involved on not only benefits but timely compensation.

The artists-service organization Fractured Atlas suggests that most insurers won’t support workers comp for project-based, temporary work. So the responsibility ultimately falls on freelancers to advocate for this support in contracts because employers are unlikely to want to front the costs.

The Actors Fund offers the kind of collective safety net for artists that should be required by law. Beyond careful recordkeeping, contracts, and the support of organizations, are there possibilities for the kind of union that are starting to re-surge among pro athletes?

That a body can be contorted to do something else that generates income exploits the versatility of freelance artists.
Click To Tweet

With artists, our networks are so interwoven, the possibilities for organizing could be easier in some respect. A big part of being an artist is consuming and participating in the work of our peers, resulting in many tight pockets of communities. But with so much work happening off books, and work in temp industries being seen as so replaceable, it’s easy to feel demoralized about our collective power.

But this also happens if we zoom in too tightly on artists alone, who statistically tend to come from more privileged backgrounds in order to bear the risks intrinsic to this lifestyle. When considering the broader workforce that comprises the gig economy and the shadow economy, it’s of no surprise that most workers are of color and many are immigrants, who face further systemic challenges to getting care in event of an injury. It’s important to acknowledge the difference between those who willfully participate in the gig economy to make room for their art and those whose primary viable options are boxed in by the shadow economy. It’s easy to imagine all the people who don’t have the means to even be considered for entry into the exclusive world of sanctified art.

But we need to imagine what this world could look like. Recognizing the intersectionality for artists of color, immigrants artists, disabled artists can uplift not only our artist work but our collective possibilities for organizing in a system where workers and consumers both lose. The food-deliverer protests in the UK and Australia can provide some examples here. If we imagine how many of those workers are also artists, how many of the workers around us all the time are also artists, it becomes harder not to sense how artists are everywhere all the time, trying to get through the day so that they can make their work.

No one’s going to pay us to organize, but to protect the longevity of our bodies and all of the work we contribute, it’s another hustle that deserves our attention.

If there is a name for the feeling when you’re waiting for the floor to drop out from beneath you, when you’re lying awake at night wondering whether you’ve done enough today, when you’re walking home from work and you wonder if you should buy groceries this week or pay rent on time, that word is capitalism.

Under a capitalist system, there is no safety net. There is no innate support system. There is no benefit to the capitalist mission of competition by supporting one another. The capitalist reality is that not everyone can afford to meet their basic needs and where basic needs can be afforded, emotional intelligence cannot.

Capitalism makes no room for emotional intelligence because the entire concept of capitalism comes from an inherent subscription to social Darwinism — that is, only the strongest (and the most willing to exploit and hoard the most money) survive, while everyone else is left to suffer in desperation. Capitalist ideology de-prioritizes mental health, mindfulness and conscious communication as necessary resources so they’re ultimately reserved for the richest and the whitest, forcing healthy relationships to the fringes. With healthy relationships coming at great personal expense,abuse and toxicity are permitted to run rampant — unchecked.

My family was not unlike many others when it came to the toxicity of my upbringing. One of my earliest and clearest childhood memories is of my mother hammering my father’s skull with the receiver part of the cream-colored corded phone that hung in our kitchen years after it stopped working. In my memory it seems like it was only a few days later that my parents were fighting, my mother in the driver’s seat of her 10-year-old minivan, and my father standing in the grass with the passenger’s side door ajar, my younger sister and me in the backseat — when my mother decided it made the most sense to end the disagreement by flooring the minivan into reverse, knocking my father to the ground with that door and breaking so hard that the door shut.

I don’t remember if my mother offered any kind of explanation for the events that transpired that day, but I grew up being told my father was an abuser and that my mother’s reactions were a normal response to the stresses our family endured, solely as a result of my father’s ineptitude.

My father with his compulsive gambling, alcoholism, and long history of addiction had left my mother isolated for much of their marriage. Throughout my childhood and into adulthood, my father has found comfort in being absentee.

