All of this talk about social class has made me think about how my social class has effected the way I am. I chose to pay for my school and cost of living since I tranfered to this school. I would have considered myself upper middle based on my parents income but now I think I fall into the working or middle class. I think my social class has effected me in many ways but one thing I have noticed is the girls that I am attracted to. In the past I have dated some wealthy girls that are very high maintenance. I think the things that appeal to me now are different. For instance, if I go to a restraunt and see a girl with expensive clothes and the latest cell phone yeah I think she is attractive but I wouldnt want to date her...unless I needed a sugar-momma. I would rather take the waitress home to meet the parents even though she has people's food on her and is wearing that crappy waitress outfit.

I was wondering if anyone else has noticed anything that your social class has had an effect on. Some people may choose to avoid things that is custom for their social class just to fit in better with people that they associate with that fall into a different classification.

I agree with Adam, I have noticed some things in my everyday life that deal with social class. I mean things as small as which grocery store you shop at , to some, can be attributed to class. I dated this guy for almost two years, we just receintly broke up, but still talk a lot. It is funny because we were from completely different spectrums of the universe. He is from a pretty southern, western north carolina town where religion and family are on top of everyone's priority list, where settling on a low paying job and not going to school was ok. Not me, I was always taught to think independently and that I don't need anyone and the only one I can rely on is ME. Class-wise we were pretty different too. I was from a twelve acre horse farm and he lived in a trailer park, which isn't bad, just different. When we first started dating these differences did not matter until they made themselves evident from other people and their opinions as well as our beliefs, we can be friends now but we have completely different lives.

I really learned a lot from him and have learned to respect differences in opinions.

Again, like I said in a different post, this class thing really makes me kind of uncomfortable. I guess I would say my family is from upper-middle class, or middle class.... I don't feel like I really know what quantifies my socio-economic status, so I don't really feel right trying to associate with a certain category....

I have definitely dated guys outside of my so-called 'social class' like Emily, and the majority of my friends come from all walks of life. Very rarely do I pay attention to the social class of the people in my life that I hold close; I think I try to analyze class from afar, which I admit is SO lame... judging books by their covers. I guess that's why I feel so awkward talking about class, because I have rarely had to confront it. Just like how Emily said that you can tell someone's class sometimes just by where they buy their groceries.... it's so crazy! Why do we even care? What difference does it make to me in the grand scheme of things whether the person in front of me in line is buying white bread or wheat bread. And yet, in because of this video, it seems these trivial instances are actually a lot more significant than we make them out to be....

I agree with Adam as well. I believe that the social class you grow up in will definitely have an impact on choices you make in the future. As Adam mentioned, i also tend to date people who have similar backgrounds to my up-bringing. I feel it is easier to relate to people you have experienced the same way of life that you have. I notice the type of clothes, resturants i choose to eat at, and extracurricular activities all reflect the social class which i feel i am a part of. However, agreeing with Emily i also feel that it's important to associate with people outside of your social class. Socializing with different classes of people will help you grow and get a better grasp on why people turned out the way they did.

I can see my family's social/economic status reflected in the kinds of food I grew up eating. I think about this often because I've gone through a sort of food-enlightenment over the course of the last few years and it's become very apparent to me that my "tastes," or what I took for so long to be my preferences for certain foods and not others, were not so much related to my actual taste buds as they were to the "white bread" mentality we saw in the video.

In my family, "vegetables" usually meant succotash, "pasta" meant spaghetti w/ meatballs, and "tofu" meant...wtf is tofu? Most dinners were of the meat-and-potatoes vein. Oh, and there were almost always biscuits ;] Sunday morning my dad cooked breakfast. No fruit, no yogurt, no bagels, rarely any kind of juice...we're talking pancakes and sausage and grits and 2% milk. There's a mix there, I think, of southern food and middle-middle class mentality.

When I first came to college, a couple of my closest friends had recently decided to become vegan. It was through these friendships that I was exposed to all sorts of bizarre delicacies. (What is pesto and what is it doing on my oddly-shaped spaghetti? Oh, this is "penne rigata," you say? Call it what you will, I still don't see any spaghetti sauce on it. There's got to be some Ragu in the fridge.....Paul Newman makes spaghetti sauce?? You guys are weird.) I resisted branching out for the longest time, always telling myself that I just didn't like these other foods. The truth is that there was something threatening about them, something that didn't feel right. Just give me some chicken fingers and mashed potatoes and I'll be fine, I'll be right at home...

That's what's interesting to me about this example--my perceptual sense of taste was affected by my class mentality. It turns out I like just about any food, no matter how strange or exotic. But for the majority of my life, my psychological state actually supervened upon and shaped the signals my taste buds sent to my brain!! Or something to that effect. So social class isn't simply "in the mind;" in fact, your mind is in social class

I totally agree. My tastes reflect how I was raised and what my family ate. My grandparents paid for our family to go on a cruise once, and I thought the fancy food was horrible! I mean, really, spinach and purple lettuce stuff (not cabbage- I know what that is) in my salad! But, I am also not a huge fan of white bread, so my taste buds are definitely middle class.

About the original question, I do think I feel more comfortable around people who have similar backgrounds as I do, but I don't have problems mixing with other people. I am more attracted to particular personalities, more so than members of a particular class.