3 hours later, an opinion column.

After spending the last three hours grinding away at this column for my media writing class, I can say with a high degree of certainty that I am not meant to be an opinions writer. At least not for a very long time.
Nevertheless, "Homeless or Hipster: Poorgeoisie at SPU."

As a happy consumer of commercialized clothing, the newest SPU fashion movement troubles me. The homeless are taking over campus.

One man, asleep in Tiffany Loop, has a scraggly beard and dirty, torn jeans, too skinny to be tasteful. A group of women meanders through Gwinn Commons wearing flannel shirts and leggings, which conspicuously attempt to double as pants, but fail. One poor man in Martin Square seems to be without shoes, walking barefoot despite pouring rain and dropping temperatures.

It takes less than a keen eye to spot them; on any school day, these questionable characters abound and if you did not know better, you’d try to offer them your spare change.
In truth, they are simply members of SPU’s community of Indie-type rich kids, but the question is just begging to be asked, “Are you homeless or hipster?”

The answer, as it turns out, is neither; they are the “poorgeoisie.”

A play on the French term, “bourgeoisie,” the poorgeosie are “those who conceal their affluence with a (carefully crafted) down-at-heel look,” as the New York Times reported in June 2009.

According to a study by Vogue, 72 percent of magazine readers are still buying designer fashion, and 59 percent are buying more or the same amount as before the recession.

But you’d never know. In July, the New York Times reported that stealth wealth, which is “shopping discreetly or buying unbranded products in an attempt to make one’s consumption less conspicuous,” is on the rise.

SPU students have bought into this anti-consumer mentality, from TOMS shoes and too-tight skinny jeans all the way up to flannel shirts and ratty hair. At least, that’s what they want you to think.

Look a little closer at some of some of these flannel-shirted women; they still carry Coach. Look past the scraggly beard at the label on some men’s deep-V neck tees; that simple cotton shirt can cost up to $50 at American Apparel, a pretty penny for someone paying to look poor.

But that is the essence of the poorgeoisie: It is spending to look as though you have not spent at all. It is shopping to make your expenditure less evident. It is just the thing to be in this time of financial hardship, when the stereotype of the poor, struggling student should be more applicable than ever.

Maybe that is why poorgeois culture found a niche amongst SPU students. In an environment that encourages world change and praises social justice and responsibility, it seems to be way to alleviate the guilt of attending an expensive, private university.

Though not all students who attend SPU are wealthy, we can all recognize that the sheer cost of tuition breeds a culture of affluence on campus.

This may be the case, but we should not have to pretend to fit in with the homeless because of it.

Despite what our culture leads us to believe, there is no shame in wealth. However, pretending that we are poor is a lie, and we cannot fully act in God-like love while desperately believing it to be true.

For whatever reason, God places people in many different financial walks of life; while some are never strapped for cash, others operate on a paycheck-to-paycheck budget. In spite of these financial differences, His call for all people to love one another is the same.

The challenge is to embody the mission of the University. If we can truly act as Christians are meant to act, it does not matter if our jeans cost $500 or $15.