"Would you like collateralized mortgage obligations with that?"
On Saturday, in the midst of a frenzied day of running errands, I stopped at a little gourmet shop to catch my breath and eat some lunch. As a former gourmet and natural food store owner, I am drawn to Mom-and-Pop places where I know that the food is prepared with an extra bit of thought and care. On this particular day, however, I found a real gem of a store owned by an energetic chef who prepared the most amazing salad I have ever tasted. Fresh, crisp greens with just the right blend of sweet and bitter flavors, succulent figs, crunchy walnuts, and two tiny rounds of creamy goat cheese - if only every salad could taste this good. Quality ingredients do matter.
It was late in the afternoon—that restful time in the food business between the lunch rush and the early dinner crowd—so I had a chance to chat with the proprietor. I’m always curious to hear the story behind the decision to open a small grocery store, especially given the difficulty of competing with the big chain stores in an industry that has such small profit margins.
During the course of our conversation, I learned that this 40-something proprietor was once a fast-track, Wall Street financial wizard. As a young woman, she thought that investment banking would be her dream job, but after years of the daily New Jersey to New York commute, only to sit among a bunch of take-no-prisoners colleagues, she was fed up and exhausted. The job paid well, but it drowned her spirit and ate at her soul. So, when she couldn’t stand the misery any longer, she decided to do what she always really wanted to do—but was discouraged from doing because, after all, she was the smart girl who could do higher-level math—which was become a chef. She exchanged designer suits for checkered pants and went off to culinary school where she improved her technique and expanded her repertoire, and even more importantly, restored her health and rebuilt her spirit.
We talked about her experience in culinary school, which was very similar to my experience in massage school. How can you not enjoy your classmates when they come from all walks of life, bring to the classroom a rich assortment of perspectives and experiences, and cook food for you—or massage your feet? But this sort of training isn’t just feel-good fluff. This chef, with two semesters of calculus on her traditional school transcript, was surprised by just how much science she had to learn to be successful in culinary school in the same way that my former massage-school classmates had been shocked by the difficulty of the anatomy and physiology classes they were required to take in order to practice safely and effectively.
After culinary school, she spent time as an apprentice cooking on a boat, and then worked in catering before opening her gourmet shop four years ago. She took me on a flavor tour of her store, telling me how and why she selected certain products. For her, food is so much more than a way to make a living. Food is how she expresses the core of her being. It is how she shows others that she cares for them and that she wants the best for them in their own lives—even if they are otherwise complete strangers.
As I drove home after lunch, I thought about how interesting it was that this chef/proprietor was the third person in the course of four or five days who told me about her transition from a prestigious legal or finance career to a job that some would see as just a notch above manual labor—especially if the job was held by a person who hadn’t previously been educated at an elite university. Earlier in the week, I learned from a friend that his Yale undergrad/Harvard law school wife was leaving her hoity-toity law firm to start a gardening and landscape business. And just a few days before that, I ran into one of my gym buddies who spoke joyfully about the transition she is making from law (she is a partner at a well respected D.C. firm) to personal training. One could argue that their power careers had provided them the financial security to make the transition to lower paying work, but such is not the case. All three of these women have financial responsibilities that require them to work and their career change either did or will require them to make lifestyle changes.
I thought back to a 2003 New York Times article by Lisa Belkin in which she wrote about the Opt-Out Revolution among Ivy-educated women. These were the smart girls, the chosen few, the ones who were once on the fast track to fame and fortune, until they got there and decided to walk away from it either to raise children or pursue some other interest. Like the finance guru turned chef, the lawyer turned trainer, or the lawyer turned landscaper, these women came to understand that the world of work isn’t exactly what they thought it would be—despite their straight A’s and perfect SAT scores—and they exercised their right to walk away. Good for them.
But what if instead of being women of privilege, any of these individuals had been a low-income woman from a disadvantaged background? What if she had been a woman of color? Would Martha Stewart feature this woman in her magazine—as she so frequently does the perfectly coiffed, shabby-chic attired, lawyer-turned-organic beet farmers among us? Would these less-advantaged women be held up as role models for those who are burned out from years of pressing their nose against the glass ceiling? I don’t think so. Instead, the ever-so-caring thought leaders of today would probably make some glib comment about the futility of a poor woman having such … clear your throat … aspirational goals.
Somehow it’s OK for those in academic circles to encourage students who can’t pass high-school chemistry to aspire to cure cancer, or who can’t pass 8th-grade algebra to aspire to be a famous scientist, or who can’t write a complete sentence to play college ball on the way to the pros, but just let a woman who has been cooking for her friends, family, or church for decades talk about becoming a chef, and watch how quickly the elite will put a kibosh on her dreams.
