In the labor movement, on May Day and every day, arises the wish for what we call “bread and roses.” That is, not just the means to secure bare life and sustenance, but also the means to partake in the beautiful things in life. Admittedly, I too wish for these things, but not without a skepticism of what wish fulfillment and attachments do to us. What happens after the roses wilt? Will its thorns scratch and tear us apart to reveal irresolvable pain, more than skin deep? What do we lose sight of in our pursuit of flowery yet fungible joys?
I recently came across a dystopian trend in my social media algorithm, one that continues the trend of millennial economic hopelessness and despair. Rather than the millennial grievances around the impossibility of home ownership, it turns out that gen Z can hardly imagine even renting their own apartments. “One day, you’ll be shopping for groceries to cook dinner in a small apartment that you rent,” the posts read.1 How did things turn out this way? Forget the roses – we’re now romanticizing the bread that becomes a garlic bread and spaghetti dinner. (Delicious? Yes. Middle-class? No.) The floor keeps changing on what we consider to be rosy and romantic, and it has fallen from home ownership to mere apartment renting. Are we now settling for romanticizing bare life? This is not what “bread and roses” should come to mean in the 21st century.
And yet, the working-class people cannot imagine a better life. Many of us get by on our small treats to survive the oppressive demands of work-life balance. In our attachments to the little things in life, the beautiful things left in life, I would say that many of us lose sight of the long-term struggle that needs our courage and persistence. It is true that an avocado toast (gen Z equivalence: a matcha latte) will not make or break your chances to own a home or afford rent, but it will not do the work of organized labor and working-class solidarity either.
In classic academic fashion, I turn to theory in times like these to articulate the profound connections and complexities of the situation. Mimi Thi Nguyen recently came to the University at Buffalo to speak on her newest book, The Promise of Beauty, where she actually mentions bread and roses in the introductory chapter’s epigraph. She thinks about beauty and what it does (beyond what it promises to do), and one of beauty’s promises is a respite or a relief from the cruelty of the world, the ability to mediate moments of crisis.2 This is in fact something that we partake in every time we appreciate our pets, or our handcrafted drinks, or the homemade dinner in the small apartment we rent, despite the feeling that everything around us is crumbling and that stagflation has us stuck in conditions of bare life. I see this all the time with people crossing the picket lines to get a latte from Starbucks, small pleasure and comfort in a world where they feel powerless – even as they have the power to boycott with the BDS movement, the ULP strikes at Starbucks worldwide, and more. What purpose is beauty serving us in moments like us, if not to turn us away from the ugly reality of worker exploitation that lies behind everything we consume? While beauty makes our conditions of bare life more bearable (pun intended, with the viral Starbucks bearista cups in the midst of the boycott), we would do well to think critically about what narratives beauty paints about our ability to affect the world around us. Simply put, what are we capable of doing other than simply sustaining ourselves day-to-day, paycheck-to-paycheck? There must be something more beautiful than small comforts in a cruel world.
This leads me to my next theoretical contemplation, which is Lauren Berlant’s concept of cruel optimism. Cruel optimism, loosely paraphrased, is when something you desire is actually a detriment to your well-being, whether that desire or attachment is to an impossible love, an addiction, an attitude, or something more.3 Mimi Thi Nguyen’s aforementioned thoughts on beauty connect to cruel optimism, in that an unrelenting attachment to aesthetically pleasing yet problematic treats, combined with an unwillingness to confront ugly and uncomfortable truths, will ultimately only do us harm. If we cannot even be bothered to leverage our economic power to boycott in the face of what we know to be wrong, then how can this attachment (to beauty, comfort, and/or convenience) ever be anything but detrimental to the working-class and their chances of escaping exploitation? That is what cruel optimism entails. The very things that we think we want are our downfall. The romanticization of simply getting by, to buy groceries and cook a meal in your small apartment that you rent, is unacceptable, unless we are willing to preserve the status quo. This is not the good life that we were promised or that we dreamt of in previous generations. This is not productive to our well-being and flourishing. There must be more that we can aspire to have.
So ask for more. Demand more. That is the essence of May Day, a day forged out of collective struggle for more economic dignity, more humanity, more livable lives. What could possibly be more beautiful and optimistic than being a part of the resistance that would ensure we could have all we wanted, if we simply confronted it instead of looking away or settling for less? The world may be cruel, but so is the complacency that promises beauty, comfort, and convenience over confronting reality. If there was ever a moment to resist and fight back against all that threatens our livelihoods, then that moment is now. This is what “bread and roses” should be. This is what May Day should be. Solidarity now, and solidarity forever.
Notes
- https://dailydot.com/gen-z-romanticize-rent-groceries
- Nguyen, Mimi Thi. The Promise of Beauty. Duke University Press, 2024.
- Berlant, Lauren Gail. Cruel Optimism. Duke University Press, 2011.
