The 100 by 30 project

"Deep down, they believe they should be like the Native Americans and use every part of the product or beast they have consumed."

Sure, I'm probably late to the party, but I love "Stuff White People Like" as much as everyone else. A few of my favorites are:

1. "Gifted" Children.
   

   White people love “gifted” children, do you know why? Because an astounding 100% of their kids are gifted!  Isn’t that amazing?

   I’m pretty sure the last non-gifted white child was born in 1962 in Reseda, CA.  Since then, it’s been a pretty sweet run.

   The way it works is that white kids that are actually smart are quickly identified as “gifted” and take special classes and eventually end up in college and then law school or med school.

   But wait, aren’t there white people who aren’t doctors or lawyers, or even all that smart?

   Well, here is another one of those awesome white person win-win situations.

   Because if a white kid gets crappy grades and can’t seem to ever do anything right in school, they are still gifted! How you ask? They are just TOO smart for school. They are too creative, too advanced to care about the trivial minutiae of the day to day operations of school.

2. Japan.
   
   Though there is full white consensus on a number of white things, there is perhaps nothing that draws more universal white acclaim than the island nation of Japan.  It should be noted, that some white people harbor SOME ill will toward Japan because of whaling, killing dolphins or Nanking.  But those are generally considered isolated incidents that do not indict the entire nation.
   ....
   It is a dream for them to go over seas and actually live in Japan. This helps them not only because it fills their need to travel, it will enable them to gain important leverage over other white people at Sushi restaurants where they can say “this place is pretty good, but living in Japan really spoiled me.  I’ve had such a hard time finding a really authentic place.”   
   
   
3. Plays.
   

   It is not known if white people actually enjoy plays or if they are just victims of massive peer pressure from the 45% of white people who have acted in a play at some point in their life.

   The only real advice around this subject is to never accept an invitation from a white person to go see a play.  Often times you will be supporting their friend or cousin and then get stuck with a $45 ticket (at least) and three hours of trying to figure how close you are to the end.

4. Bicycles.
   
   But there is a special category of bicycles that appeal far more to white women, the European city bike (pictured). White women have a lot of fantasies about idealized lives, and one of them is living in Europe and riding around an old city on one of these bikes. They dream about waking up and riding to a little cafe, then visiting bakeries and cheese shops and finally riding home to prepare a fancy meal for their friends who will all eat under a canopy with white Christmas lights. This information can be used to help gain the trust/admiration of a white woman, especially if you can pull off a lie about how your mother told you about how she used to do all of these things when she was younger.

Most of these had me dissolving in giggles, often because of self-recognition (for one, I love plays, or as we're supposed to say, "live theater"); the only really "ouch, truth hurts" moment was the comment about the unused KitchenAid mixer. Why did we let ourselves register for that stupid contraption?

OK, at least I'm no more of an a-hole than '60 Minutes'

Unsurprisingly, there was a piece on the real estate crisis on '60 Minutes' tonight. But I was interested to see an angle that I've always felt but rarely articulate because it makes me feel like I sound like a complete jerk. But here it is:

Why is it so tragic that so many people are losing their homes?

Certainly, it used to be tragic when someone lost a home. But why was that? The tragedy was that the family had been there for quite some time, and that they were losing their down-payment and the equity they'd built.

But if the people losing their homes are primarily recipients of no-downpayment mortgages on which they were never paying enough to actually pay off the loan (e.g. either interest only or ARMs they couldn't possibly afford once they reset): is losing their home tragic? While it's certainly a pain to have to move, they've likely spent a couple of years in a home paying far less than they would have had to pay rent on a comparable home. And if they pulled "equity" out of the home, they might have even made money on the whole experience.

And, you know, I'm not angry at these people. I'm really not. I think the banks are as much to blame. McMansions an hour's commute from work aren't really my bag, anyway.

But I certainly don't think it's tragic.

