第8期横空出世的装穷族 - 英语阅读

第8期横空出世的装穷族-英语阅读
Unit 8 The Rise of the Poorgeoise
Brooks dubbed them "BoBos," the "bourgeois bohemians" who
created a new antiestablishment establishment.
They were the specialty-cheese-eating, sport-utility vehicle-driving
environmentalists who railed against the elite even as they
became one of themselves.
They were, in a sense, the antirich rich.
Now, they are calling them the "Poorgeoise," affluent entrepreneurs
and executives who prefer to look like starving artists.
An article in the Guardian says the financial crisis has made
the Poorgeoise more common than ever.
"They're rich and they love to spend, but they like to pretend
they're having as hard a time as the rest of us," the article says.
It's the latest must-have term, fresh in from Brooklyn and
Portland where the streets are paved anew with poorgeoise hipsters.
The poorgeoisie are the countercultural rich who have adopted a
form of consumerism against consumerism—a way of spending to
make themselves to look as though they haven't spent.
It's a new way for rich people who don't want to seem rich to buy
their way out of the guilt and shame of having money at a time
of mass economic woe.
According to the article, they drive hybrids, have creative jobs
and grow their own vegetables.
I wonder, though, whether the Poorgeoise are all that new,
or all that real.
Even before the crisis, many of the wealthy liked to drape themselves
in the camouflage of the proletariat-boarding tbe G5 jet in jeans,
T-shirts and sneakers.
They preferred to be around "thought leaders" and creative artists
rather than other rich people.
They were the Google guys or the art-buying hedge-fund managers
in Greenwich, Conn.
Bobos and Poorgeoise and those who pretend to be less wealthy have
been with us for years. What has changed is that many of them no
longer have to pretend.