Thursday, December 22, 2005
Rich people
Generally, I find that I can tell if someone I know is wealthy or comes from a wealthy family by the way that they spend or talk about money. One of my friends recently told me that she judges how wealthy people are from the condition of their teeth which seemed to me just as good as my test. What ways if any do you determine wealth or class? Do you think that it's important?
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3 comments:
Pierre Bourdieu has a lot to say on this. His term is "bodily hexis" for the way culture and class is "inscribed" upon people's bodies - the way they walk and talk and move. See Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991).
well from a less sophisticated point of view, in the UK the dentistry you'd think would hold. The state dentists here are on the whole pretty poor, private dentists cost a fortune. On top of that you can pay for hygenists, whitening teeth etc etc. However I've met plenty of rich people with poor looking teeth, possibly because they smoke and drink too much...
Ken
Definitely based on how they spend/talk about money, especially what they think is or is not expensive.
When I tell people I am so broke right now, I can tell if they are poor (or grew up poor) by how the respond -- only poor kids get what that really means, that is, I am past the point of no beer and no going out to eat, and on to the point of "How do I pay the electric bill and have money left over to eat?"
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