class

My friend Steve sells Cessnas (single engine propeller planes, usually with between two and four seats).  A four-seater basic single-engine Cessna will cost you about $200,000, plus insurance, hanger fees, regular maintenance, and check-ups.   They aren’t particularly fast (not jets): the $200,000 one will get you somewhere about twice as fast as a car.  The gas will cost you about twice as much.   And there’s a much bigger carbon footprint.

Last summer, Steve sold a six-seater single-engine Cessna to France.  Since someone had to fly it (and the trip was paid for), we decided to take it there ourselves.  (Okay, Steve decided to take it there himself; I decided to sit in the passenger seat.)  Among other things, the adventure was a fascinating look at how the other half, eh em, top one percent lives.  In this post, I’m going to talk about the terminals serving private planes (also posted about here).   If you fly by private plane, you don’t go to the main terminal.  There is a separate private terminal.  We went through a lot of those terminals as we flew from Omaha, Nebraska; to Bangor, Maine; to Goose Bay-Happy Valley, Canada (Newfoundland-Labrador border); to Narsarsuaq, Greenland; to Reykjavik, Iceland; to Aarhus, Denmark; and, finally, to Nice, France.

Because I have my priorities straight, the first thing I noticed about these terminals is that they all have free treats: muffins, candy, or cookies:

There was also always free coffee and soda and bottled water. (This, I gotta tell you, was torture because I was off caffeine for the trip and, on top of that, couldn’t drink anything before taking off because of the whole no-bathroom-on-the-plane-thing and living below the poverty line until you’re 32 really instills a desire to pilfer anything that’s not nailed down.)

Private plane travel is figuratively as well as literally delicious.  There is no “long-term parking.”  You park your car right up front in the complimentary parking lot.  Honestly, going to the grocery store is more challenging.  In the private terminal, you can wander about as you please; your things will not be confiscated if you leave them unattended. There are no announcements.  You will not wait in line.  There is no security, except that which is designed to make your life more comfortable. You will not be asked to walk through an x-ray machine or show anyone any paperwork. There are computers available if you would like to use them and free wireless if you brought your own. You will leave whenever you like and stay as long as you please.  And how nice, since the facilities are incredibly comfortable.

Steve let me borrow these photos from the Houston Million Air.  The main desk:

A lovely place to sit and watch TV comfortably:

And if that isn’t good enough for you, a free, private cinema:

There were also free magazines about things like investments, yachts, and other expensive things:

This is where I got the ads and articles aimed at exeedingly rich people that I have been posting recently (see here, here and here).

When we decide to leave, we just waltz out to our plane, jump in and taxi to the runway.  We would call ground control, say “we’re ready,” and they’d say “go ahead.”   We never waited more than three or four minutes to get clearance to take off.

When we landed, we’d taxi over to the terminal, jump out of the plane and wander in.  The interaction would go something like this:

THEM: Welcome Sir and Miss. Can we get your bags?

STEVE: Please.

[They go out and start unloading the plane.]

THEM: Can we arrange for a hotel?

STEVE: Why yes.

THEM: Will do. Would you prefer downtown or on the water?

STEVE: The water will be lovely.

THEM: One moment, please. [The hotel is called.] Your room is booked. Would you like us to arrange a rental car for you or would you like a ride to the hotel?

STEVE: We will take a rental car, please.

THEM: It will be just a few minutes. Please enjoy our complimentary beverages, delightful morsels, overstuffed chairs, and free wireless while you wait.

STEVE: We certainly will.

I am totally not kidding.

You could also call ahead and request a rental car.  In this case, they would drive it right up to your plane, unload your bags for you, and you’d just scoot across the tarmac and be off!

One final tidbit:

Steve and I left the U.S. and entered five different countries over the course of our trip.  We got through Canada and Greenland without being asked for our passports.  Iceland would be both the first and the last place we were required to show I.D.  Denmark and France welcomed us with wide arms and trust.  We were the special people.

UPDATE: Several commenters pointed out that once Steve and I were through Iceland, the law grants us entry to Denmark and France without I.D. Thanks for the correction!

Maggie B. says:

I was shocked and appalled when I saw these posters hanging above the children’s shoe section in a FootAction store in Jensen Beach, FL this weekend.

In her book, Bad Boys, Ann Ferguson argues that while white boys are seen as naturally and innocently naughty, black boys are seen as willfully bad.  This is possible because teachers attribute adult motivations to black, but not white, children.  Ferguson calls this adultification.   Essentially this means that many teachers and other school authorities see black boys as “criminals” instead of kids.  And black girls–also adultified, but differently–are seen as dangerously sexual.  Adults, of course, are held 100% responsible for their behavior.  There is no leeway here, no second chances, and no benefit of the doubt.

These pictures do more than just sexualize the young children pictured (who appear to be black and mixed-race), they also adultify them with their expressions, postures, fashion, and implied contexts.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Robin B. sent us a link to a story in the New York Times magazine chronicling one woman’s decision to have a surrogate carry her biological child.  Surrogacy is, from one perspective, extremely expensive and, from another perspective, extremely lucrative.  The photos accompanying the story illustrate, almost as if by design, how “mothering” is being spread out in systematic ways to different kinds of women. Robin note that the accompanying article bought up lots of issues, but did little to think them through.   In contrast, she points to a set of letters written in response.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Ben O. brought our attention to this set of vintage ads (from Found in Mom’s Basement) that all use images of Black male servants.