You'd never know that she didn't go on for a PhD:

From Megan McArdle:

"Academics are terrible, terrible snobs about certain forms of consumption, and painfully few of them are aware that these tastes are class markers, not ordinal virtue rankings written into the fabric of the universe at the beginning of time."

Luxury in price only

I found this this article on luxury goods very interesting. It is a review of a book that claims that "luxury" goods (mostly clothing) no longer come with a level of quality, durability, and craftsmanship that is commensurate with their price tag. In other words, you really are buying it just for the label.

For some goods, this is clear to anyone -- obviously a designer T-shirt is not something that becomes a family heirloom. But being someone who never has and never will own a $3000 purse, I wouldn't have guessed that this might hold true in general.

At my particular price point, there still is a clear correlation between price and quality. The difference in craftsmanship between a pair of pants from Old Navy and one from J. Crew is significant. For some of my goods, the durability actually increases a price decreases, but that's due to the cheaper synthetic material being hardier, e.g. my pleather Nine West purse has survived things in years of daily use that would have stained or deconditioned real leather.

Summer glow

I'm really enjoying my summer too much to think or worry about money. Even when I do, I rarely do anything practical like calculate change in my net worth or figure out how quickly I can pay off the student loans if I increase my monthlies by $100 -- more often I sit around calculating how much I would have to make so that A. could stay home with the kids yet we could still afford this house:

 

Answer: About $90k.

Let's play pretend.

If I were a student in, say, sociology or cultural studies women's studies or social anthropology, you know what I'd want to research? The phenomenon of women pushing for, helping to select, and possibly even helping to pay for an engagement ring, and then concocting some elaborate scheme in which they are "surprised" by an engagement and a ring that they know very well has been sitting in the sock drawer.

Am I the only one who thinks that's fucking bizarre? It's a bit like planning your own surprise party, and then when the guests jump out from behind the couch, you all have to pretend as if you had no idea.

In other news, the job -- the one in which I'm not a sociologist -- is going wonderfully. I could not be more thrilled, and there's ample evidence that the feeling is mutual.

Building a professional wardrobe (with pics!)

The advice I was given about dress for my summer job is "business casual, but you should wear a suit on the first day", suggesting that they lean to the business side of business casual.

I've been a graduate student for two years, and worked in research for four years before that. My business casual wardrobe is non-existent, so I've been doing a lot of shopping.

Here's what I've settled on:

1. Three of these wrinkle-free, tall stretch shirts from Eddie Bauer. At $5 extra for the tall, they're $54.50 each (but if these are half as great as my husband's wrinkle-free dress shirts from L.L. Bean, they're well worth the price).
   
2. These wrinkle-free chinos from Eddie Bauer at $54.50 (again, $5 extra for the tall!)
   
3. This lightweight wool twill suit from J. Crew in navy at $386.
   
    
4. This chino khaki suit from Banana Republic for $236.
   
5. This black and brown reversible dress belt from Eddie Bauer for $39.50.
   
6. The $60 J. Crew blouse that caused so much hand-wringing. It's not even wrinkle-free, but damn do I look good in it!
   
7. A $170 briefcase:
   

That's $1110 for two suits, three pairs of pants (if you include the suit pants), a belt, a briefcase, and four dress shirts! Luckily I have a good number of stylish pairs of business dress shoes, so at most I need another pair or two. Plus some dress socks, and possibly a necklace or two. All in all, that should run another $150 or so, for an approximate total of $1250. And that doesn't even include enough shirts to get through the week without doing laundry! And lucky for me that this is summer only, so I needn't worry about a nice professional coat or sweaters.

