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1、When the Joneses Wear JeansBy JENNIFER STEINHAUER BEACHWOOD, Ohio - It was 4:30 p.m., sweet hour of opportunity at the Beachwood Place Mall.Shoppers were drifting into stores in the rush before dinner, and the sales help, as if on cue (在预定的时间), began a retail ritual: trying to tell the buyers from t
2、he lookers, （distinguishfrom）the platinum-card holders from those who could barely pay their monthly minimum balance (余额). It is not always easy. Ellyn Lebby, a sales clerk at Saks Fifth Avenue, said she had a customer who regularly bought $3,000 suits but who looks like he should be standing outsid
3、e shaking a cup. At Oh How Cute, a childrens boutique(专卖流行衣服的小商店), the owner, Kira Alexander, checks out shoppers fingernails. A good manicure (修指甲) usually signals money. But then again, Ms. Alexander conceded, I dont have nice nails and I can buy whatever I want. (Translate?)Down the mall at the G
4、odiva chocolate store, Mark Fiorilli, the manager, does not even bother trying to figure out who has money. Over the course of a few hours, his shoppers included a young woman with a giant diamond ring and a former airplane parts inspector living off her disability checks.You cant make assumptions (
5、想当然), Mr. Fiorilli said.Social class, once so easily assessed by the car in the driveway or the purse on the arm, has become harder to see in the things Americans buy. Rising incomes, flattening prices （平稳的物价）(soaring prices) and easily available credit have given so many Americans access to （让这么多美国
6、人买得到）such a wide array of high-end goods （大批高端产品）that traditional markers of status have lost much of their meaning （传统的身份象征已经失去了大部分意义）. A family squarely （directly）in the middle class （中坚的中产阶级）may own a flat-screen television (平板电视), drive a BMW and indulge a taste for （满足的口味）expensive chocolate.A
7、wealthy family may only further blur the picture （让情况变得更为扑朔迷离）by shopping for wine at Costco and bath towels at Target, which for years has stocked its shelves with （货架上摆满了）high-quality goods. Everyone, meanwhile, appears to be blending into a classless crowd（汇入不分阶级的人流）, shedding the showiest kinds
8、of high-status clothes in favor of a jeans-and-sweat suit informality. When Vice President Dick Cheney, a wealthy man in his own right, attended a January ceremony in Poland to commemorate the liberation of Nazi death camps, he wore a parka毛皮风雪大衣，派克大衣：一种在北极地区穿的带风帽的皮外衣.But status symbols have not dis
9、appeared. As luxury has gone down-market 商贸价廉质次的, 低档市场的, the marketplace has simply gone one better 美俚胜过(某人), rolling out大量生产ever-pricier goods and pitching定位于them to the ever-loftier rich. This is an America of $130,000 Hummers悍马and $12,000 mother-baby diamond tennis bracelet sets, of $600 jeans, $
10、800 haircuts and slick光滑的new magazines advertising $400 bottles of wine. Then there are the new badges of high-end consumption that may be less readily conspicuous but no less potent. Increasingly, the nations richest are spending their money on personal services or exclusive experiences （独特经历）and i
11、solating themselves from the masses （脱离大众）in ways that go beyond building gated walls. These Americans employ about 9,000 personal chefs, up from about 400 just 10 years ago, according to the American Personal Chef Association. They are taking ever more exotic vacations （奇特的休假）, often in private pla
12、nes. They visit plastic surgeons and dermatologists for costly and frequent cosmetic procedures. And they are sending their children to $400-an-hour math tutors, summer camps at French chateaus城堡and crash courses on managing money.Whether or not someone has a flat-screen TV is going to tell you less
13、 than if you look at the services they use, where they live and the control they have over other peoples labor, those who are serving them, said Dalton Conley, an author and a sociologist at New York University. Goods and services have always been means to measure social station. Thorstein Veblen, t
14、he political economist who coined the phrase conspicuous consumption at the beginning of the last century, observed that it was the wealthy leisure class, in its manner of life and its standards of worth, that set the bar障碍for everyone else.The observance of these standards, Veblen wrote, in some de
15、gree of approximation, becomes incumbent upon（常与on连用）负有职责的；负有义务的all classes lower in the scale.So it is today. In a recent poll by The New York Times, fully 81 percent of Americans said they had felt social pressure to buy high-priced goods. But what Veblen could not have foreseen is where some of t
16、hat pressure is coming from, says Juliet B. Schor, a professor of sociology at Boston College who has written widely on consumer culture. While the rich may have always set the standards, Professor Schor said, the actual social competition used to be played out largely at the neighborhood level, among people in roughly the same class.In the last 30 years or so, however, she said, as people have become increasingly isolated
