"You can just"

[firecat]

About providing food for your family when you don't have a lot of money, and the thoughtless advice that people sometimes give if they don't know much about a difficult problem you have, especially if they give the advice using the adverb "just" (with the "it's so simple" connotation).

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2011/08/31/you-can-just/

Comments

[libskrat]

"Just" is one of my least favorite words.

[eftychia]

Related (from two days ago): The Four Most Infuriating Words -- "Why don't you just...?"

[firecat]

Thanks, that's great.

[elf]

Thank you for this. (I think. It certainly isn't fun to think about.) I always get ranty when I see articles about how the people living in poverty are there because they're so clueless and/or lazy as to ignore the obvious, simple solution to their problems. With bonus side irritation for people in big cities thinking everyone has a supermarket and mall outlet in walking distance, and people in rural areas thinking everyone has space for a garden and playground equipment.

Nice to know I'm not alone with the reaction of "No, dammit, it's not that easy to fix."

[eggcrack]

Thank you for this. Few things are as irritating as people insisting on so called easy solutions.

[spiderdust]

The article nicely sums up what I've been thinking lately.

While we technically have a decent income, we fall into the "mortgaged poor" category. The calculations done when determining whether or not we could afford a house were based on income plus regularly occurring bonuses, and we also had fewer family members at the time. Mere months after we purchased the house, the bottom fell out of the economy and the value of the house dropped (but our mortgage payments stayed the same!). Shortly after that, we discovered we were having another baby. Changes in the economy meant fewer bonuses, more people in the household meant our expenses increased, and you can see where this goes.

Whenever I express frustration over yet one more financial obstacle put in our path, often well-meaning friends tell me to learn to cook with legumes, to cut down on "frivolous" things like cable and going out to eat, to start a garden in my back yard, and to turn off more lights and wear more sweaters in the winter.

Stuff like this makes me crazy, despite my knowing that it comes from a well-intentioned point of view. It assumed that 1) I don't already know to do these things, 2) that I wasn't already doing them, and 3) that I'm even able to do the things that I wasn't already doing.

And the viewpoint of "just do this" also sends the implication that I have an easily avoided problem, so therefore it must be my fault that it's still an issue.

[firecat]

Well said.

[mama-hogswatch.livejournal.com]

I am an incredibly frugal grocery shopper. I really do feed my family on an amount that would shock the shit out of most middle class people (It does my mother, who is not exactly a spendthrift, herself). Even so, we spend about 20% more than we would get on food stamps.

I had to go about three weeks without a car in a neighborhood that has an almost adequate bus service. My husband could get to work, we could walk to a small grocery store(whose product section could not rival the one that we could use with a car), and we could pretty much get to where we needed to go during the week. Know what? It still fucking SUCKED, even though we're professional people who were fortunate enough to still be employed with health insurance and such. February in New Hampshire and carless? God, what a pain. It wears you OUT battling the weather just to do your day.

Data points:

I'm self-employed. This means I CAN take a ten minute break to cut up a .99/lb chicken into its component parts and then go back to work.

I have a CAR to get to the grocery store that sells the little bastards.

I have a CAR which means it's realistic to buy six or seven chickens and cut 'em into parts myself.

I'm self-employed, which makes dishes that take watching and soaking time practical because I can start dinner at noon and keep half an eye on it while I'm working during the day.

I have an incredibly well-equipped kitchen. Bread is easy to make with a kitchen aid and a dough hook. Ditto crock pot meals to put in the freezer.

I'm not going it alone. If I'm sick or exhausted, my husband or son can and will cook.

Just being without ONE thing that poor people often don't have that the more well-to-do take for granted was an incredible eye opener for me. If the poor seem "lazy" it's because survival without amenities can wear you the fuck OUT.

[firecat]

You got quoted:

http://dglenn.dreamwidth.org/1840734.html

[auntysocial.livejournal.com]

Yes, and it's hard to get the kids to eat their lentil soup when they want potato chips.

[jenk]

It helps if lentil soup doesn't only appear when parents are stressed. If it frequently appears with lunch or dinner the kids are going to see it as normal.

[mama-hogswatch.livejournal.com]

Well, we eat a lot of bean soups and beans and rice, yes.

Unfortunately or fortunately depending on one's POV, we always had an "Eat what's served or starve" policy. Not as harsh as it sounds. If I KNOW a kid doesn't like something, it shows up less often in the rotation than foods I know they DO like.

But beans and rice is GOOD.

[auntysocial.livejournal.com]

I actually don't have children and don't get food stamps. I am on a budget though, and I cook for myself and my husband. I have room in the budget for some of what I call luxury items. I think of potato chips as a luxury. Although they don't cost that much, the the ratio of price to nutritional value is too high. I'm saying I understand their allure! You see them on TV, and they have that wonderful crunch.

It would be easy to look at all the very nutritious foods in the market, like legumes, cabbages and other low-cost vegetables and think it might not be so difficult to eat on a low budget, but there are a lot of things that can make it difficult! One is the amount of time it takes to prepare unprocessed food and make it attractive. Another is the allure of the potato chip and other manufactured foods that are widely available and made attractive through advertising, and I think children are particularly susceptible to advertising.

[jenk]

Unfortunately or fortunately depending on one's POV, we always had an "Eat what's served or starve" policy. Not as harsh as it sounds. If I KNOW a kid doesn't like something, it shows up less often in the rotation than foods I know they DO like.

I don't have a quibble with that, especially if it's combined with variety. I think a lot of whining parents experience with sudden, major menu changes is the kids reacting normally to change. A parent might have similar issues trying to turn their kids into vegetarians or moving to a Kosher diet. And if you combine it with complaining that the food's not expensive enough (as one friend's now-ex-husband would) well then what DO you expect? *rolls eyes*

[gmdreia.livejournal.com]

Yep... If the person could "just" do something so easily, chances are, they would've already done it.

"just" also doesn't take into account the fact all kinds of invisible factors of which the "juster" may not be privy.

Like, in my own case, with my health issues combined with ADHD (I can't take meds, unless i want to experience heart palpitations, windedness, and increase my chance of a serious heart condition in the future), I can't over schedule things the way that many people do - I need to allow myself a lot of time to get things done. I was only able to work while going to school (because of how time consuming it is to make accommodations to my ADHD) when on meds.

Most of the people who've told me "you can just..." have more free time than i do. They have no clue what it's like to be me.

I try to watch the "you can just..." with others, especially with people I don't know very well... And even then.

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

This made me just about want to hit the wall in frustration. Yes, to all those above.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

A good essay, but unfortunately the world is divided into people who already know it and people who will think up other arguments, as specious as the "you could just," to supposedly refute it.

[firecat]

I switched from being the second kind of person to being the first kind of person. So I signal-boost essays like this in the hope that maybe they would help another person make that switch.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Thanks, it's good to know that it can happen!

[mama-hogswatch.livejournal.com]

It can. It did with me. I grew up well-to-do and couldn't understand WHY poor people WASTED their LIMITED money like they did.

'Course the Vimes Boots Theory of Economic Unfairness (http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/vimes) explains it pretty well, but I had learned a bit before then.

[pyrzqxgl.livejournal.com]

When I was on food stamps in the early 80's it was for more than I had been spending on food before that, so I thought it was really awesome, but if I was using them to feed children then I would definitely want better for them than that kind of starving-student mode. :-(

Pretty much any kind of "how to live on less money" article I see is full of super-clueless stuff that isn't going to apply to those people who already don't spend lots of $$$ on fancy restaurants, Starbucks, cable TV, etc. ...