Could I have cut the price? Well, certainly. But two factors worked against me:

1. Time. I start work in exactly two weeks, but I'm not done with school yet! This week I have to give a presentation on my research this year, and then I will officially be done. This meant that I had to go with known quantities; while J. Crew and Banana Republic aren't the finest clothiers out there, I knew that I could order online and have a reasonably well-built suit show up at my door. I'm sure there are hidden treasures at JC Penney or Sears or Macy's, but I don't have time to play the order-and-return game to find them.
2. Sizing. As I discussed in detail here, I need tall sizing. Talls tend not to make it to the clearance rack, at least not in consistent sizing. For example, I couldn't get the black chino suit from Banana Republic because, even at regular price, you can see here that while they still have regular blazers in every size and petites in half the sizes, the only tall jackets left are size 2! (The same thing happens with shoes: tens are always sold out. I ask, "Why doesn't the store order more tens, if they know they'll sell out?" Response: "The manufacturer sends them in a batch, we don't get to pick sizes." So why doesn't the manufacturer throw in more tens?! Very frustrating. And Banana Republic has no excuse as they're both the manufacturer and the retail distributor.)

On the plus side, in between using http://naughtycodes.com/ and calling from the store to place an order, I managed to spend only $15 in shipping, including all the returned clothing that didn't make it into the final cut above.

When shopping is no longer loathesome

At some point between the end of college and a few years ago I managed to convince myself I hated shopping. Being in malls was repulsive. I did pretty much all my clothes shopping  online.

But something strange has happened lately. Sixty dollar shirts aside, I am loving shopping for my summer work clothes. I spent hours yesterday, fingering the fabrics, deciding whether to go with the linen or chino suit.

So I think the attitude that developed over the past few years was that I hated to buy stuff I didn't need, and since I really didn't need any clothes over the past five years (not even, say, a black dress for a funeral or a suit for a job interview), all shopping was superfluous. Honestly, if need be, I have enough clothing to last me for years.

But once I actually need something and it doesn't feel like I'm wasting money, shopping is fun again. That pleases me. If I have to spend the money anyway, I don't mind enjoying it!

"The bigger the house, the worse the CEO"

I don't have time to read this paper today, so for now it's strictly in the "humor" category:

Or the purchase of an absurdly large house could signal entrenchment: The CEO is too comfortable with his position and his personal finances. He has made so much money that he can't really be bothered with running the company. And the willingness to spend gazillions on a house—not to mention the furnishings, artwork, and baubles to fill it—betokens a general inattentiveness to costs. In which case, you'd expect stocks of the companies where the CEO just bought an obscenely large house to fare poorly. Sell!

Young adults increasingly vain?

This story reports on two research projects suggesting that "today's college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors". The first is focused on the "Narcissistic Personality Inventory" and compares college students of 1982 to those of 2006.

The researchers traced the phenomenon back to what they called the "self-esteem movement" that emerged in the 1980s, asserting that the effort to build self-confidence had gone too far.

As an example, Twenge cited a song commonly sung to the tune of "Frere Jacques" in preschool: "I am special, I am special. Look at me."

"Current technology fuels the increase in narcissism," Twenge said. "By its very name, MySpace encourages attention-seeking, as does YouTube."

The second study, out of UCLA, "found that nearly three-quarters of the freshmen it surveyed thought it was important to be "very well-off financially." That compared with 62.5 percent who said the same in 1980 and 42 percent in 1966."

What to think of this? I spend every day on a college campus, and there are massive differences between the undergrads here and the undergrads at my school eight to ten years ago. Mostly I'm shocked by how much time and money they apparently have to dedicate to their appearance, and I'm not just talking about the women -- the guys, too, are fond of outfits that just reek of effort. However, this could be for a variety of factors -- difference in location of the two schools, of wealth of the student body, the particular mores of the campus, difference in distribution of majors, etc. -- that have nothing to do with a widespread change in the behavior of college students.

The second study, though, I think might be making an unfair inference about young adults today. We're a generation that has seen the very public erosion of entitlements and traditional safety nets. Pension promises are being denied right and left. Enron. The hysteria about Social Security's longevity.

So, yes, I think it's very important to be well-off. Not because I have some mindless desire to be wealthy, but because I can't trust anyone else -- the government, a corporation I give a lifetime of work to -- to keep its promises to me.