Anonymous wrote:I usually sleep in yoga pants and a loose t-shirt. If it’s good enough for walking around DTSS, it’s good enough for the breakfast buffet. That said, I’m AA and super conscious that for some people, my very presence as a paying customer rather than a service worker or trespasser is incomprehensible. So I shower and change into something with more structure in the hopes of not being harassed.
My mom, who is an old white lady in her 90s and not particularly woke, noted to me about 30 years ago that she felt bad that her African-American neighbors always had to get dressed up just to go to the grocery store and how she always noticed how nice they looked. I was surprised she had noticed this aspect of her white privilege decades before most people were really talking about that. I’m really sorry you feel like you still need to shower and change into something nice just to get a stale bagel from the hotel lobby.
On a funny note, my mom also totally noticed the white ladies in curlers at the grocery store and was always totally horrified by them. She’d say “Where do they have to go tonight that’s so important that they are willing to let the whole town see them in curlers?” She would also not be a big fan of PJ at hotel breakfast but she’s seen me on my yoga pants and tee-shirts at hotel breakfast multiple times and even she wasn’t too scandalized.