Category: Culture

SNAP Benefits Shouldn’t Be Limited to Food

Photo by Oleg Magni on Pexels.com

In 1990, I was 31 years old and had been married for 11 years to my high school sweetheart (my first attempt at trying to get a man to meet his own potential despite his lack of interest in the whole project!). We lived in a large single home in the suburbs across the river from Philadelphia in South Jersey, with two kids and two dogs. By that year, I realized that the man I married was NOT someone I wanted to spend the rest of my life with and I told him to leave in March. He finally did so that June, and I got my friend’s sister and her toddler to move in as my roommate. She worked days, I worked nights, so perfect, right? Not so much.

Anyway, one thing led to another and I found myself in the unacceptable position of needing to apply for public benefits – food stamps, welfare and Medicaid – for myself and my children. My father took me there to fill out the application (no internet in 1990, sadly) despite my distaste of the whole idea (I had my own prejudices about ‘assistance’), because I was entitled to it. He was right – I wasn’t able to work because I was recuperating from surgery and my estranged husband (in rehab after a drunk-driving accident that caused him some serious frontal lobe damage) wasn’t working either, leaving us with no actual income.

I was way more fortunate than the majority of women in similar circumstances – single parents without financial support from the noncustodial parent – because my parents were fairly well-off. In addition, due to a legal settlement, and a bargain ‘fixer-upper’ of a house, I had no mortgage payment. Unfortunately, this did not mean I lived there for free – real estate taxes, utilities, cable and such put my monthly expenses conservatively around $1,500 before food. Adding groceries to that total for just myself and two young kids (7 and 10) brought that total to around $2,000.

When I was approved by the state for assistance, I was granted Medicaid for myself and my children (limited to those providers who agreed to accept the meager fees paid for their services) along with cash assistance/welfare and food stamps. The monthly cash payment I received was $475, and in food stamps, $256, about 30% of my monthly bills and about half of my grocery expenses. Of course, those grocery expenses include more than just food.

The non-edible things purchased at the grocery store are (in large part) also necessities and should be included in the benefits. Who among us can manage without laundry products, paper products, feminine hygiene products, health and beauty aids and cleaning products? How much of the average American’s grocery budget includes non-edibles like toilet paper, tissues, etc.?

When I pointed this out to the welfare worker I was assigned to, I was told that this was the purpose of the cash benefit. How I was supposed to pay my bills after I used my cash benefit for my non-edible groceries was not her problem. The only reason I wasn’t forced to sell my home in order to live off the proceeds was because of my parents’ financial support.

It is long over due for the food assistance system to be updated to reflect that actual needs of real families, including the fact that the least expensive food items are also those least healthy for us to eat. Fresh fruits, vegetables and proteins are significantly more expensive than the non-nutritious prepared foods available in the middle aisles of most grocery stores, and produce is almost nonexistent in food deserts where the only ‘grocery’ store is a dollar store.

Once again, we have to ask ourselves – if people who work 40 hours or more every week for a minimum wage job require government assistance for food, housing, healthcare and other necessities, why aren’t their employers required to raise their pay to a living wage?

Taxpayers shouldn’t be required to supplement poverty-level wages, to make workers whole; employers should be forced to provide a minimum living wage that is above the poverty level. Put the burden for this disparity where it belongs; on the companies that pay too little. Republicans (along with Sinema and Manchin) who refuse to address this do not deserve their place in power. Period.

Noooooo!!! Not My Pepe!!!

Pepe Le Pew

Since I was a little girl, my favorite cartoon character has been Pepe Le Pew. I looked at him as a poor, rejected little skunk who just wanted Penelope to love him.

After learning today in WAPO that Pepe is on the block to ‘exit, stage right’, I’m both saddened and disturbed. Sad, because I there won’t be any more Pepe Le Pew Hallmark ornaments to add to the ten or so I already have for my xmas tree. Sad because that little bugger was a big part of my childhood TV viewing, and he was cute. And sad because the reality is hard to deny, when you take a cold, hard look at those old cartoons through adult eyes.

What bothered me more, however, was realizing how I never really thought about the underlying theme of every one of the Pepe and Penelope cartoons – that men force themselves on women because they want to, and that women can do nothing but accept this as the status quo. Sure, as a little girl this wouldn’t have crossed my mind, but that’s the problem; repeatedly exposing little minds to these images, children absorb the lesson that it’s okay for a man to force himself on a woman. They take that out into the world, along with all the other media exposure of women as playthings for men, and it’s no wonder that so many of us have at least once in our lives been sexually harassed or abused.

I say this having been sexually assaulted by a friends’ cousin when I was in eighth grade. I played hookey one day with her and her brother, so during and immediately afterwards I told myself it was all my fault. It didn’t cross my mind at the time that the fact I was wearing my catholic school uniform when he came to pick me up should have been enough to make this grown-ass man make tracks and drive off as soon as he saw me. Or the fact that he knew I was 13 years old and in elementary school with his cousin. I was precocious, as an only child in a home with three adults, and so sounded older than I was. I have no idea how old he was.

When he was done, he drove me back and dropped me off on the corner of my street. Walking home, I contemplated telling my mother what had just happened. As I imagined the conversation in my head, I got as far as this:

“Mom, while Sue (not her real name) & I played hookey today, I got into a car with her cousin and went to his house somewhere where he took me to his bedroom and made me play with him until something squirted out of his penis.” (I was physically mature, but emotionally not so much.)

“If you hadn’t played hookey, this wouldn’t have happened.” Nope, not gonna happen.

I didn’t tell anyone about it until I was 28 years old. Mom, aghast, asked me why I didn’t tell her then. When I told her what I’d thought at the time, she admitted that I was probably right. I know she felt really bad about it, but there wasn’t much that could be done at that point. Ironically, I think I was prompted to say something after we’d watched the Bill Cosby stand up video that was so big back in the late 80’s. Weird.

Anyway, I think it would be better if Warner Brothers would revamp Pepe Le Pew into something less creepy, like maybe have Pepe and Penelope in a consensual relationship. I’m not sure what that could end up looking like, but it could show how people are supposed to treat someone they really care about, and how no means no. But with humor. Kinda like a Looney Tunes cartoon.