About Me. End of Story. Done.

So first of all, I definitely started reading this chapter with a closed mind. I personally thought the author needed to follow her rules and stick to them and actually live the rough life, not this easy crap of let me start with $1300, lots of books, and a car. Knowing all this, I had a feeling I was going to be very judgmental of some of the decisions she was going to make. The author then goes on to describe her type of surroundings as what seems to be a 100% white population. White people everywhere, even doing the “dirty work” such as driving cabs, serving/ making the food in restaurants, and even being maids in hotels. She is getting into a region that is going to benefit only her. Now, I am not trying to be racist in any way by saying this, but I have generally heard statistics that many families living below the poverty line are Hispanic. So as a journalist trying to “make it” a month in a town just like her, it may not benefit the overall standings of what her results will produce.

However, that was my voice going into the beginning of the chapter. But as she started to look for jobs, I started to be extremely appalled when racism against her came into effect by others of the same ethnicity/ color. Like what’s up with that?! So she becomes a maid cleaning wealthy estates and is surprised by the lack of cleanliness actually done by the maids to fool the residents of each room as if it is a different hoax to complete behind each bedroom and bathroom door.  [I like that line…(:] anyways, she sees that they only clean what can be seen by the naked eye or felt by a hand on countertops. personally, it is surprising that these maids care so little about wiping things down or polishing, but care so much about folded toilet paper, combing the fringes of the Persian carpet or vacuuming a certain way. If you are not going to care, why bother? I mean really, if you care so little about cleanliness, why actually focus on making things look like you care? This whole cleaning theory is just unsanitary. 

I’m a little worried about some of the connections I make between maids and minorities in the United States as well as maids and invisibility. For starters, Ehrenreich is judgmental, well maybe more pre-assuming that all the ladies who worked as maids and did the “dirty work” such as mentioned before, that they were all Hispanic, or not Caucasian. Basically saying and showing that most people just assume that these jobs are not typically held by “white people”. However, in this day and age, the Caucasian race is starting to turn into a minority, and maybe, just maybe, Caucasian people will continue to do the dirty work more. It is already portrayed here that the Caucasian race is dividing itself into a minority and a majority. One looking down upon the other, pretty soon, there will hardly be an elitist group. Just a futuristic thought. Secondly, I find a big connection between maids and invisibility. When Ehrenreich describes cleaning a rich person’s estate she says “–that their floors are cleaned with only the purest of fresh human tears?” (Ehrenreich 89). Tears are clear and transparent, also known as invisible, which is also similar to chemicals used to clean things up. When someone is crying, generally someone tries to care, but these rich people see them cry or even sweat [which is a body crying] and do not care. Simply because, once they are gone, they do not care about the girls; they only care about how clean their house is. They only care about themselves and what comes back to benefit him or herself. 

This chapter opened up a lot more with this book and definitely told me not to fully prejudge Ehrenreich because things did get more challenging for her.