That was one of the many things about this movie that bugged me. It's not like she's living in some trailer park, she's living in a nice little house, albeit a tiny bit run down but not that bad. And come on, she even has a car, but oh no she's poor because -gasp- it has a DENT in it. It seems to me like Andie was just a brat, she had a fine life, she just always wanted more.
I guess in this movie if you don't live in a mansion, you're poor. Weird logic.
She obviously was a very insecure girl. She wasn't as poor as she painted herself but compared to her classmates she felt she was.
Esta es mi firma
100% agree with you. I just can't take Andie's "poor" complex seriously. She looks like upper lower class or lower middle class. Technically speaking, she's not poor at all. She and her father have a lot of wealth, i.e. they own a lot of things that have a lot of material value. It looks like they've got a house, running water, and electricity, which is not something that totally, utterly broke people typically have. They could be "working poor," but if you put up her family's total assets against the rest of the world, it looks like she's eating off gold plates and sleeping on luxury mattresses. The poorest person in America is far from being the poorest person in the world. The majority of the country looks poor compared to Blaine or Steff, but Blaine or Steff look poor (since they're attending a school where poor kids are also students - it looks like a public school, since there's your standard variety of cliques) compared to the "uber-rich" anyway. 80s era class stigma is not a really good excuse for being so ungrateful and conveniently forgetting all the truly disadvantaged people in the world. No matter what decade you live in, you can't forget that there are people who are really poor; i.e. they actually have next to nothing. That's why she seems like a brat when she's ashamed of her house. She should be happy it's an actual house, not a trailer or a lean-to hovel. I also kept thinking that when she goes to college, she should redefine her concept of "poor" because her house looks great compared to the living situation she's going to be in during her undergrad and post-grad years. She's doing as much as she can given her situation, but her situation isn't bad by a long shot.
She should also be grateful to her community that she gets to attend such a good high school. I don't know why she was being sarcastic about it; I think she'd change her mind if she had to attend a poorly funded inner city school for a while.
I can't believe so many people misread her. She wasn't ungrateful for what she had. She was fine with what she had and who she was. It was just that she was in love with a boy whose friends looked down on her and wouldn't accept her because she was poor while her friends treated him badly because he was rich. She was frustrated by the situation and embarrassed because she thought HE would have a problem with where she lived, etc. When she was with Iona, Duckie, or her dad she didn't whine about being poor. As far as being grateful to the community for letting her attend the school, her problem with that was that she should not have to be "allowed" to attend a good school. Every kid should attend a good school. It should just be every kid's right not a favor handed down to them by the people "above them". I'm sure she was glad to be at a better school but to have someone say that to her as if she didn't deserve it or something was condescending at best. Once she knew that Blane was okay with her situation I'm sure she'd have him over to meet her dad and have dinner, etc.
I do not have attention deficit disor...Ooh, look at the bunny!
I agree. Andi didn't come across spoiled at all, I guess only people who stereotype women as princesses would believe that.
I'm also tired of levels of poverty being the new playing ground of the Oppression Olympics. "She has running water" or "she has a car" are arguments that wouldn't be tolerated if one were talking about a non-white neighborhood.
I think she felt that way compared to the other kids at that school. I don't know if you ever watched Gossip Girl, but in the beginning 2 of the characters were considered "poor" by the standards of the rest of the kids at their schools. Their dad owned an art gallery in Brooklyn and had to of been making $150,000+ per year minimum. More likely he was making $500,000 because it was a fancy gallery with fancy shows and parties.
However at the schools his kids attended most students were the kids of millionaires and billionaires, so they were poor in comparison.
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Actually, yes, she was poor. The area she lived in compared with the rest of the suburb? Yes, she was definitely poor. So was Duckie. It had nothing to do with the car having a dent it. I grew up in a suburb like that. She lived in the poor section of that suburb, and Blaine, Steph, and their friends grew up in the Upper Middle Class section. But to me, it was completely realistic. Several people I knew who were poor managed to have their own car (a beater, but they didn't care as long as it ran), and their own phone. They were still poor. Their parents just worked hard to give them as much as possible, and some of them held some form of after school job to earn spending money. And if they were a guy with a beater? They often fixed it themselves, and the girls got their brothers or dad or whatever father-figure they had to fix their cars if there was a problem.
Hell, I was not poor growing up, but I didn't have a car. My parents didn't see a need for it. I took the bus in senior year. Having money or not having money had nothing to do with whether or not you had a car. So when I watched this movie, it was not unrealistic to me to see Andie with her own car or phone or whatever. That was normal, even for someone who was considered poor. It just wasn't a brand new car like the "richies" had is all.
EMOTICONS ARE BACK! YAY!
Reminds me of Zach Morris from SBTB when he said he wasn't used to poor people. Being poor in his neighborhood was not having cable.
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And if the rich kids were so rich then what were they doing in public school? Wouldn't they go to some exclusive prep school?
shareIn some wealthy suburbs outside of NYC and Chicago the public school are exceptional and it make perfect sense for the wealth parents to send their kids to the local public school. I have numerous friends who grew up in areas like Scarsdale, NY whose parents had the means to send their kids to private school but chose to send them to the local high school.
If you what you mean by "exclusive" is some boarding school like Groton, St. Pauls, Exeter, etc. those school are VERY hard to get into in. There are numerous wealth families who would love to send their kids to one of those school but they cannot get in. Steph and Blaine did not seem like the strong academic types.