I am spoiled. Spoiled I am.

I am a spoiled American.  I admit it and I own it.  However, it is not something that I take for granted, at least not anymore, or at least most of the time.  I grew up in a middle-class family with my mother working as a flight attendant and my father working at Kodak.  Because of my mother's profession, my brother and I were very fortunate to have been able to travel to different parts of the world in our youth.  We've been to France, Germany, Mexico, Puerto Rico, London, and various tropical islands.  Among my travels, I've witnessed a vast array of living and economic conditions.  The people I observed in France, Germany, and London appeared to be doing quite well.  The cafes and public squares were overflowing with well-dressed and seemingly "put together" people.  They sipped on cappuccinos while their noses were buried in stimulating novels.  All in all, these people did not strike me as struggling or down on their luck.  Conversely, the people I observed in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and tropical islands were often shoe-less, toothless, and food-less.  They were not shy about asking for money and they appeared to be the living definition of "down on your luck."  I am not naive though.  I recognize that down seedy side streets and hidden alleys of France, Germany, and London, those "type" of people were most likely living.  In the same respect, behind wrought-iron gates and expensive security guards, rich Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Islanders also hide.  My point is this: regardless of the location or affluence of a place, there are always going to be the fortunate and the unfortunate.  However, the egocentric American in me has been conditioned to believe that things like poverty and sweatshops only exist in places where third-world conditions exist.  However, a deeper examination into this issue--as well as Bruce Robbins' article--reveals the dirty truth that sweatshops are in our very own backyard.  I took a film class over the summer where we watch the film Real Women Have Curves.  This film featured a Mexican-American family living in a Mexican community in California.  While the youngest daughter wished to further her education beyond high school, the oldest daughter was running her very own sweat shop, although she seemed to be completely unaware that her dress-making factory was exactly that.  After her family forced her to abandon her dreams of attending college (temporarily--she ended up going against her mother's wishes and left anyway), the youngest daughter was fated to a life of hard manual labor in her sister's factory.  How could something like this happen in the good ol' US of A you ask?  Well, I think the answer is simple: when there's a market for it and the demand is great, it will exist.  In this particular film, the Mexican dress makers hand-crafted beautiful ball gowns that retailed at Barneys and Sacks for over $500 a piece, they were only paid a measly $18 a dress, which had to be split among the nearly 10 workers who were a part of the painstaking process.  No matter how you do the math, the sweatshop workers are always the losers and the consumers are always the winner.  Although this movie is a fictitious account, the scenario is all too real.  Robbins' brief discussion of Wal-Mart and their prices versus what the workers are actually paid hits all to close to home for a lot of us.  I will be the first to admit that I love a good bargain and Wal-Mart sure has them.  Yes, I've read articles and seen news segments that exposed Wal-Mart as a patron of the sweatshop.  I've looked at labels and noticed "Made in the USA" is absent.  I've even tried to take a stand against Wal-Mart and attempted to do my own personal boycott of their products.  I tried to frequent "Ma & Pop" shops for items made in the USA.  I examined labels with care.  And although I felt a minor victory in the egocentric World of Jen, my bank account began to suffer severely.  As hard as I tried to no longer be a part of the problem, it just came down to me being unable to afford authentic and untainted products.  Ultimately, I fell victim to the age-old anthem: "Am I really going to make a difference?  I'm only one person, after all."  Isn't that the very problem, though?  Like Robbins says, my pathetic little  antisweatshop attempt was"...saturated with nationalism and populism" (90).