Typical of what capitalism demands of a man via gender roles, he’s always understood his role as going to work, earning an income, and giving it freely to his family as a stand-in for actually showing up. When his one business didn’t meet his expectations of living, he sought to gamble ferociously, hoping to win big and transcend the class of the working man. After losing one business to his compulsive gambling, he was able to get sober in his divorce and become a partner in a well-known Italian grocery store. While having never been to one of my swim meets, being late to my actual birth, and seldom having been home when I went to bed, my father has never notprovided on the financial end of things.

Islamophobia Informed My Mother’s Silence On Domestic Abuse — And Mine
theestablishment.co

But even though he was able to fulfill that ultimate goal of capitalism, there were issues roiling.

It only took my mother six years to realize my father wasn’t what she had bargained for, and five more after that for her to divorce him. My father’s inactive role in the day-to-day functions of our family inevitably left him uninvolved in any of the decision making and childrearing process before and after their divorce. It’s not to place the blame of our particular brand of familial toxicity squarely on my father, but had he been around, things may have gone a little differently. My father’s absenteeism empowered my mother as the sole disciplinarian and her preferred method of discipline was physical, verbal, financial, and ultimately spiritual abuse.

My first punch to the mouth came no more than a month after my father had left our house. The beating worsened in the days, weeks, and years after that, and my self-esteem, or lack thereof — so shattered by puberty and abuse — only served as further justification for why I deserved it. I remember sobbing on my bed, thinking back to the many times I bore witness to my mother doing to the same things to my father, desperate to find a reason for why my mother wanted to hurt us so bad and so often. I blamed him, and I blamed myself. I figured that — because I was told this — if my father had made different decisions then my mother wouldn’t be so stressed out.

And for most of my childhood that’s how I justified the abuse. I felt that if my mother had access to more resources to be both a working mother and a present parent, that the abuse wouldn’t have happened. I began to see myself as a burden on my mother’s finances and on her well-being because, again, that’s what I was told. Unfortunately, this wasn’t inaccurate.

My mother had a 15-year gap in her resume from marriage and parenting, so it wasn’t easy for her to get back out there to earn a living for her family the way she had hoped. Of this notable pattern in the women’s workforce, Julie Torrant writes:

“This role [as a full-time parent] has structurally blocked women from full and equal participation in the wage-labor force. It has, in other words, made women ‘bad’ competitors in the labor-market. At a time when a ‘family-wage’ was the norm (that is, when the norm was that the husband would be the breadwinner and his wage would support the entire family and thus women did not ‘have to’ compete on the market to sell their labor), a system of social welfare was put in place that worked to (at least) alleviate the hardship this norm placed on women who did not have access to such a male wage.”

Dealing with the debt of divorce, my mother had negative funds to raise us and desperately needed a career change if she had any hope of independently providing. She applied for welfare, but the cost of education plunged her further into debt. When she went back to school, she stopped parenting altogether. The only time I saw her was when she came home to lock herself in her bedroom, where she did homework and came out only to beat me for knocking on the door asking about dinner.

Tasked with the decision between parenting and breadwinning, my mother decided to go absentee and chose neglect — an impossible sacrifice many single mothers in America are forced to make.

But sourcing the causes for my mother’s toxicity does nothing for the weight of trauma on my shoulders. I know my mother, like my father, an addict, would likely still be an abuser regardless of her life’s circumstances. But I also know that capitalism gave her all the tools.

Tasked with the decision between parenting and breadwinning, my mother decided to go absentee.
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Teetering on a cliff of survival or not, the inherent stress of having a family under capitalism allows families to become isolated and violent institutions. In February 2015’s Socialist Review, Susan Rosenthal’s indictment of the capitalist family says exactly what I’ve been trying to say for the last 1,200 words:

“Today’s perpetrators are yesterday’s victims. While only a small minority of child victims become adult perpetrators, studies of those who do perpetrate reveal that almost all were traumatised as children. Capitalism cannot acknowledge that most perpetrators are former victims because it cannot admit that families transmit trauma from one generation to the next.”

Both my parents came from blue-collar immigrant families in which the mother was left at home with the children and the father was rarely seen. Both my parents came from families that didn’t meet their needs and were able to rationalize their neglect as just.

The wounded child in my parents never had a chance to heal, and so they went on to wound their children.

