Social Class..Can't be Avoided

"Class: A Guide through the American Status System" is about the many different levels of class in the American society. The book is about what really makes up class characteristics. This book was very amusing; I had a hard time reading it because it seemed to frustrate me mostly. Paul Fussell talks about how class is exposed everyday by what we do, say, and own. He thoroughly describes the customs and symbols of the American class system through nine classes in which you can clearly identify which one you belong too. In his description of the nine social classes the one that I found most interesting was the "Top out of Sight" class. These are the Billionaires and Millionaires who are so wealthy they can have enough money to buy their own privacy. We never see them because they seclude themselves from the world. They live in the houses where you can't see from the streets. I would never want to be apart of this class system, because these specific people don't want to be apart of the outside world. There are so few of them in that specific class system that they do not fit in with the inner society, and the inner society doesn't accept them because they feel like there better than everyone, wouldn't have anything in common with the people, and have different values and morals.

He argues that class has nothing to do with money and is more about how one is raised and how one perceives them self. In his book, Fussell states how each social class portrays themselves even though economically there are only two classes, the rich and the poor. He says that people of lower social class tend to believe that class is defined by the amount of money you have. The middle class believe that money has something to do with it, but they believe that education and the type of job you have is equally important as well. Then there is the upper class, who believe that the necessary criteria for such social class is the taste they perceive, their values, the clothes they wear, and the behavior in which they act. To the upper class, the amount of money they are making and the education they received isn’t as important as the necessary criteria the author stated. I think that when it comes to defining what social class you belong too, that it can't just be about how much money you have, because no one knows for certain how much money you make, and that’s personal. It is very difficult to escape, culturally from the class into which you were born. It's hard to be someone your not, and to act "rich" just to fit in.
Fussell compares the life of two different families and the two different families are completely different, but are making the exact same income. The income they are making is equivalent to that of a garage mechanic. The difference between the families is that one family lives their life like an upper middle class family. There living room is full of bookshelves; they drink fancy drinks daily and shop in the city, but the only reason they are living their life like this is because they want to be seen as rich. It was so important for that family to come off as wealthier than they really are, because they want everyone to view them as "rich" rather than just "average". It proves that families with the same income can have nothing in common and live life completely different. Just as the example that I just stated, Fussell discusses living within a certain social class because of preference.
It makes you wonder why people choose to live their life as if they are rich. The part that frustrated me the most was when he described the difference between social classes by the way they sit and stand. "Upper -middle class tend to have controlled precise movements. The way they use their arms and where their feet fall is dramatically different from lower-middle class people, who tend to swing their arms out rather than hold them closer to their bodies". Are we stereotyping someone because of the way they sit and move their arms? Does that mean if you don't have controlled arm movements you're not living in an upper-middle class society? Fussell goes into great depth about the social class system in the American society. He goes into great detail about the middle class and provides examples about the differences between the middle class compared to the upper class. I never realized how our society operates and interconnects with each other.