I've been thinking about this for some time now. OK here it goes. Ever since I've become a dancer & have been improving my overall quality of life, I notice that I'm treated nicer by society in general. Before I started dancing, I was making shit income, below the poverty line in fact...I couldn't afford a professional hair dye job, I drove beat-up cars or sometimes no car at all during the times that I couldn't afford the minimal repair on my moderately restored70s Beetle, and I overall carried myself with a little less confidence. When I drove the beat-up cars, I got pulled over by cops a LOT more than I do now, even though I have a very fast sportscar that is capable of going waaaay over the speed limit without even trying. And when I got pulled over years prior, I got a lot less breaks too. Even though I had a pristine clean criminal record a few years ago, some people still seemed to interrogate me as if I was a guilty party or something. It seemed that society overall paid better attention to the people who appeared to have more money. But then again, us dancers do the same thing, when we spend more time with a rich customer than a broke one.
Has anyone experienced this? I just feel like I have more clout with having a higher income and nicer things, such as a nicer apartment in a safer neighborhood, a new car, etc. When I was poor and it showed, even freakin' McDonalds employees would give me a hard time about stuff!! Whereas now, people in the service industry are more accomodating and willing to go the extra mile for my business. Maybe it's because people stereotype the people with more money to be a sign that they're less lazy and more motivated and responsible? Maybe when I was poor and drove a beat-up Mazda, people wrongly assumed that I'd beaten the car myself by being a careless driver(ironically, my car was beat up from 3 no-fault accidents within a yr; insteada repairing my car each time, I put the checks from the insurance company towards my college tuition because I needed money that baaaaaadly), or "white-trash," or something similar? It just seems that in this society, people stigmatize the poor to be almost worse than they view criminals/felons!! It's almost a "crime" to be poor in society!
There was one incident(of several) that especially infuriated me. Right after I started dancing, a guy and I got arrested for some stupid immature stuff(fighting). I immediately did all it took to secure myself a good lawyer. One day, they had me visit the police station and they put me in front of the judge to be read my rights and any restrictions I had. Both my lawyer and I didn't think I'd be seeing a judge that day, so we'd agreed that my lawyer wouldn't come along that time. Apparently my mom(who was pissed at me at the time) and the boy involved in the fight had gossiped earlier to the police officer that I "made like no money" and had "sooooo much debt." I know this because the police officer involved told me this and said it in a mocking way as if my debt was something to be embarrassed of(trust me, I WAS very embarrassed). Little did they know that I'd become a dancer and was no longer in debt, but they didn't know this! So while the judge spoke to me, she made me sign paperwork, one form being a form explaining my right to a public defender. I told both her and the officer that I had a lawyer, but they made me sign it anyway. Later on, my lawyer asked me why they made me sign this if I had a lawyer, and said that if I said I had a lawyer they shoulda never made me sign that form. I think they made me sign it because they thought I didn't have a lawyer(he wasn't there that day), and because they already had the impression that I didn't have any money. During this incident, the judge was also kinda snobby to me and at one point when she asked me about my work/college status and I told her I was almost finished college but had to pay back tuition that I'd owed from prior before being allowed to finish, she said in a snooty voice, "Well if you haven't paid your tuition by a year later, you probably never will." (Little did she think that I'd pay off my tuition a short time later and graduate later that same year! I showed her!) OK I knew that I'd done wrong, so I had no problems with being treated like a criminal; it's the idea that she treated me like an INDIGENT PAUPER that totally irritated me. And whaddyaknow...next time I faced that same judge for the probation hearing, she saw that I had a very expensive lawyer and she was a lot nicer to me! A lot more reasonable, accomodating, and overall friendly!
This isn't the first incident where this has occured, people being nicer to me after I started making money, driving nicer cars, living in better neighborhoods, etc. I also noticed a situation with creditors. During the time that I was in debt to my college and a few small credit cards, I was still paying on my bills(but minimum payments) yet it seemed that creditors were aware that I was in a state of "financial distress" and did anything they could to con me. More than one company tried to falsely place fees on my account, or try to overcharge me. I read in a few places, that people with bad credit or low income are more likely to receive false fees than people that appear to have a high income; probably because the low income/bad credit people can be more easily guilted into paying a fee that they don't even owe, or maybe because they're stereotyped to be too irresponsible to notice the extra fees added to their bill. That seemed to ring true for me. Yeah when I disputed the fees they always came off my bill because it was shown to be in error, but why were they placed there in the first place? It seemed that more people were overall picking on me when I was poor.
Is this how American society is headed? Any similar experiences?


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