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Notes -
I don't hear much talk about the "towel principle" and I'm curious if it relates to a real phenomenon and how one could use it in their interactions with other people or with oneself.
If you're not familiar, the towel principle is from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide: "More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (Non-hitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have "lost." What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with."
Basically, the principle would be that if you're the sort of person who does or has something that takes a decent amount of effort, people will see that and cut you a break in other areas. Specifically I was thinking about it in relation to housework. I'm a pretty terrible housekeeper - not hoarder or pest-attracting level (much) but I have a lot of trouble getting myself motivated and making a system to stay on top of things. And my ex tweaks me about it often and it stresses me out because I know it's a problem but I wish they would just shut up about it.
Anyway I was looking for a new system and read something about how much someone enjoyed cleaning their baseboards and how it gave them satisfaction. Baseboards. What kind of person cleans their baseboards? Is this really something where people wake up one day and say, yep, it's baseboard day?
Baseboards are far down my list of potential cleaning goals - but maybe they shouldn't be. A place that hasn't been deep cleaned in a while does collect grime and dust everywhere, including baseboards. On the other hand, if someone has clean baseboards, that's probably the sort of person who's on top of their cleaning. I do think there's a perceptual difference between a home that is cluttered AND ALSO has dirty baseboards, versus a home that is cluttered but has clean baseboards. If I clean my baseboards, does that change the character of the house even when I'm behind on other stuff? Do I feel better about myself, because now I'm the sort of person who cleans baseboards so I can take a little pride in that? Will it get my ex off my back a little more because it has the appearance of me putting more effort in?
Anyway, just wondering if you think I'm onto something and if there are other potential applications of the towel principle.
I think of this as "definitely not a bum privilege" and I am conscious of how valuable it is for someone like me who is too disorganised to reliably be able to prove that they are not a bum on request - if you have it, people really do assume you are a respectable person having a bad day and wave off all kinds of minor irregularities (missing paperwork and being in the wrong place at the wrong time are the ones I take advantage of most often). It also makes people willing to do cheap favours like letting your child use an employee-only toilet.
But there isn't a simple cheap signal like knowing where your towel is that is unusually effective in generating definitely not a bum privilege - my suspicion is that it is necessarily anti-inductive in order to work. The key things that seem to make a difference are personal hygiene, vaguely normal physical appearance, broadly conventional dress (clean, non-ripped jeans and a T-shirt is fine - wearing a suit doesn't seem to make much difference beyond that), and accent (upper-class British is optimal on both sides of the Atlantic for different reasons).
Part of what the "white privilege" crowd in the US appear to be talking about is that black Americans need to do significantly more class signalling to benefit from definitely not a bum privilege than non-blacks. This is a little bit true in the UK, but not enough to be worth ranting about.
That's probably a better description yeah.
The bum / not a bum perception IMO is based on behavior as much as appearance. Even before they really do anything, you can often just tell that they move differently. Most normal people out in the world are actively doing something, or appear to be relaxing or waiting for someone or something. Bums just seem to have a kind of restlessness and not knowing what to do to them.
They also seem to have a way of asking for things in excessively flowery language. Or with long explanations of whatever ridiculous situation they are supposedly in.
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