This is not about worker safety and public welfare. This is about paving the way for politicians and the elite to gentrify cities.

T he year was 1995. Deity Delgado was about to take the stage at the Blue Angel Cabaret — an underground strip joint tucked away in a basement in Tribeca. The club was packed to the brim. Sweating from the heat of the room, she sauntered on the small platform to dance for a buzzing crowd.

Worn down from the midtown gentlemen’s clubs, Delgado started working at the Blue Angel to express herself more freely and comfortably while still earning a living. There, she performed cabaret and lap dances in a communal room in the back which she remembers as safe, fun, and lucrative. She was making an average of $600 a night.

She appreciated the diverse hiring practices not commonly found in upscale clubs in Manhattan. The stripper-owned club hired queer, punk, tattooed people of all shapes and sizes and colors. “I could show up to work without shaving my legs,” Delgado said. “Many of the upscale clubs are set on one look, but at the Blue Angel you worked with what you had.”

Located off Walker Street, the Blue Angel was weaved into the fabric of early ‘90s Manhattan — a place where queers, sex workers, artists, minorities, and outcasts once lived, worked, and thrived.

The club, however, became one of the 170 clubs targeted by Mayor Giuliani’s iron fist against the commercial sex trade. Two years after the club opened, he signed into law a new zoning ordinance that prevented adult businesses from operating within residential areas and near each other (as well as schools, places of worship, and cemeteries).

In response, police amped up surveillance of the sex industry, eventually stamping an eviction notice on the Blue Angel’s door due to the club’s illegal mixture of alcohol, lap dances, and nudity. Delgado mournfully had to say goodbye to her beloved club.

Gentrification is often seen as an organic process that cities undergo. Jeremiah Moss, the author of the book and blog Vanishing New York — a detailed analysis of how New York City lost its soul to corporations — says, “Gentrification was originally defined as the process by which working-class neighborhoods are changed into middle-class neighborhoods by the middle-class who buy homes there.”

Moss explains, however, “Now we’re dealing with something much larger and more destructive — what I refer to as hyper gentrification which is not an organic process. It’s the government stepping in with policies and zoning to remake the city for the upper classes. In order to that, outlaws have to be removed, including sexual outlaws. So adult businesses have to go.”

“The hyper-gentrified city must be safe, friendly, and welcoming for tourist families and major corporations,” Moss says.

Shutting down adult businesses was on the top of Mayor Giuliani’s list throughout his terms. Giuliani claimed strip clubs, peep shows, and x-rated video stores were “corrosive institutions” that contaminated neighborhoods and prevented “legitimate businesses” from prospering.

The relentless spreading of disgust with and fear of adult businesses was fueled by the real-estate recession in the early ‘90s. Prior to that, corporations like Disney with a vested interest in attracting family-friendly tourists had little interest in devoting capital to parts of the city lined with street workers, x-rated stores, and strip clubs. The low-socioeconomic and “sleazy” stigma attached to sex work (of which stripping is a form) stood in stark contrast to Mickey and Goofy. But the market collapse opened a window for investors to turn a keen eye to urban real estate and its possibilities for profit.

Lower property values provided real-estate developers an opportunity to attract newcomers with visions of a “cleaner city.” Jayne Swift is a doctoral candidate in Feminist Studies at the University of Minnesota who examines how gentrification played a role in the closing of the Lusty Lady, the only worker-owned unionized peepshow, in Seattle and San Francisco. She explains that visible sex work can stand in the way of developers trying to attract certain groups of people with an upscale image. “Sex work is seen as lower class and dirty in the imaginary,” she says.

Twenty years after the Blue Angel closed, I stood in the basement of a corporate-chain strip club in Midtown with three other dancers, each awaiting the verdict on whether we would get hired. I had just auditioned in front of three unimpressed male managers, feeling self-conscious about the small layer of fat on my slim 5’2” frame.

After working in one of the few Times Square clubs that took 70% of my earnings in the private rooms, I was desperate to get hired elsewhere. The house mom came back. “The managers said okay…but they want you to lose weight.” I sighed a breath of relief. I had a job and that’s all that mattered. Afterward, though, I realized the other two dancers didn’t get hired, one older than me and the other more tatted. My heart sank. How many people did they turn away a day?