This one for Cream of Kentucky bourbon was illustrated by Norman Rockwell. I can’t quite figure out what the expression on the Black servant’s face is supposed to convey:

Miller Beer:

Cream of Wheat:

Glider shaving cream:

Part of the text reads, “Why did Grand-dad so often take the trouble to get water from the rain barrel for his shave?” For some reason I have a feeling it wasn’t Grand-dad getting the water.

Thanks, Ben O.!

In STRATOS, “the premier in-flight magazine for corporate and private jets,” I found this two page article (text below):

Selected text:

High Dollar Highballs

STRATOS travels the globe in search of $1,000 cocktails in another installment of the world’s most exclusive cocktails.

…

Burj Al Arab, the dreamy, sail-like hotel on the water in Dubai, surely serves one of the most impressive… runs about $7,500. But when you factor in the cost of the ingredients, it almost seems reasonable. Start with a healthy pour of The Macallan 55 Year Old Single Malt Scotch… bottles… sell for $15,000 or more… The drink is stirred with a hand-carved piece of wood salvaged from a Macallan oak cask and presented in a Baccarat tumbler of 18-carat gold…

Hotel de Crillon, one of the loveliest hotels in Paris, has a beautiful lounge where barman Philippe Olivier offers perhaps the ultimate Sidecar for $1,600… this version opts for the creme de la creme of Cognac: Louis XIII Black Pearl, a special edition of Remy Martin’s long-aged signature bottle selling for about $30,000…

Master Mixologist Tony Abou-Ganim created Between the Sheets ($10,000) for Eyecandy Sound Lounge and Bar, the lounge at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. A slug of 200-year-old British Imperial Navy Rum gives this drink its kick, while a pour of Hardy’s Perfection, a rare and expensive long-aged Cognac, provides the subtle flavors… This drink is, naturally, made for two. The bartender assembles it in a sterling silver shaker and strains it into a pair of Baccarat crystal glasses… The lucky couple, once the last drop has been drained, takes home a cherry wood box, complete with engraved name plate, holding the shaker, the glasses and a crystal decanter.

An argument:  Because of the way we are segregated by class in the U.S., people rarely mix socially (pun intended) with others very far outside of their own social class.  For me, paging through magazines aimed at the super rich (see other posts from them here, here, and here), is kind of like flipping through Maxim.  There’s a whole world out there that is not aimed at me and of which I am largely unaware.  The segregation that nurtures this ignorance is part of what sustains our complacency.  Most of the time I can be completely naive to the entitlement to extremes of luxury that is marketed to the very rich, like I can remain blissfully unaware of what they are saying about women and men in Maxim magazine.  Political sociologists suggest that it is not deprivation that incites revolution, but relative deprivation.  That is, not having much doesn’t cause people to resist the system, it is the realization that others have so much more.  As long as we remain unaware, the system is likely to continue unchallenged. 

Maybe it doesn’t even make sense to say that we are segregated by class.  Class does separate people, but it also brings them together.  Working and middle class people are brought directly into interaction with people of other classes when they clean houses, are hired gardeners, and work as receptionists, administrative assistants, nurses, and nannies.  And it has often been this way throughout history (think slaves, indentured servants, etc).  So to say that we are segregated might be a stretch.

I also don’t know how I feel about this argument in light of the rash of reality shows that have emerged over the past 5-10 years that depict real, honest-to-goodness rich people basking in luxuries that most of the viewers could never afford.  Not that (I think as I write this) reality shos are all that different from the non-reality shows that have been on TV for a very long time that depict extreme wealth (e.g., Dynasty).  Do we not, on some level, recognize that those people, at least those in the reality shows, are real?  Or do we identify with them over and against people of our own class?  (I described how this might work in a previous post on McDonald’s coffee.)  Would actual physical integration (insofar as it doesn’t exist) have a different impact on us than the integration that occurs on between us and our television screens?  Or does our current social climate challenge the tenet of relative deprivation?

Asked another way, given that I am a sociologist AND watch TV, why do I still find the stupid article about expensive cocktails so surprising?

This, dear reader, is a pound of Kopi Luwak Arabica coffee, for sale here:

You can buy a pound of this gourmet coffee for just $180. If you’re on a budget, you can get 2 ounces for $40.

Now, you may be wondering, is it worth it? Should I spend so much for coffee? Luwakcoffee.com believes that it is:

Yes, the coffee is expensive, but so are all of the better things in life. You have to pay more for quality or uniqueness. This is a class issue: part of what you are paying for is exclusiveness, the knowledge that not everyone can afford a Chanel bag or Christian Louboutin shoes or Kopi Luwak coffee. Its inaccessibility to the masses is part of how you know it is worth having. And from this perspective, Kopi Luwak is quite desirable: at most 1,000 pounds or so make it to market each year, which makes it so expensive. It’s so desirable, it was included in the 2006 Emmy Awards gift bags for celebrities!