We don’t talk about the obligations of those who have enjoyed the advantages of a heavily taxpayer-subsidized elite education at a selective institution (even those who pay the full sticker price enjoy significant tuition subsidies from taxpayer largess). We set them up nicely, give them the best that higher education can offer, and then congratulate them for having good values when they decide to leave the world of work for whatever reason … or to never enter it in the first place. If they elect to take a low-paying job in the developing world and put their loan payments on hold, even better.
But let a poor woman dare to pursue her dreams, and all of a sudden our otherwise politically correct thought leaders start talking about her obligation to the taxpayer, as if her decision to raise children or care for parents or pursue a job she loves, even if the starting salary isn’t great, makes her a selfish deadbeat. Some are simply quick to assume that if she isn’t working, it’s because she wasn’t very competent, or bright, or well trained in the first place. For poor women, unemployment—including voluntary unemployment—is seen as the sure sign of failure.
I guess in the egalitarian world of work and higher education, some people are just more equal than others. Does this mean that Yale and Harvard need to adjust their Web site to make sure that future students know that some are using their $200,000-plus education to be … well … gardeners? Just how much does my lawyer-turned-gardener friend need to earn before she can be counted among the ranks of the gainfully employed?
9 Responses to Double Standards in the Egalitarian World of Work and Higher Education
goxewu - November 18, 2010 at 10:38 am
1. Could Ms. Auer Jones be a little more specific about “politically correct thought leaders”? A couple of names, a couple of quotes? Do we [scare quotes following>>] “certainly know who they are”?
2. “The elite” is even more vague than “politically correct thought leaders.” And they supposedly “put the kibosh” on a woman who wants to turn her domestic cooking talents into a living. Does Ms. Auer Jones have anything remotely resembling a specific instance of this? (I somehow suspect that if she does, it’ll involve the overregulating of small business, e.g., a hypothetical Mrs. Jones being hounded by health inspectors.)
2. There’s a difference, isn’t there, between a woman exchanging high-powered job (A) for more self-fulfilling, lower-paying job (B), and simply deciding not to enter the workplace and to stay home and raise children? Not that staying home and raising children is necessarily a bad choice, but it implies somebody else in the household being in the workforce and earning enough to support the entire family. Except in the “elite” classes Ms. Auer Jones otherwise condemns, the paterfamilias single breadwinner has become something of a rarity.
3. If a “poor woman” elects to stay home and raise children, this means either a) raising the children in poverty, or b) some kind of public assistance (a.k.a. “welfare”) that would raise her family’s economic situation somewhat. Which does Ms. Auer Jones prefer?
4. Since Ms. Auer Jones’s prologue in this post is personal, one is prompted to ask: 1) What made Ms. Auer Jones go in the other direction, from a presumably lower-paying, self-fulfilling job as the owner of a health-food store, ultimately into a higher-power, higher-paying job as CEO of The Washington Campus? 2) Is she inspired by the gourmet-shop owner to give up the higher-paying CEO job and do herself what she praises in others?
marktropolis - November 18, 2010 at 10:44 am
Call my a cynic, but my guess is that this column is a precursor to an upcoming piece: one that says something about how it’s unreasonable to hold those for-profit schools for employment outcomes, since it’s perfectly reasonable for individuals to go to school for one thing, and then get a job in something else.
Except that the for-profits are marketing themselves as job-training enterprises, and are recruiting individuals based on their alleged job-placement record. So, please, new recruit, take out more student loans than you need. And come get this degree that actually won’t get you a job, so you’ll graduate up to your eyeballs in debt with no prospect for a job.
But I’m getting ahead of myself…
lsadc - November 19, 2010 at 9:30 am
I agree with some of the other comments. This column is setting up a straw man of elite thought leaders who criticize low-income women without offering any evidence to support this claim.
sisgett - November 19, 2010 at 9:45 am
Precisely, lsadc.
dank48 - November 19, 2010 at 1:28 pm
I can’t agree with the above comments. For starters, I really don’t think there’s a lot of doubt who the elite are: the politicians, professors, and pundits whose thoughts are regularly brought before us in the “leading” journals and of course television.
Unless I’m totally misreading this, Ms. Auer Jones is comparing how society (i.e. the commentators who are supposedly thought leaders) looks at women who decide on a change of direction in their lives. It’s all determined by what passes for class in this country today, namely money. As she says, let an Ivy League grad with an astronomical income, high-powered job, and all the usual accouterments “go quality of life on us,” and that’s considered admirable. A less well-educated, less-affluent woman is considered fair game for criticism–just as some comments above demonstrate.
It comes down to this, imo: other people’s life decisions are none of our business, regardless of whether they’re rich or poor. Forty-some years of what began as The Great Society has convinced some people that they know what’s best for anyone whose income compares unfavorably with their own.