The low-socioeconomic and ‘sleazy’ stigma attached to sex work stood in stark contrast to Mickey and Goofy.

I have never known Delgado’s New York — a sex industry booming among artists, minorities, queers, and working-class people. I have only known $12 beers, $2,000+ monthly studio apartments, and pricey artisan cafes. My experiences dancing in New York were dampened by rigid hiring practices, poor security, and steep commissions.

I was lucky that day. My blonde hair, white skin, and youth got me through the door, but unless I’d glam up and slim down my employment was precarious. And after a year of doing exactly that, I was worn down to the point of quitting.

Instead, I left for New Orleans and found an accepting, accessible, and much friendlier and safer work environment. Not quite the Blue Angel, but I felt at home dancing in the creative city of grit and soul.

But then, two weeks before I was due to fly into New Orleans to work my second Carnival season, I heard the news that four strip clubs were raided along Bourbon Street. Sickened, I researched more and discovered the City Planning Commission was pushing a strip club cap and limit per block-face, essentially de-clustering strip clubs along Bourbon Street. A week later, four more were raided.

I Ain’t Saying She’s A Gold Digger: Sex Work, Money, And Upward Mobility

On the surface, these crackdowns were stoked by a city’s 2016 investigation into clubs’ harmful effects on strippers and the community. But the reality is, just like New York 20 years ago, corporations and developers have a stake in eradicating the industry from tourist areas. The devastation of Katrina provided an opportunity for developers to lure white millennials and upper-class families to the city with lush condos and pedestrian walkways, as locals have bitterly watched as houses remain in despair, potholes unfixed. The officials at the cruise ship port of New Orleans have been trying to capitalize on this makeover and charm Disney with promises of a clean family-friendly destination.

As cities turn their backs on residents to attract the elite,“sex workers are not part of the economic vision,” Swift explains.

Even though the targeted elite frequently patronize strip clubs, our visible presence must be sanitized and contained. “Sex workers are part of a city that is more open and less policed. But when a city is being forcibly hyper-gentrified by city and state governments, they have to be surveilled and controlled,” Moss says.

After the raids, I lamented to a friend, “It feels like they’re trying to clean up Bourbon Street.” She chuckled, “People don’t go to Bourbon Street for family fun.”

But that’s what people once thought of Times Square and Downtown Manhattan.

Stripping is protected by the First Amendment, but city councils have the power to curtail the industry through zoning if they can provide evidence of “secondary effects” that outweigh the right to self-expression.

The secondary effects doctrine is used to rob cities of strip clubs or push them out to the margins in gentrifying cities. And it doesn’t take much. Cities rely on slapdash reporting that claim clubs decrease property value, heighten crime, and more recently contribute to human trafficking. At best, these claims paint a picture of correlation rather than causation; at worst, they convince the public that strippers inflict harm on the community (and themselves).

This doesn’t just reshape the city, but changes who can be a stripper. Swift explains, “As cities try to limit the size and scope of the industry, they contribute to its monopolization.” Stringent regulations and club closures allow corporate strip clubs with big lawyers to prosper. And since strippers face fewer options for work, clubs get choosier, which looks like capping people of color and shutting the door on the tattooed and bigger-bodies workers.

The Insidious Planning That Goes Into Gentrification

Like the Blue Angel, three clubs that welcomed diversity in New Orleans shuttered during this round of police crackdowns. As cities gentrify, so do our clubs.

“Were there protests against the zoning ordinance?” I asked Delgado.

“We didn’t really have a voice,” she responded.

On February 4, 2018, though, something changed. The silenced stormed the political conversation and demanded a voice. Hundreds of workers took the streets in New Orleans to march for our jobs. We chanted “No new Bourbon Street” and “Bourbon Street, not Sesame Street.” I cried as allies joined — hopeful that maybe, for the first time, people will see that sex workers make valuable contributions to the city’s economy and culture.

“The protest in New Orleans was a break of tradition. For the first time there was a collective voice of dancers saying ‘No’ to being shuffled around by the city and targeted by police,” Swift says.

