Location: Gelson’s Market: Calabasas, CA (inside at a fireplace table adjacent to the Service Deli area)
Time: 6:30 pm Friday night
Observations:
The electronic sliding door opens to the left. Many shoppers talk and their voices blend into a loud clamor. They wait around the Service Deli. A woman, appearing to be well into her 80’s, enters. Her face is consumed by an exaggerated wince. Her eyes smile and her back hunches forward. She sports a teal windbreaker sweat suit with bright red crocks. Her face looks like a desperate bulldog’s. Her skin has a blotchy sheen of jaundice and her nose is bulbously. Her brown, beady eyes hide behind a pair of spectacles, which rest nicely on her prominent nose. Her eyebrows are quite obviously penciled in without precision; they rest directly in the middle of her forehead. This octogenarian’s hair is wiry like a spool of used copper as it is also appears to be copper in color. She resembles a slightly effeminate and contemporary version of Ben Franklin; her hairline recedes and she is balding very ostensibly from the top of her scalp just to the edge of her crown. She reeks of what seems to be a combination of halitosis and body odor. The old woman clutches her purse, laced over her right shoulder, with her left hand, as if to protect it with a paranoid urgency. Her earlobes and cheekbones sag as she plods to the service deli nearby. Her jowls and brows plunge when she takes a number from the dispenser to wait in line. Then, upon glancing at her number and squinting vehemently at the “we are now serving number 58” display above the counter thereafter, she shakes her head twice, places her hands on her waist directly in front of the display. She is static for about 15 seconds, her eyes fixed on the number on the display, waiting for it to change, counting time by taping her left foot on the floor. Suddenly a younger woman, in her mid thirties, leggy, tall, and dark, briskly slides in front of the old woman, shoots her a quick conciliatory glance, grabs a number from the dispenser, and smiles at the clerk behind the counter. The old lady remains in a state of frustration coupled with a bleak malaise, which makes her appear sad and angry at the same time. The younger woman has about a solid C cup chest, her hair is black, her skin is olive color, and her predominate facial feature is her statuesque chin. Around her hazel eyes are regions of skin that appears tighter than the rest of her face. She is in good shape. She sports a vibrant orange sundress, which reveals her dark shoulders and upper cleavage. Her tiny ears are attached to pearl earrings and her lips are red. Her feet rest in Greek styled sandals and her toenails and fingernails match her sundress. Her wrists are dressed in not one, but two Tiffany’s silver bracelets. Her demeanor is upbeat, urgent, yet focused. After saying “Hello, Mario” to the clerk behind the deli counter, she self-consciously looks around a congregation of people waiting for the deli—thirteen people wait anxiously. About 30 solid minutes fly by—within which the crowd slowly shrinks to four people, including the older and younger women. During this interval, both women shared a panicked interest in one item: the lobster salad at 13.99 a pound. The older woman doesn’t smile once while intently examining the salad she wants to purchase. Her head dips and tilts when the clerks bring out a new batch of the salad. While the older woman studies her buy, the younger woman talks on her cell phone, an Apple I-phone 3Gs. Her conversation is casual at first. Then she raises her high-pitched voice. She nervously itches the back of her neck with her index finger before breaking into a fit of playful laughter. She says the word, “Fuck” nine times and the word, “cunt” three times. Before hanging up, she caresses her left shoulder, then her chest, and then her neck. All of the sudden, the number 70 blinks on the display above the deli counter and both women quickly check their numbers. Leaning forward, her penciled-in brows raised in expectation and panic, the old woman remains in her original standing position while waving her number in the air like a winning lottery ticket. She grunts in anticipation while the young woman in front of her swoops to the counter space in front of the old woman, rests her elbows on the counter and immediately engages in flirtatious conversation with the clerk. The young woman smiles at the clerk and bats her eyelashes about four times. The clerk, a young Mexican-American man, perhaps in his mid twenties, smiles at first, quickly glances at the old woman and then returns his attention to the younger woman in front of him. The clerk quick and overly-obedient to the younger woman, shells the salad into a large container, slaps a price tag on it and slides it on the counter space dividing the young woman from him. His delivery of the salad occurs blazingly fast, in which it seems is less than 15 seconds pat. The young woman moves her hands to rest on her tiny buttocks; the clerk takes notice of this swiftly and returns his glance to her. When she thanks him, the young woman rests her hand on the clerk’s hand ever so quickly and gently. She retracts her arm before tilting her head. She says, “thank you so much, honey” before winking and storming off with her salad. During this entire exchange—between the young clerk and the young woman—the octogenarian is throwing up her arms in the air, yelling loudly at the entire deli staff. The five staff members intermittently glance at the old woman with blank faces and the young Mexican clerk avoids any eye contact with her whatsoever. The old woman repeatedly points to him angrily, albeit at a good distance from the counter. She is chastising the staff for his behavior. She repeats the phrase, “I was before her, you know. That’s not fair. This is outrageous”. When she says this, she is yelling. Any customer within a close proximity of the old woman quiets. Her voice starts off bold and confident and simmers into a breathless strain. She is shaking her head violently now. She pauses for a moment then returns her attention to the salad. She exhales audibly and forcibly before taking a long hard, despairing stare at her feet. She quiets down, takes off her glasses, pinches her nose, and then deliberately and furtively lets her number drop to the floor. She turns away from the deli, her hand over her whispering mouth. She is off in her own world, while the other grocery patrons remain quiet and observant of her every action. Then, she pipes her eyes up to the exit doors nearby and stares blankly and endlessly to the parking lot in the distance. She ambles from the deli area to the exit. Her eyes are watery and squinting. She sniffles once and wipes her nose with a vibrant-white handkerchief. Her purse is clutched, and her mouth is straight, almost indifferent. She stops before finally exiting the store before momentarily glancing at the service deli clerk she had accused. Then, in a flurry, her pace quickens and she heads out. The store gradually resumes its usual clamor and onlookers return to their shopping and waiting.
