Disposable Income
Many critics of the book—especially non-professionals publishing reader reviews online who admit to having experienced financial hardship in their own lives—find an especially galling sense of irony in the book’s opening image relative to what comes later. The author’s story commences with the assertion that she watched her daughter learn to walk while they both called a homeless shelter home. This assertion presents an image of a life lived on the cutting edge of economic deprivation. Thus, the outrage was directed toward the irony of the author later admitting that she had enough disposable income to spend on a subscription to the dating website Match.com.
Near-Tragic Irony
Arguably, perhaps, the single most emotionally devastating moment in the story is a terrifying description of the author hearing the sound of a vehicle slamming into her own car where her little girl sat alone inside where she had parked it on the side of the road. The devastating sound of a windshield exploding in the near distance is almost intense to try visualizing. A tragedy turns out to be only very nearly avoided, but the gut punch of reading the scene is hardly lessened by the fact that it could have turned out so much worse. Adding to the almost unbearable tension is the underlying irony. The entire series of events leading to the arrival of two ambulances, a fire truck, and police officers more interested in serving blame than protecting victims began with a decision to buy a Little Mermaid doll at Wal-Mart to cheer up a sick little girl.
Mary Kay
Mary Kay is a company that has long enjoyed a good reputation for producing quality cosmetics. The price of that quality has served to put them out of buying range for a sizable portion of the population. This combination is the very definition of what makes something a luxury product. And yet, all is not as it may seem. “Donna enjoyed Mary Kay oils, which left a film that stuck to the side of the bathtub like Velcro, collecting every hair, every dead skin cell that came off her.” In her experience working as a maid for those capable of making the statement that is the whole point of buying luxury products, the author is brutally honest. The elevated reputation of Mary Kay's product comes under ironic scrutiny as a result of that honest assessment.
The Welfare
The most successful aspect of the book is the author’s revelations of how the generalized negative view toward the welfare system suggesting it is an easy way to get paid by the government for doing nothing prove to be completely divorced from reality. Multiple examples abound illustrating not just that getting into the system and making it work efficiently to meet very real and pressed is anything but easy, but how it has turned into a system designed to inflict punishment for successfully working hard enough to improve one’s conditions. Among the ironies touched upon by the author is working enough extra hours to earn a small increase in one’s revenue can potentially result in an inequitable loss of hundreds of dollars in benefits.