The protest reminded the city officials that there is a human cost to a sanitized city. And they heard — because on March 22nd they voted 4–3 against capping strip clubs. It was a landmark decision for the rights of strippers, but it’s not over. The secondary effects doctrine is alive and well, still threatening New Orleans, and more recently, Reno and the Bronx.

As long strippers are feared and devalued members of society, our bodies will be seen as a deterrent in gentrifying cities. In order to mitigate our threat, officials and police will regulate, criminalize, and dispose of us without a care.

In an address to the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), a non-profit which counts over 325,000 small business owners among its members, Vice President Mike Pence gushed that small businesses “create jobs. You provide a pathway of opportunity for generations of Americans. And you are literally the cornerstone of American communities from the smallest towns to the largest cities.” Paraphrasing President Donald Trump, Pence added that small businesses “embody the American pioneering spirit and remind us that determination can turn aspiration into achievement every single day.”

This veneration of small business is by no means specific to the Trump administration. A recent Gallup poll found that 70% of Americans have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in small business, compared to 21% for big business.

It’s little wonder that, in pushing its unpopular tax plan, Republicans have focused on how it will benefit scrappy mom-and-pop business owners. Trump crowed that his proposed tax cuts will benefit over 30 million small business owners, cutting their tax rate by 40%. Never mind that this isn’t true, and that one of the small business owners advocating his tax plan actually runs a lobbying firm for big business. His promises have sparked optimism among some small business owners, and gushing stories in conservative outlets about how his plan is helping the little guy. (It’s worth noting that support for small businesses is not entirely partisan, with liberals often using it to promote “buy local” campaigns — but it’s conservatives who exploit the reverence to achieve their tax-slashing aims.)

“I know that a small business is really all about family — whether it’s your immediate family, your extended family, or the family of your employees,” Pence said in his comments to the NFIB.

Even liberals may find it easy to buy into this vision of the earnest, family-run small business embodying everything that makes America great. But the fact is, many small businesses treat their employees just as poorly as more readily criticized corporations. And importantly, employees in these situations are often left with fewer resources to fight back.

The employer-employee relationship is inherently unbalanced; treating small business owners as the benevolent personification of the American dream just tips the scales even more in their favor. In a system that so adamantly favors small business owners, worker self-advocacy and unionization efforts can seem like a kind of betrayal.

This is a dangerous view — not the least because, as it turns out, small business owners don’t always treat their employees all that well.

The NFIB page, despite its cheery presentation of facts, isn’t actually very impressive. In “The Benefits of Working for a Small Business” infographic, under the headline “Major Benefits,” the association boasts that a mere 38% of small businesses offer a retirement plan, while 42% offer disability insurance and 25% offer dental. The survey that provides these numbers also reveals that 21% of respondents exempt all their employees from overtime pay, while only 53.2% offer overtime to all qualifying employees.

Meanwhile, 95% of large firms offer a retirement plan (and such plans are often better than those offered by small firms) and 89% offer dental. According to an analysis from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, an average 34.4% of employees at large firms have access to disability insurance, compared to 23.4% of workers at businesses with under 50 employees, and a mere 10.9% of those employed by businesses with 50–99 employees. As for overtime pay, the 2016 Obama overtime rule would have made it harder for small businesses (and businesses in general) to exempt employees by raising the salary threshold for overtime by 100%. This law, however, was struck down in late 2016, a defeat celebrated by the NFIB.

In fact, compared to large firms (over 500 employees), small businesses are consistently less likely to offer benefits, and 2017 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics find that access to benefits like health care, retirement, and paid leave decrease along with the size of the business. This is, of course, unsurprising, and it’s true that small businesses have a harder time meeting the costs of these benefits. But that fact does nothing for the workers going without health care and fair pay.

And it’s not just large corporations that find themselves embroiled in scandal — some high-profile labor cases have involved small businesses exploiting and mistreating immigrant workers. In 2012, Flaum Appetizing, a food distributor in Brooklyn, New York, paid a $577,000 settlement to 20 former employees, mostly Mexican immigrants, for withheld compensation. Workers were denied overtime for work weeks as long as 80 hours, and also endured discrimination and verbal abuse, including anti-immigrant comments, from senior management. From 2002 to 2003, there were a total of 1,441 lawsuitsagainst small businesses, with the most common reason being civil rights (15.7% of all cases).