The paternalistic attitude exhibited by the Becks and Limbaughs and other mean-spirited right-wingers, which is rightly despised by so many in these columns, is not somehow become sanitized when it emanates from a leftish, perhaps female commentator whose viewpoint, however well-intentioned, is probably just as foreign to the subject of their concern as that of the right wing.
J. S. Mill, again imo, got it right (please pardon memory lapses here): “If a man be possessed of a tolerable degree of experience and maturity, his own way of laying out his life is the best, not because it is in itself the best, but because it is his own way.” And I have no doubt that he’d have made it gender-neutral in this century.
marktropolis - November 19, 2010 at 2:09 pm
dank48, my point, at least, was pointing out that Ms. Jones is a lobbyist for a corporation that is currently under investigation for how it serves *exactly* the population she’s allegedly defending.
p.s., she *is* one of “the commentators who are supposedly thought leaders.” That’s what she gets paid for.
goxewu - November 19, 2010 at 4:39 pm
Re dank48:
* I hardly think that “the politicians, professors, and pundits whose thoughts are regularly brought before us in the “leading” journals and of course television” constitute, in the sense that Ms Auer Jones meant it (a consensus from on high), an “elite.” That’d make, say, Harry Reid, Glenn Beck, David Horowitz, Maureen Dowd, Noam Chomsky, Anne Coulter and Curtis Sliwa part of a united front. (And the scare quotes around “leading” in regard to journals is a little Know-Nothing-ish.)
* The Ivy-League-affluent mark of success, contrasted with the attributes of “less well-educated, less affluent” are equally, if not more so, applied to men in our society. Testosterone, y’know. As to choosing no career at all: If a woman two houses down the street is a stay-at-home mom, one thinks little of it. Au contraire, if the man two houses down the block is a stay-at-home dad, one thinks a lot about it. Oh sure, we’re all open-minded about the potential virtues of stay-at-home dads, but, c’mon, they’re guilty until proven innocent.
* No formal survey evidence here, but my impression is that op-ed and TV news segments on women “who decide on a change of direction in their lives” run equally in both directions in terms of admiration. The high-powered, highly paid female CEO or COO or CFO who gives all that up to follow her gourmet bliss run a little deli is treated no less warm-and-fuzzily than the inner-city single mother of four who stays awake twenty hours a day to put herself through night school and become district manager of a surgical instruments company (or whose candied yams homemade for her relatives become a thriving catering business), proving that any dream can come true if you work hard enough, etc., etc.
* I have to admit I don’t quite understand what dank48 is talking about when he says, “Forty-some years of what began as The Great Society has convinced some people that they know what’s best for anyone whose income compares unfavorably with their own.” What, the “elite” are forcing food stamps, ADC, Head Start, job training, extended unemployment benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, and other toxins down the throats of poorer people who just want the Government to leave them alone so they can pull themselves up by the bootstraps? While I’m familiar with the complaints of conservatives who don’t want their hard-earned money over-taxed and the proceeds handed over to lazy welfare queens, the idea of poorer people not wanting help advocated by the “elite” is somewhat new to me.
* Might dank48 furnish an example of an “elite” leftish female commentator concurring with Glen Beck or Rush Limbaugh concerning the economic and social mobility of women? Over here in the “Brainstorm” threads, we’re still waiting for Professor Essig and livefreeordie2 to join hands on anything.
* If you peer into the muddy waters of Ms. Auer Jones’s piece (I showed a few friends, not all of them as lefty-wannebe-elite as I am, and all of them had a hard time making heads or tails of exactly where she was going with it), you’ll begin to make out, near the bottom, the subtext: Big Government is bad for poorer women seeking to change direction; the ones who want to work their ways up the corporate ladder have their incentive sapped by welfare, and the ones who want to make a few bucks running food carts are hamstrung by over-regulation, snoopy inspectors, and taxes on small business. dank48, who’s evidenced a libertarian streak in the past, may buy into this. I don’t. A whole lot of families shouldn’t go without welfare so that a few bootstrappers are motivated by fear of malnourishment and eviction to move into white-collardom, and unregulated small businesses are a greater detriment to society than some owners of them who feel constrained.
dank48 - November 19, 2010 at 5:12 pm
Nuts. It seems to me the point is pretty clear, regardless of my appalling libertarian streak or whatever other doubtful provenance the essay may have.
goxewu - November 21, 2010 at 10:06 am
I didn’t say “appalling” in regard to a libertarian streak, and wouldn’t. I was simply speculating that dank48′s seeming to agree with Ms. Auer Jones on her seeming (yes, this is all a bit of tea-leaf reading) point about Government (the official arm, I gather, of “politically correct thought leaders”), is part and parcel of that streak.
I don’t understand “provenance” in regard to Ms. Auer Jones’s essay. Is there some doubt that it came from her own hand, or was published somewhere else before its appearance on “Brainstorm”?