As we all know, last week Gwyneth Paltrow joined the SNAP Challenge, in which wealthy celebrities pretend to live like people on the USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. These wealthy celebrities are doing this to feel better about themselves and signal to their peers that they’re good people improve the lives of the poor.
Gwyneth made a serious commitment to the challenge:
This is what $29 gets you at the grocery store—what families on SNAP (i.e. food stamps) have to live on for a week. pic.twitter.com/OZMPA3nxij
— Gwyneth Paltrow (@GwynethPaltrow) April 9, 2015
Only seven limes? For an entire week? How is a struggling family supposed to subsist on that?
Not very well, as it turns out. From Gwyneth’s mournful follow-up on GOOP (Gwyneth’s Online Offering for Peasants):
As I suspected, we only made it through about four days, when I personally broke and had some chicken and fresh vegetables (and in full transparency, half a bag of black licorice). My perspective has been forever altered by how difficult it was to eat wholesome, nutritious food on that budget, even for just a few days—a challenge that 47 million Americans face every day, week, and year…
After trying to complete this challenge (I would give myself a C-), I am even more outraged that there is still not equal pay in the workplace. Sorry to go on a tangent, but many hardworking mothers are being asked to do the impossible: Feed their families on a budget which can only support food businesses that provide low-quality food. The food system in our beautiful country needs to be subjected to a heavy revision—it is a cyclical problem, with repercussions that we all feel.
I know I do!
“Why doesn’t she just buy black licorice for everybody, then? When was the last time she ate a single item of food that cost less than $30?” Hardy-har-har, teabagger. That’s not what this is about. This is about raising awareness that poor people exist, and they’re poor because they don’t have a lot of money, and everybody should have enough money because it’s not fair that some people don’t have enough money.
Why can’t everybody get equal pay? If we all made as much money as Gwyneth Paltrow, then nobody would have to buy their limes with food stamps. It’s not rocket science, people.
More money > less money. Duh!
(Hat tip: Twitchy)