Every so often, I hear someone joke that if you compliment a woman on her dress, there’s a 95 percent chance she will respond, “Thanks, it has pockets!”
My response to that compliment is typically something like, “Thanks — it was only ten dollars!”
I remember a time last year when I answered a friend’s compliment in a similar way, and she laughed and said, “Every time I compliment you on your clothes, you always tell me you got them on sale!”
It was one of those comments that seemed inconsequential at the time. I wasn’t hurt, but I began to stop myself before responding that way in the future.
I was struck by her simple observation and the meaning it carried, even though I don’t think her intent was to harm. Other people, she meant without saying, don’t feel the need to declare how cheaply they bought their clothes. Maybe that isn’t something they think about, or maybe they feel the need to declare the opposite. In contrast, I’m always proud of a good deal. Before she made that comment, I didn’t think there was anything strange about sharing that with other people.
The idea of status symbols and the way we express social standing through our belongings and appearance is not unfamiliar. It can also seem like a juvenile concept — that only kids and young adults care about the brand name of their winter jacket or what it means to have an iPhone instead of an Android.
It seems that
Enter Congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The politician hailing from the Bronx has been making waves since the day she announced she was running for Congress, and much to the delight of her fans — I mean, constituents — she has only gotten bolder since she arrived in Washington.
Washington, D.C. is a place of highly concentrated power and wealth, but this has not stopped Ocasio-Cortez from being vocal about her upbringing. Her father passed away while she was in college, and her mother worked as a housekeeper and bus driver in order to keep the family afloat. After she graduated from college, she worked as a waitress to keep the banks from seizing her family’s home.
When she arrived for congressional orientation, she didn’t waste any time before making headlines. She tweeted and live streamed on Instagram the behind-the-scenes details of her first days on the Hill, sharing experiences with her followers that usually go untold. She has made a point to ignore the status quo and make her own political norms. Certainly, no other politician has talked policy while making a meal on Instagram Live, which Ocasio-Cortez has been doing recently.
Combine a willingness to accept her identities with social media savvy, and the Democratic Party has itself a new darling. Honestly, it’s hard to resist: Ocasio-Cortez combines the razor-sharp wit of a millennial with political smarts (enough to topple Joe Crowley, the
The fearlessness of this Congresswoman-elect has not gone unnoticed or uncriticized. The tension reached a boiling point when conservative blogger Eddie Scarry tweeted a picture of Ocasio-Cortez from
This leads me to ask two questions, one more significant than the other. First: What does the coat of a girl who ‘struggles’ look like?
Ocasio-Cortez’s critics are saying that she has talked the talk, now they expect her to walk the walk. In other words, she must display visible signs of her economic background or her claims are not valid. We must all be able to view, and verify for ourselves, that she struggles as much as she says she does.
In a response to the tweet, Ocasio-Cortez said it best herself: “If I walked into Congress wearing a sack, they would laugh & take a picture of my backside. If I walk in with my best sale-rack clothes, they laugh & take a picture of my backside.”
Her critics would not have been satisfied had she shown up to the nation’s capital with a Goodwill tag still hanging from her coat. And that leads me to the more important question: why does what a congresswoman wears matter, especially one who claims to be working class?
In this situation, I empathize deeply with Ocasio-Cortez. A person who has never felt the need to disguise their social class can never understand the
Ocasio-Cortez wore a fancy coat to Congress. Can we blame her for wanting to fit in? The structure of power in Congress, nor in politics in general, has not been designed for a person like her — or for me. I fiercely admire her for bringing what I like to call "clearance rack representation" to Congress, and being unashamed of it. She is willing to admit that she does not have the same economic background as many other politicians, and Washington, D.C. is better off because of that honesty. By being herself, Ocasio-Cortez holds up a mirror and makes Congress consider its own elitism.
As a low-income student studying political science, I have already seen the way wealth gives others a leg up when it comes to political opportunities. For instance, wealthier students with political aspirations are more easily able to take unpaid internships at the Capitol instead of working a minimum-wage service job, giving them a leg up in both experience and connections. I know that the road will be more difficult for me than for others, but politicians like her give me hope that Congress is slowly becoming more representative of all people.
Ocasio-Cortez should be known for her progressively bold ideas and policies, like the “Green New Deal,” and before this misguided tweet, she was. She wants to be in the room where it happens. But she also has the self-awareness to realize that in Washington, there is no access to power if you don’t conform at least a little bit. For those of us on the outside, we can only hope that once she gets this power, she'll use it to dismantle the systems that have kept people like us out of politics for so long. Her term is only just beginning, but I think she’s going to give D.C. more than what it bargained for.
Izzy is a sophomore studying political science. Do you think representation of many economic backgrounds is important to politics? Send all comments to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
