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Hanna Rosin’s The End of Men was this summer’s gender meme: it’s hard to say that women are, across the board, oppressed in America when they graduate from all levels of education at higher rates than men and when the recession is killing traditionally male jobs left and right.
You only have to watch Mad Men to see how far we have and haven’t come. Do people still sometimes act like that? Of course. But, today, Peggy Olson could go start her own firm. On her laptop. In her apartment. The real Peggy Olsons of the 1960′s couldn’t: until the 1968 Truth in Lending Act (and the 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which allowed married women to obtain credit without their husbands’ signatures), it was completely legal for a banker to tell you to your face that they don’t lend to women, or that you’d really better bring in your father if you want a loan. Ditto on the commercial real estate agent, etc.
Obviously, we live in a wildly different landscape. Rosin suggests in The Atlantic that women may actually be better-equipped to succeed in the modern economy:
“The postindustrial economy is indifferent to men’s size and strength. The attributes that are most valuable today—social intelligence, open communication, the ability to sit still and focus—are, at a minimum, not predominantly male. In fact, the opposite may be true.”
Of course, there are still localized pockets of gender discrimination all over the place — against women on Wall Street, against men who want to work with young children, etc. But this column is about class, and I mention the changing gender dynamic of the workplace to point out one thing: there are a lot more women working on Wall Street than there are people whose families couldn’t afford braces.
Here’s a really quick quiz that has a bit to do with social class in America. When you were growing up, did you ever see your parents shake hands? With anyone? Ever?
I never did. The idea of genially touching a stranger is a class marker in itself. My dad was in the military; my mom stayed home. In the Navy, you salute people who are above you. Or you just say things, in normal words, without touching people. (At least that was my understanding as a child). And I’ve never seen my mom shake hands in her life. She wasn’t ambitious, and why would you shake hands with a stranger when you have no interest in using that person to better your own position?
People shake hands because they’re in a business situation, of course, and because everyone else does. Often, shaking hands indicates the start of some cordial, functional relationship based on something other than actual affinity or friendship. Shaking hands can be a way of saying, “We all understand that we will follow certain conventions of getting things done by smoothing out the edges of this interaction as much as possible.” It’s two people putting their tails between their legs at the same time.
If you’re from a certain kind of background, you react with some alarm and uncertainty at a high school debate tournament when some Brooks Brothers-clad kid sticks out his hand as though it’s the most natural thing in the world. I mean, really: just like you have to learn to use a fork, at some point someone has to teach you which hand to use. It’s not automatic.
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I read this article when it was published and applied it to my job. I read it again tonight and applied it to my boyfriend. Things make so much more sense now.
Your exercise about “when you’ve seen your parents shake hands” made me smile because my response was so off from what you, I assume, wanted. The times I can remember my parents shaking hands are with my aunt and my uncle. And I learned how to shake hands from that aunt and uncle, when I was like five. Granted, my aunt and uncle were not born in America, although they lived here since their teens. They’re Eastern European, and to them, a hand shake is a sign of respect and you respect your family, just like you respect your business partners. At least, that’s how I took it?
I loved reading this. My parents were, actually, white collar, but being foreign is often similar to being blue collar in terms of cultural things. I am highly uncomfortable in my white collar job (I’m a teacher) and hate with a passion every single meeting I attend. At the last one, I couldn’t help but make faces of disgust and it wasn’t until afterwards that I realized that I probable offended at least a few of my co-workers. It’s funny too because we’re supposed to teach our students how to work effectively in groups and collaborate and come up with answers, but I find that some of my co-workers unconsciously teach white collared vagueness. But then they get annoyed when our students are vague on assessments… I’m rambling now, but this piece gave me a lot to think about, so thank you! I will also definitely be checking out the book too.
I think I just read a 100% correct explanation of why I completely failed at my first corporate job.
Calling stupid projects stupid? Check. Saying what I meant? Check. Resenting people who had it easier than me although I was better at my job than them, and making no fucking secret about any of my feelings? Check.
I’ll have to read that book.
I LOVE Bullish! This is such an interesting article. I definitely grew up white-collar, but I worked as a waitress for seven years before my first professional job. Working in restaurants I was always too meek, too polite with my coworkers. Now as a young professional, I’m either clumsily calling out the elephant in the room (or meeting) or biting my tongue while stupidity runs amok. The fact that I have to handle my desperately insecure superiors with kid gloves is just baffling to me. And what is up with bosses’ insecurity, anyway? I recently watched a coworker, who I thought was pretty down to earth, go through a Jekel/Hyde-like transformation when he got promoted. wtf?
Wow. As a person who grew up blue-collar (at best), I’ve always known that it’s subtle behavioral differences that mark the classes in American culture, but this: “people will hate you if you are receiving things that you didn’t earn” blew me away.
Holy crap dude, way to nail it. That statement summed up an entire unease that I’ve always felt around those with more entitled attitudes. It simply never occurred to me that others from more affluent backgrounds wouldn’t naturally feel in agreement with that statement, because it’s such a no-shit-sherlock sentiment among all the people I knew growing up (who were unsurprisingly, blue collar, working class, or straight up broke).
I’m psyched to go read that book now.
Here is my class marker question: If you offer something to someone, do you care whether or not they accept it? When I was working in a wage job, my boss once offered me a home-made treat, and I said no thank you because I assumed she only wanted to share with her friends, and just included me to be polite. But she was clearly offended that I didn’t accept her generosity. The way I was raised, you’re always offering things to people, but it’s mostly to show you’re considerate, not because you want people to experience your generosity.
I don’t think it is. I had blue-collar parents and I care if someone accepts a treat. I was also taught that you always take a little of what is offered and at least try it (barring allergies). In our house it was “always offer, always accept.”
Wait. Jen. The Post is the record of history. You don’t just “trade” something that is true and good and real for some slutty grey lady who is 74 million in debt. She only wants you for your subscription money.
Ha! You can’t beat a paper that gangs up on its readers for having to look up “Kristallnacht”. From http://topics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/50-fancy-words/ (an article about the 50 most looked-up words on the NYT site):
“Kristallnacht” is there — somewhat surprisingly, I thought — along with “omertà” and “renminbi.” “Hubris,” “crèches” and “démarche” are foreign words that seem firmly established in English, but that still present hurdles for many readers.
“Kristallnacht,” seriously? I’d say the NYT uses a ton of much harder words than that…my eighth grade math teacher told us that the NYT is written on an eighth grade level and that therefore she was making it her business to teach us a word from it every day, and some of those words were seriously tough. “Kristallnacht” is a word you learn in high school history during one of the many units on the Holocaust.
Reading this article has forced me to come to terms with the fact that I am totally not blue collar.
This is really interesting. I wouldn’t exactly call my upbringing blue-caller (my parents owned a newspaper, albeit a weekly in a very small town) but we definitely weren’t WASPy and the part about anger really hit home. Good to know it can be useful.
blue-collar* Ugh, caffeine is rotting my brain.
Growing up, my dad told me that when I was doing business with someone I should smile warmly and then shake their hand as though their fingers were a baby bird I was trying to crush to death. It was so they would know who was in charge. I’m still not sure whether this is great and/or terrible advice.