Now, at this point an ignorant but aspiring gourmand might ask, “What, pray tell, is so special about Kopi Luwak coffee? What is this ‘unusual phenomenon’? I’m so anxious to know!”

Why, my dear, the beans for your coffee were eaten by a civet and then handpicked out of its crap to be brewed into coffee for you! It’s terribly adventurous, isn’t it?

What, don’t believe me? Here is your Kopi Luwak coffee, pre-handpicking (image found here):

Delicious! If you’d prefer to buy it in this form (called “natural” coffee), you can buy it that way too. [For the record: I will never be able to eat a Payday candy bar again.]

In researching this topic for you, Reader, I found many properties ascribed to Kopi Luwak coffee. It is supposedly lower in caffeine than regular coffee because the civet’s stomach acids digest some of the caffeine. Or something. It’s supposedly less bitter and has less of some protein or other, and that’s why it tastes so much better. One researcher said it is “earthy, musty, syrupy, smooth and rich with jungle and chocolate undertones,” although I question how much better it can taste since “[though] certified blinded human tasters could find little difference in the overall flavour and aroma of the beans, an electronic nose machine could detect that the aroma of the civet coffee beans is also affected.” I’m glad a machine thinks they smell fantastic.

Why did I decide to post this on Soc Images? Well, one, the pure absurdity of it. However, there are some sociologically useful things you could use it for. One might be to discuss food and our cultural taboos on food. My guess is if you had students make lists of things they’d never, ever eat, no matter what, and then made them slowly pare them down based on the assumption that they were starving, people might give in and say, “Ok, I’d eat a slug,” but few people would say “Fine, I’d eat poop if I had to.” I could be wrong, but I think most people would see eating another animal’s fecal matter as beyond disgusting. And yet here we have an example of people doing it under no duress (that I can see) and considering it a delicacy.

I suspect that students would then express horror and shock at the idea of drinking such coffee, but you might then point out that many of them probably eat the product of an animal’s digestive tract somewhat regularly: honey. Bees digest pollen to turn it into honey. It could lead to a nice discussion of how we come to think of foods as normal or disgusting, and why we might continue to eat honey and think it’s just fine, since we’re used to it, but think people who eat beans picked out of civet poop are gross.

Of course, you could also use it as an example of how, if it is sufficiently expensive and difficult to find, anything can be labeled a delicacy and sold to upper-middle-class yuppies. Even wild cat* crap.

*Not really a cat, though it’s called the civet cat.

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

Chelsea C. brought our attention to this billboard for McDonald’s coffee or McCafe:

90210 is the zip code for Beverly Hills, a notoriously rich neighborhood in California. And, Chelsea explains, 48503 is a zip code in Flint, Michigan.

The ad is interesting to me because of the double meaning of taste (hello Bourdieu!). Taste refers to how things taste on your tongue (literally the taste of the coffee), but it also refers to who has good versus bad taste (people with good taste are “high class” and they like things like classical music and caviar). The idea that this ad is capitalizing (pun intended!) on both meanings of the word taste is supported by the use of the term “cafe” in “McCafe” and the portrayal of a fancy coffee drink (“Mochas”).

So the ad is saying that, even if you live in Flint and don’t have the economic resources of someone who lives in Beverly Hills, you can have the taste of expensive coffee because, of course, expensive coffee is to your taste.

There is something interesting here that ties into our consumer culture and wide range of advertising, television programming, and Paris Hilton-watching that encourages us to aspire to be just like the rich. This means buying expensive things that you can’t really afford and/or valuing things that mark you as a high class person with good taste (such as Mochas from McCafe, if that’s the best you can do). There is no questioning as to whether it’s a good idea for everyone to aspire to such heights, whether there is something problematic in the disparity between 90210 and 48503, or even whether it’s true that the rich have better “taste.” So, ultimately, the hierarchy goes unchallenged while we all just jocky for position.

This reminds me of the moment in the Sex and the City movie when Carrie realizes that her assistant, Louise, rents super-expensive purses even though she is too poor to buy them.  Carrie is impressed by Louise’s “taste” and her dedication to having “the best” things even if they are completely inessential and renting them only exacerbates the fact that she doesn’t have oodles of cash.

So, yeah, I think this billboard plays into that.

This ad — found at the height of the foreclosure crisis in a magazine for the obscenely rich — points out that, for obscenely rich people, the crisis is a bonus.  What struck me most was the double meaning in the headline. “Above It All” has both descriptive and moral meaning. 

It is also a good example of how the rich see the economic struggle of the masses as an “opportunity” to get richer.

Text below.

Text:

Above It All.

Despite the headlines, high-end properties still in demand among affluent set.

What do recent headlines proclaiming a dip the [sic.] current real estate market mean for upper-income vacation-home buyers? Opportunity! A survey released in April by American Express and Harrison Group revealed that among Americans with a household income of more than $500,000, 77 percent say real estate presents a ‘real opportunity’ right now, and 40 percent say they’re in the market for property this year. Of those in the market, 33 percent are looking for a second home, and 25 percent are looking for a third.