I grew up in Oyster Bay, New York, a hamlet right on a North Shore beach. We call it OB, sometimes pronounced like “oh bee,” and other times pronounced like “obe.” A particularly seminal memory I have about OB came when I got my second job at a Bed Bath & Beyond in Plainview – a town just a few miles over. I remember being trained by a coworker who asked me where I lived, and when I told her she said, “Oh. Then you must be bougie, right?”
“Bougie.” I had never been called that before. Of course, I am not bougie; I did not consider myself bougie then, and, in fact, I have never considered myself bougie.
I grew up with my mom in a single-parent household, and though I received plenty of support from my dad in Greenlawn (about 30 minutes east of OB), money always felt scarce.
My mom was always belt-tightening as if the next Great Recession was coming. Asking her to spend money was always an uphill battle, but I understood why: we were poor.
I knew what my coworker meant, though. Some people from OB were and still are bougie, but that was not me.
There were blatant distinctions between myself and my peers. I think the most damning one came in early high school when a friend invited me to her house for a party. My mom drove me to my friend’s house in Oyster Bay Cove (casually known as “The Cove”). We drove 15 minutes from my house on a long, twisting route that flanked by private beach after private beach. Then at the end of a long, winding driveway was a house so gorgeous that it should have been in a museum. When I entered the house, the foyer immediately struck me.
The room this family used to hang coats, take off their shoes and grab their car keys was bigger than my entire house. The peanut butter and jelly sandwich I ate for lunch almost daily could never compare to the food there. My wardrobe consisting exclusively of Old Navy and thrifted clothes could never compare. The cramped, six-room house I called – and still call – home certainly could never compare.
This was the mindset I carried with me for most of my adolescence: my peers are more fortunate than me, they are steeped in privilege I will never have and there is a fundamental difference between me and my neighbors. I am not bougie. Or, in other words, “Woe is me.”
That mindset stuck until college when, during my first semester of freshman year, I was talking to a friend about how poorly media represents high school. In movies, shows and books depicted kids were being shoved into lockers, teachers were hitting on students, fights happened at 8 a.m., athletics and arts programs were underfunded, the academic resources were miniscule, small teacher salaries and a struggling student body. I pointed out that those things just didn’t happen.
When I was done, my friend just stared at me, mouth agape and eyes wide. He then told me about his school, about everything he did not have. He told me about every locker he and his friends had been shoved into, every teacher that hit on students, every fight he saw and everything his sports and arts departments missed because of how poorly funded they were.
He told me about every resource they lacked, every teacher with a second job and every student who failed because the support was not there.
What he was telling me was an ugly truth I had avoided my whole life: maybe I am bougie.
Maybe I am bougie because I grew up in OB. I spent my adolescence walking safe streets and hanging out in a beach-side suburb. I grew up in an education system that was well-funded and focused on bringing its students as many opportunities as possible. I grew up in a cushy upper-middle class town going to a cushy upper-middle class school and interacting with cushy upper-middle class people.
While yes, I was certainly underprivileged compared to a lot of my peers, I was a small fish and OB was a small pond.