In his August remarks, Pence declared that every member of the NFIB “has a story that springs straight out of the American dream.” But this dream — that the U.S. is a fundamentally fair meritocracy in which anyone can succeed through hard work and determination — is not reflected in small business demographics. In fact, 2013 data from the Small Business Administration show the same racial and class divides prevalent in all sectors of society. People of color are far more likely to be employees than owners, and owners’ education levels are comparatively high — 39.2% have a Bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 29.2% of their employees and 31% nationwide. Employees are also more likely than owners to have a high school degree or less. The same SBA report notes that the numbers of female and, especially, Hispanic business owners have increased over the years; even so, the idea of the small business as the embodiment of the American dream — at least, for anyone not already highly privileged — simply isn’t supported by the available data.

Yet still, the image persists — and so does the centering of small businesses in debates over worker rights. Not only are small businesses used as arguments against regulation, opponents of a $15 minimum wage often invoke the plight of small business owners as well. The Faces of 15 campaign, launched this year by the right-leaning think tank The Employment Policies Institute, profiles small business owners who have been forced to shut down, allegedly due to minimum wage increases. In short videos set to melancholy music, with frequent cuts to locked front doors and empty shelves, small business owners share their stories, often stating that, as much as they would like to pay their employees more, they simply aren’t able to. In some videos, former employees mourn the loss of their jobs. Notably, it is rarely just minimum wage increases that force closure; numerous owners refer to such increases as “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” But Faces of 15 never addresses the other straws.

From 2002 to 2003, there were a total of 1,441 lawsuits against small businesses, with the most common reason being civil rights.
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These concerns are, of course, legitimate — but so are the rights and livelihoods of workers. In these efforts to not only humanize, but glorify the small business owner, workers often disappear.

I corresponded with several small business employees about the labor abuses they have experienced. All asked that their last names be withheld, due primarily to fear of retaliation from their employers and people in their communities. While their experiences vary, all have faced obstacles in reporting violations and advocating for their rights, due in part to the image of the noble, well-meaning small business owner.

When she was 16, Emilee started working at a store that sold food and camping supplies in a state park and employed eight students (high school and college) each summer. For most, including Emilee, this was their first job. It was, she wrote via email, “a good situation compared to other prospects,” as the work was fairly easy and employees had significant latitude and free time. Yet Emilee also describes a toxic environment made possible by the exploitation of youthful naiveté and the manager’s community standing.

How To Survive A White Workplace As A Person Of Color
theestablishment.co

Basic cleaning and safety standards weren’t met — according to Emilee, “It was a running ‘joke’ that if the food safety inspector ever actually came out we’d all be out of a job in a heartbeat.” Employees received no breaks, no overtime, and had to underestimate total work time when clocking out. Sexual harassment was a pervasive problem: “The boss would rub the female employees’ shoulders, hug them frequently, [and] kiss them on their heads,” she says. When the girls, most of whom were underage, complained, the boss argued that “he knew most of the girls growing up so it couldn’t be inappropriate because the relationship was like a father/daughter, or so the claim went.”

Since there were no other supervisors and no HR department to field complaints, pursuing grievances would have required filing a lawsuit, which none of the young employees were empowered to do. Because the community was small — approximately 4,500 people — and the manager so well-respected, even disclosing their frustrations to others could result in pushback from people in the town and difficulty finding future employment. With regard to the sexual harassment, the female employees worried about being dismissed as lying attention-seekers: “It was young, underage girls against a married man with children who was also a revered community member.” That the manager was a teacher who had taught some of the employees in the past made it even harder for them to report infractions. Emilee says the boss “saw himself as a father figure to many of his employees […] and the converse was also true. Many of his employees felt a kinship to him.” Even those who didn’t feel this way “had a great deal of ambivalence about doing anything that might cast him in a bad light.”

