Washing dishes as a 17-year-old in an Oxford college and seeing the privileged lifestyles of the undergraduates there convinced me that a system that allowed luxury for the few at the expense of the many needed to be challenged.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I've always had a great work ethic, even when I was washing dishes.
I've always enjoyed doing dishes. Maybe it was the fashionable yellow gloves that I loved so much. It's weird, I know, but I find cleaning cathartic.
When I was 15, I worked at a dry cleaner because I wanted Abercrombie & Fitch jeans. My mom told me I could have $20 jeans, not $70 jeans, unless I was willing to work for them. So I did!
As an impoverished student I used to spend days out in Selfridges, nibbling on samples of free cheese and dousing myself with scent in the perfume department.
My father always told me, 'Before you become a queen, you have to learn how to take care of your own things.' So I knew how to do all of it, but I had never really done it on a daily basis. So I was cleaning houses, and I started working restaurants.
In my generation, if a man washes the dishes, the older women still tend to cluster around and coo and thank him and praise him. But if a woman washes the dishes, it's business as usual, even if both man and woman have tough office jobs.
Luxury! more perilous to youth than storms or quicksand, poverty or chains.
As a child, I'd help my mum cook, and it was ridiculous - she had the correct gadget or utensil for everything. 'Stop! Don't use that, I have exactly the right utensil.' After I left home, I survived on cup-a-meals and never saw myself as being like her. Now I've become her.
I am convinced that there can be luxury in simplicity.
I was 18 when I first started working at a restaurant. I was a dishwasher. I only got the job because I wanted to go to Ibiza for vacation, and washing dishes was the only job I could find.