Re-adjusting the collar of her quarter-zip and taming the flyaways of second-day hair, my friend stared at her reflection with a look of mild disgust. “Ugh, I look so homeless,” she lamented.
While my unapologetic political correctness has both fans and critics, it is always respected by those close to me. As my friend heard the all-too-familiar silence of my disapproval, she began stumbling towards a realization I’d made just a few weeks before — that her comparison was unequivocally wrong.
Step one was trying to backtrack. “Well, I don’t mean I look homeless,” she corrected. She continued, “I just mean I look awful. Wait, no. That’s so bad for me to say.” Much better.
Calling yourself homeless from a place of privilege isn’t a clever quip or a witty remark on your less-than-chic fashion choices for the day. It’s a display of your inability to empathize with a lifestyle that is difficult and typically not a choice.
When we equate “homeless” with “dirty,” “ugly,” “lazy,” “slovenly” or any other negative descriptor, we are calling homeless people dirty, ugly, lazy. And that’s simply not a fair assumption to make.
Synonymizing a state of economic hardship with broad, negative generalizations is wrong for the same reason that associating homosexuality with being weird, stupid or lame is wrong. It doesn’t matter that you don’t actually dislike LGBTQ people, it matters that using “f--” to mean stupid is less than a stone’s throw away from calling queer people, as a whole, stupid.
Seemingly innocuous, deprecating comments such as these reveal the deeply rooted, negative associations the general population holds toward homelessness, and this has real consequences. If we think of those in need as simply unmotivated or gross — if we compare our temporary hiatus from bathing and nice attire to a life of real danger and privation — it should come as no surprise that a whopping 44 percent of Americans cited “people not doing enough” as the primary cause of poverty in the Rasmussen Reports.
The next time you catch your reflection and think to joke that you look “homeless,” think about what makes someone who is truly homeless. Then, perhaps you will see that you don’t look homeless today — you look clothed, full and extraordinarily lucky.
Sofia’s column runs biweekly Fridays. She can be reached at s.mckewenmoreno@cavalierdaily.com.
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