Welcome to Saturday Morning Cartoons, a segment where four artists take turns delighting you with their whimsy, facts and punchlines on Saturday mornings! Our esteemed cartoon critters are Cameron Glavin, Anna Bongiovanni, Megan Prazenica and Yao Xiao. Today’s cartoon is by Anna!
I'm a cartoonist living in Minneapolis. Co-Author and artist of A Quick And Easy Guide To They/Them Pronouns. Author of Grease Bats, coming out Fall 2019 with Boom! Studios! If I'm not working I'm socializing. If I'm not out with friends I'm drawing. If I'm not doing any of those things I'm probably depressed. Support me using Patreon.
Archie has written 117 articles for us.
Another classic to brighten up the day. Thank you!
HAHAHAHA maybe I should have read this before I went to the thrift stores last weekend…
Andy’s struggle is so real. I completely agree with them about yard sales being a great form of retail therapy! (And about crossbows being cool as shit!)
Love it! We need to talk about money and spending habits/consumerism more often. Financial literacy for the win! (But it also is a reflection of our classist society and income inequality…)
It’s ALL OF IT and we totally need to start talking and realizing our own habits! BUT ALSO I hate talking about it so. so. much. hence being hella broke.
JD Samson (Bikini Kill, Le Tigre, MEN) has a great article about that: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jd-samson/i-love-my-job-but-it-made_b_987680.html
Made me feel better to see their words in print about being poor vs the expectation to afford and represent trendiness in order to be cultural.
yessssssss.
A lot of the feelings mentioned feel very similar to mine, especially about being a queer artist (in 2015). The combination of living a life of art/activism is dreamy, but stressful as hell. The money, the security, is never there, and the anxiety that can go with it (my therapist says being broke is a full-time job) is so detrimental to productivity. This is probably the same for a lot of folks who freelance or who are not making a living wage.
Someone should start a blog about this called working-class queer or something. My friend’s wedding this May is making me feel especially self-conscious about how being visibly queer has become performance art conducted in thousand-dollar bespoke suits (my friend’s assistant-of-honor is shopping Kipper and St. Harridan’s); it’s a dapper uniform. There are SO MANY companies in SF and NYC catering to this trend; the list from DapperQ’s website circa 2013 is over 20 companies. Meanwhile, i’ve been on the ramen plan all spring just to try and afford the airfare to her wedding.
Even here on AS, a lot of times I feel excluded from post after post of shopping links or expensive cheese / whiskey / whatever, so I very much appreciate the acknowledgement of a few affordable options in those posts when they happen. My friends are very understanding and nonjudgmental, but it sucks to have to rely on that to make whatever cheap clothes I end up wearing to their wedding ok.
it’s so weird at work, too. i don’t fit in socially because i don’t have the same privileged background as 90% of academia, and learning the unwritten rules is like learning a foreign language by lip-reading. But as soon as i cut my hair and wore men’s clothes and became visibly queer, all of a sudden i was “trendy” and ppl that previously avoided me in the hallways are suddenly treating me with respect and talking to me like an equal. (No, its not that i am projecting more confidence; it is not coming from me.) But it is so, so weird. i’m still the same person I was before, that fits in better at Food City (working class) than Safeway (frat crowd) or Trader Joe’s (hipsters). Except now ppl at work see me as someone i’m not: before, i was invisible because ppl decided I was beneath them; now i’m invisible because they see the queer uniform and assume i’m upscale and ‘cultured’. Being queer is not the same as being hipster but to most ppl there’s no distinction, and I’m feeling the negative aspects of that these days.
I *am* cultured, but no one wants to hear about working-class culture. No one wants to hear about how the kids that grow up affluent in Arizona literally cannot understand foreign accents because unlike the neighborhood I grew up in, with 6 different languages spoken at the grocery store line and the playground, these affluent kids have rarely been in the same room with people who aren’t almost exactly like them. The other TAs I work with that grew up in privileged AZ, literally cannot understand their scholar colleagues from the global community, and the undergrads literally cannot understand TAs that are among the best and brightest from their entire (foreign) country. But no one wants to hear about that.
ok this comment is really long now sorry about that but BLUE COLLAR *IS* CULTURE and QUEER IS NOT HIPSTER; I’m not sorry for that.
I mean, English spoken with a foreign accent.
@Rey thank you so much for your comment. It is everything I’ve wanted to articulate for years but I couldn’t have put it so perfectly as you did. I feel a little less alone now :) Again, thank you.
Thanks Jasmine for your kind reply, and you too Shewasnice. I’m surprised and glad for so many ppl clicking like on this rant of mine. Wouldn’t it be dreamy if somehow there was an AS column about it (from a real writer, not me). I wish I knew everybody’s story and we could share some solidarity: what if there was an interview-type column, or stories from a different working-class straddler each month? <3 And thanks Anna for comix that inspire everybody.
This is the most perfect comment. You win.
Thanks for sharing JD Samson’s article, Rey! I’m also 33 and have lived out my passion, not as an artist but in early childhood education, a very low paying field. For almost ten years I’ve had a fairly successful business, enough to pay my bills and put some money into retirement (thanks in large part to the encouragement of my parents who are upper middle class and have stressed the importance of financial planning). But not enough to have health insurance not to mention luxurious.
I got married two years ago and my wife has been unemployed off and on due to her depression and anxiety issues. We have talked about starting a family, but I don’t feel like we have enough money at this point, especially as it is looking like we might need to try IVF to conceive with her stuff and my stuff. I feel fortunate that I make enough to pay the bills and take care of my wife and myself, but frustrated that I’m working 55 hours + for just over $8 an hour and no health insurance.
And so I’m looking to change careers. Partly for the money to take care better of my family. So many complicated feelings!
I love this so hard.
Andy is right, no snow in Minneapolis in MARCH! mean I Do What I Want!
I am GOING CRAZY!!
A leather chest harness and body glitter.
Andy, you stunning beast.
TOO REAL TOO REAL
ANDY! You’re wearing too much glitter and having a skin reaction! GAWD!!
I love me some greasebats!
I feel so, so much for Scout. It’s one thing to feel constantly dicked over by capitalist society; it’s another thing to constantly feel dicked over by capitalist society AND your friends.
I just want to share my excellent spending choice of the day:
I’ve just returned from the vintage shop down the street with my first ever non-bowtie ties! I look so dapperrrrr yayyyyy and I got two (a dark purple skinny tie and a funky-patterned pastel one) for only $10!
spreading the joy…. :)
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