If they had done so, they would have had to contend with a lack of community support. Emilee notes that people in small towns not only “know everyone’s business,” but that “everyone has an opinion — usually a very strong one — about everyone else’s business,” which can “concretize in behavior that can ultimately harm the complainants.” Thus, Emilee worried, “Would I be shut out from other jobs because public perception tends to favor men in situations of assault while framing women as liars? Would I even want to work in the community anymore because of the oppressive environment?” For her and many of her coworkers, she concludes, “it was a deeply unsettling, frustrating entrée into employment.”

Autumn works at a bridal shop with fewer than 10 employees. Though she was recently promoted to a manager position and still performs managerial tasks, she lost the promised title and wage increase after asking why she hadn’t received her overtime pay. According to Autumn, the owners told her “they would only pay me straight time, and that they were taking away my position because the ‘management position only seemed to corrupt.’” Lack of overtime pay is a persistent problem at Autumn’s workplace: “My previous manager consistently worked 90+ hour pay weeks and never received any overtime pay. However, she never complained about it, and […] I believe that’s why she was allowed to be kept on and I wasn’t.” The owners’ reason for denying overtime was that they couldn’t afford it — a common defense — but according to Autumn, “they built a million dollar house by the beachside” and “spend thousands of dollars on personal items for themselves.”

Autumn believes that “as far as pay goes we are all equally abused.” However, “any rude comments or distrust are directed mostly toward our employees of color.” The owners told one Black employee that “she looked ‘too ethnic’ when she came in the store wearing a head scarf, or when she came in with her natural hair”; when this employee called the owners’ comments offensive, they cut her hours to the point that she had to find a new job. And Autumn notes a clear double standard in the way the owners treat her, a white woman, compared to Black employees. For example, while Autumn received her key to the store within a month, “we have another Black employee who they’ve stated that they don’t trust with the key […] even though she managed multiple stores.”

This is not to suggest that all small business owners exploit or mistreat their employees. Even those who fail to compensate employees adequately or provide breaks don’t necessarily do so out of malice or disregard. Suzanne used to work at a daycare where staffing shortages often resulted in lack of breaks. This did not go unnoticed by administration, and the assistant director would add missed break time onto the staff’s total hours when doing payroll. “That was a nice thought,” Suzanne wrote in an email, “but not a solution. Still this was the only business where I actually believed that yes, the administration felt bad that this was occurring, and they did their best.”

Suzanne’s current workplace, an assisted living facility, “is a small family-owned business and they push the ‘homey’-ness factor of the place quite a lot, which I think makes them feel like they can ask more favors of us.” Suzanne has had to assert their rights numerous times, reminding the owners that, for example, paid breaks are mandated by law. “I think it surprises them that I would bring state requirements into their little homey business,” Suzanne says. Nonetheless, the facility “is viewed quite highly [in the community], and I too believe that regardless of these violations, it is one of the best places in the industry that I’ve worked with.”

‘As far as pay goes we are all equally abused.’
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But what the differences in these experiences show is that, for workers, finding a fair employer is largely a matter of chance. Furthermore, the lack of avenues for small business employees to file grievances means that one’s ability to self-advocate depends on factors like age, knowledge of labor law, and relative social capital. The more vulnerable a worker is — whether due to race, gender, documentation status, age, or disability — the less empowered they are to take action against exploitation and mistreatment. While Suzanne felt empowered to demand breaks, Emilee and her underage female coworkers didn’t even feel comfortable complaining to anyone outside the workplace. Autumn has both seen and experienced the financial repercussions of voicing her concerns to management. And factors like documentation status can make complaints dangerous to pursue.

Small business owners do face unique difficulties, including stiff competition from large competitors, and patronizing local businesses does benefit local economies by keeping money circulating within the community. But none of this excuses abuses against disempowered employees, and small businesses are not inherently ethical or fair. Furthermore, the policies small business owners are often used to advocate — conservative tax reform, ending the Affordable Care Act — overwhelmingly benefit big business.

