Poor Chic: The Rational Consumption of Poverty

Abstract

A discussion of Poor Chic, or an array of fads and fashions in popular culture that make recreational or stylish `fun' of poverty, or of traditional symbols of working class and underclass statuses, challenges the reductionism of the view that `lifestyle' consumption has displaced consumption as a means of expressing social status (e.g. race, class, and gender). It is argued that the multiplicity of symbols involved in Poor Chic collectively represent lower class status and have referents in the material realities of poverty. Using numerous examples of Poor Chic in the United States and internationally since the 1980s, this article shows how the rational (controlled, efficient, predictable, and calculable) consumption of poverty symbols distinguishes class boundaries between the wealthy and the poor. Drawing on works by Ritzer, Bauman, Veblen, and others, Poor Chic is explained as the rational consumption of commodified poverty, involving postmodern `tourists' who `conspicuously' vacation in `vagabondage'.