Analysis:
Reflecting upon my objective observations, a couple philosophical quotes come to mind. The first theory I thought of relates to Giddens’s theory of social identity with respect to the duality of structure. Giddens’s major point is that structures enable and constrain individuals who are, according to him, actors predetermined by greater social forces. Barker encapsulates and extends Gidden’s theory, though, when he specifies that Gidden’s theory implies these greater social structures enable an individual’s actions, too. Barker paraphrases this sentiment, saying, “Identities are understood to be a question both of agency (the individual constructs a project) and of social determination (our projects are socially constructed and social identities ascribed to us” (Barker, 233). Thus, the seemingly unattractive octogenarian and the younger and ostensibly more attractive, more suggestively dressed woman played out their roles in the context of waiting for their salad. Specifically, the role of the old woman, who was quite obviously and unfairly judged on her looks suffered for her role. To the young deli clerk, the old woman was unattractive and the younger woman was gorgeous and appealed to him. He was socially constrained by his job to call on the next person in line, regardless of what they looked like, or, really, who they were. He decided to help the younger woman when it was the older woman’s turn to order because he was enabled by her proximity to the counter in contrast to the old woman’s distance from it, and acted on his attraction, rather than occupational duty. So, within Gidden’s theory on the duality of social structures, the young clerk was both constrained and freed within this situation; it all had to do with whether or not he could get away with it, whether it was practical to the given situation; the clerk, then, assumed his agency within the power of his job over the old woman’s. Yet, Gidden’s incorporation of social determination cannot be ignored in this situation either. He was the decision maker in this situation, or at least he made him self one; he, really, reproduced a social interaction that occurs everyday—a young man will be more attracted to a hot body than an old face. He is, therefore, enabled and disabled, within this given situation, within prescribed, socially constructed identities. Any young man, who could have gotten away with what the young clerk had done would have at least been inclined to do the same, if not actually act out the same way given the circumstances.
But what is really being socially dealt with here? What characteristic is responded to in each woman? The answer to these questions relates to what Butler says about “sex” as an ideal construct. She argues that, “‘sex’ is an ideal construct which is forcibly materialized through time. It is not a simple fact or static condition of a body, but a process whereby regulatory norms materialize ‘sex’ and achieve this materialization through a forcible reiteration of those norms” (Butler, 238). In the scenario I witnessed, the “sex”, or gendered identities of the young and old women are materialized and reiterated. In this case, then, by extension of this theoretical standpoint, it is reasonable to say that the old woman’s appearance was punished, while the better looking, young woman’s was rewarded. The situation materialized gender roles, but also with a strict respect to sexual appeal. For the deli clerk, the old woman was not desirable, and the young woman was “hot;” in breaking the rules and letting the more attractive woman go before the older one, the clerk, then, materialized the importance of a woman’s looks in getting what she wants from a man. In this situation, the “regulatory norm” is male attraction to appearance; while his response to each woman is natural, it foments an unjust decision on his part.
The quote that ties the first Barker quote best with Butler’s is also from Giddens. The theorist, Barker, sums up what Giddens has to say about social identities within given situations. Barker summarizes Giddens, saying, “ The proliferation and diversification of contexts and sites of interaction prevent easy identification of particular subjects with a given, fixed identity. Thus the same person is able to shift across subject positions according to circumstances” (Barker, 231). This really applies to the meat clerk and his response to the women. He acts based on social constrictions and freedoms, but only within his situation. He knows what he does is wrong, yet he can’t resist his desire. The young Mexican deli clerk makes less than 12 dollars an hour, yet he has the power to reduce an old woman to tears and pet an attractive, younger woman’s ego; outside of work he would never have such power, or at least its unlikely. Yet within his occupational influence he makes a judgment call based on the attractive traits socially prescribed to him of the “sex” of a certain woman over another’s. Are his actions despicable? Yes. But shouldn’t the social structure assume some blame too?
Works Cited
Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2008.
