If Orange is the New Black, Can Someone Tell Me Who is In the New Middle?

After a satisfying binge of watching "Orange is the New Black" it was time to take stock of my self-perception of a world that is much bigger than my own little GTA bubble. Leading lady Piper Chapman gets stripped mentally and emotionally (and let’s face it physically) to see that her “middle class white blonde” reality masks not only her own sense of who she could potentially be on the opposite side of the coin, but also the reality of women from very different lives who inevitably wind up in the same place as she did – prison.  On a level playing field everything is set into sharp focus becoming raw and brutally honest. For the viewer it is seat squirmingly fascinating as the confessions and revelations hit nerves, questioning our sense of identity in a Western society clearly cut by socioeconomic lines of class, gender and ethnicity.

My first question was as a white 40 something female in Canada’s largest urban center where do I fit into the Canadian social landscape? Clearly I’m not in prison, but the media platform of the series allows us to explore the deeper question of place and belonging.  As we head into multiple elections over the next 6 -18 months in Canada I feel I’m often lumped into a Canadian wilderness of political promises and aspirations to meet the needs of the middle class. Just who is that exactly?

What does middle class mean? According to StatsCan it meant that in 2010 a pre tax family income was $57,000. Okay…but with inflation adjustments that means that they are relatively the same level as they were in 1980 with an overall increase of $53. Of course if we add in home values that have risen to meteoric heights you can paint a rosier picture of middle class net asset values being $212,000 as of 2013. Oh but wait, let’s subtract the average family debt load in Canada at somewhere above the $27,000 mark that means Canadians are spending 1.64 to every dollar they make. Confused yet?

Numbers can paint any number of images of financial middles and averages but the trend is clear – income inequality is on the rise and the middle has shrunk leaving greater gaps and questions on who is struggling and thriving in the world of haves and have not’s. But the gaps have also brought into question what will I have or will my children have in the future? The picture is this – not much has happened in growth even five years after the supposed end of the recession. Instead there are greater disparities that aren’t being addressed on the key issues of what the middle needs.

If that is the case I asked, then what do middle class women worry about? What do they need?  If I was a marketing exec I would be positioning my product to middle class women – they are the primary purchasers of daily goods and services, the budgeters and generally key to swaying decision making in Canadian households. Who are they? Well, in many cases they are the primary or shared breadwinners to their households. They are burdened with income disparities in the face of finding a work-life balance and affordable childcare. They see employers and federal employee policies that don’t recognize that women HAVE to work today AND raise families. It is no longer a choice for many to stay at home, but a necessity to go into the workforce however employers are still reluctant to find that middle ground and government policies aren’t addressing that. They have aging parents and an aging healthcare system that is covering less and less each year. They see a shrinking job market of opportunities to make ends meet – for them and for their children.

According to recent statistics of demographics across Canada - chances are if you think you’re in the middle or trying to get there you are also addressing the challenges of not being white like Piper Chapman but faced with the realities of the immigrant experience (especially if you are in the GTA and its expanding diverse communities.) If that’s the new Canadian middle perhaps it makes sense that Olivia Chow would throw her hat in the ring here in Toronto? From her immigrant roots to national politics her story is one of rising to the middle and surpassing it.

Life isn’t a level playing field and neither is the economic, educational or employment opportunity disparities in a country like Canada. It’s a multicultural field here that is still struggling with questions of workplace equality for women, new immigrants and younger generations who are educated and coming into a world where the economy can’t kick start itself or them. Whether it is austerity measures masked as balancing budgets or cutbacks in the public service that limit what we historically did best in Canada for Canadians – promote growth of communities and societies through a stable basket of socialized care policies in education, health and culture –it's not really working. If we take stock of the issues and the desire to meet the needs of the middle, how do they fit into the political considerations and landscape of Canada’s upcoming elections - from municipal, provincial to federal?

From a party standpoint the middle means finding representatives of every gender, ethnic and religious leaning to make the middle a more rounded, multicultural “representative” of the fabric of modern Canadian life and to create a message that meets and greets the middle. They are trying from “Nominate Her” campaigns to open nominations among the newly created and established ridings that are changing existing political geographic lines across the country. But what does that look like in terms of meeting needs with policy for the middle?

Marketers would say that your target audience for buy in of your product is the middle. However we are still not sure what the parties are selling and aren’t really getting an indication that they know who the “middle” is in whose votes they are trying to sway. Kathleen Wynne was asked that question just last week of who the middle is – she told us to wait for the budget.

But the middle isn’t only a number. Just like Piper Chapman is thrown into a different reality of her self-defined middle class life into prison, many once self-defined middle class families find themselves on the edges of that social divide struggling under debt, a prolonged weak economy and rising costs of family life that show that the ends aren’t meeting in the middle. Yet politics still wants us all to belong there to relate to and be part of the middle where they can reach out with their policies and promises.

Why are we so uncomfortable to admit that Canadian families are increasingly not middle class, that they are beleaguered under increasing burdens? We can squirm and watch in fascination the raw dialogue of personas and their tragic life stories on Orange is the New Black but do we explore it enough in the dramatically shifting realities of average families in the long winter of economic slowdown, rising unemployment and poor family - work life balance? Do we look at a shrinking tax resource base that doesn’t include a balanced taxation system that leverages and brings the corporate sector in line to pay its share rather than hiding behind practices of recent years that have pandered to corporate revenue tax evasion? 

Orange is the New Black had me asking does everyone want to be in the middle? Is there social pressure "shame" of not belonging if you aren’t defining yourself as in the middle? Politicians want to cater to the middle - of course they do.  But the question is where are we right now and where do we want to be in the future? At some point we have to stop standing in the safety of an empty middle to walk along a path that really addresses what Canadians need to get us out of the red and back into the black.

For a fun poke at what the middle life looks like from an artist’s perspective check out  Suzanne Henitz Life Once Removed