Worker activism, then, must include not only employees at large firms, but small firms as well; and rather than merely “buy local,” consumers should educate themselves about the working conditions at local businesses. While concerns about the welfare of small businesses should factor into debates about the minimum wage and regulations, owners should not be privileged at the expense of workers. And we certainly shouldn’t push an inaccurate narrative so easily weaponized by anti-labor, big business advocates on the Right.

“Because of circumstances beyond my control, fate, and bad timing, I am underemployed and having to use the local food bank to help supplement my family’s grocery needs. I only go once a month and only take what we can use. While having to deal with my own embarrassment and shame, I find myself resentful of the other people there.

I get extremely angry when noticing people with expensive accessories and clothes vying for a limited number of resources, when I have had to sell pretty much everything I own just to stay in my apartment and keep my daughter in clothes and shoes. How can they justify coming for free food or other amenities while still owning an iPad, $500 purse, and more jewelry than Mr. T?

I am trying to contain my jealousy and downright envy, but it is difficult.

How can I avail myself of features that I need and still be civil? This is eating at me. I feel so guilty judging the others that I get nauseated when it is time for my trip. This is not me and I do not know where this attitude is coming from.”

— Via “Dear Prudence,” Slate, 15 August 2017

Dear Resentment,

There are two kinds of poor people: You, a good poor person who is experiencing poverty for reasons that only good people experience poverty, and the gaudily outfitted charlatans at the food pantry who have the bad kind of poorness that bad people who wear jewelry get. You are the only person on earth who has ever needed to use a food bank because of circumstances beyond your control, fate, and bad timing. Everybody else is at the food bank because they are foolish squanderers made of greed and avarice and personally derive joy from stealing food from your children. It’s not out of the bounds of reason to consider the fact that the entire food bank itself might have been constructed by people with nice purses specifically to troll you.

You can tell everything you need to know about another person’s entire financial situation by evaluating the accessories they wear, none of which could have been gifted, obtained secondhand, or purchased affordably as well-crafted imitations. It definitely does not behoove the bougie-butt kings of American heteropatriarchal capitalism to have the lowest-income people fighting each other over low-sodium cream of chicken soup instead of mutually supporting each other in an effort to dismantle the classist sociological strata that oppresses all but the richest among us, so it’s more likely that you’re the only person at the food bank who isn’t 100000% buck wild over the whole situation. What a wacky universe we would live in if this were just a super fucked-up culture that made people feel miserably ashamed of poverty and incentivized judgmental competition over basic necessities, instead of this just being another case of You vs. The Bad Poors.

“My wife has a diminishing sex drive and now continually making excuses as to why it is not a good time to be intimate. I am 69 and she is 61. She had breast cancer six years ago and this precludes her taking medication that may help. Do you have any advice — other than my taking on a discreet lover?”

— Via “Sexual Healing,” The Guardian, 31 July 2017

Dear 69-year-old,

The last thing you want to do is have a series of honest conversations with your wife about her sexual needs, your sexual needs, and how or whether you can mutually satisfy your disparate sexual needs as two respectful partners who wish for the other to experience their twilight years with joy and comfort. No indeed, taking a discreet lover is your only and best option. Nothing could be wiser or more necessary. A discreet lover is the sole solution to your problem. It’s not just a good idea, it’s imperative that you obtain a discreet lover instead of doing literally anything else.

“I’ve been dating this certain girl for eight months, and all of sudden she has gotten to where she now wants to hold hands in public. She is 22 and I am 24. Isn’t holding hands in public a little juvenile?”

— Via “Ask Willie D.,” Houston Press, 10 August 2017

Dear Holding Hands,

You’re young, so you may not know this yet: Women, who tend to be very childlike and frivolous, are prone to escalating relationships, often pressuring men to make extreme commitments before they’re ready. Holding hands in public after eight months of dating really puts you on the spot; it’s a lot to ask of a young man who’s just hoping to play the field and have a little fun before settling down into something more serious. Regardless, displays of affection have objective meanings on a universal scale of maturity understood and agreed upon by everyone, it seems, except for your girlfriend. Tell this young lady in no uncertain terms that you do not want to look like some kind of silly baby man by holding her hand at the mall; instead, settle down at the food court with your financial portfolio and spend a few responsible hours diversifying your investments together like the grown-ass adults you are.