As part of its “ongoing series about life during a recession,” Salon profiles the “hipster,” known among self-sufficient 20-somethings as the kid who puts his art and personal wholeness ahead of corporate ambition, and then demands that someone else (mummy, pep-pep, Uncle Sam) pay for it:
In the John Waters-esque sector of northwest Baltimore — equal parts kitschy, sketchy, artsy and weird — Gerry Mak and Sarah Magida sauntered through a small ethnic market stocked with Japanese eggplant, mint chutney and fresh turmeric. After gathering ingredients for that evening’s dinner, they walked to the cash register and awaited their moments of truth.
“I have $80 bucks left!” Magida said. “I’m so happy!”
“I have $12,” Mak said with a frown.
The two friends weren’t tabulating the cash in their wallets but what remained of the monthly allotment on their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program debit cards, the official new term for what are still known colloquially as food stamps.
Magida, a 30-year-old art school graduate, had been installing museum exhibits for a living until the recession caused arts funding — and her usual gigs — to dry up. She applied for food stamps last summer, and since then she’s used her $150 in monthly benefits for things like fresh produce, raw honey and fresh-squeezed juices from markets near her house in the neighborhood of Hampden, and soy meat alternatives and gourmet ice cream from a Whole Foods a few miles away.
“I’m eating better than I ever have before,” she told me. “Even with food stamps, it’s not like I’m living large, but it helps.”
Mak, 31, grew up in Westchester, graduated from the University of Chicago and toiled in publishing in New York during his 20s before moving to Baltimore last year with a meager part-time blogging job and prospects for little else. About half of his friends in Baltimore have been getting food stamps since the economy toppled, so he decided to give it a try; to his delight, he qualified for $200 a month.
Please, read the whole thing.
At my last job, an editorial intern asked me if I thought he should go on food stamps. He was paying his way at a private university, had just lost his part-time job at a coffee house, and didn’t want to quit his internship at our publication (where he interned for college credit instead of cash). I asked him if he was having trouble getting a job, and he said no, he just didn’t want to give up his internship (his third editorial internship and a luxury of sorts).
As someone who paid his way through private college with scholarships, loans, and what was essentially a part-time job running the student paper, I envied students whose parents paid for them to intern for free. But I never applied for food stamps. If, like my intern and the characters in this Salon story, you’re choosing to attend a private college, or choosing to quit a part-time (or full-time) job in order to follow you’re dreams, you’re choosing to be broke.
And if we’re going to argue that food stamps are a safety net for the destitute or the indigent, it’s best that we not define those terms so loosely as to include yuppy offspring who would rather someone else fund their complete and total self-absorption.