Editor Cady Lang caught up with Mason at 7 a.m. one morning in the shadow of City Hall, as this now iconic protester exited her tent and began another day of protesting. It’s an interesting piece, because Mason’s central issue of credit card debt was incurred in part through very careless purchasing:
While Mason is still paying her student loans, she adamantly refuses to pay her credit card debt. “I still have debt and I’m not paying it back because I feel like at this point, I have an obligation to try and disrupt and upset the financial industry, the credit industry…”
“Each paycheck that I would get, I would overspend. I got a credit card because I had no money and I needed a credit card to buy things that were essential to my life during this time. I had already spent all this money on clothes, make-up, accessories, and I got the credit card because I needed to pay my electric bill. Bank of America offered it to me, so I was like, ‘Yeah, of course – I’ll pay my electric bill with it.’ And then of course, it turned into I just started using it recklessly, thinking initially I would be able to pay it back.”
Learning More About TIME’s Protester Cover Girl, Richard Horgan
First of all, of course an Occupy protestor would be the TIME cover image, especially for a cover that name checks the Arab Spring (a movement that has been tirelessly used as the “inspiration” for Western protests). And secondly, they’re just inviting ridicule at this point. Occupy The Excessive Price of Sephora Products.
(Not that consumer capitalism hasn’t contributed to spending addictions and the need to look “perfect” at every moment, and not that Mason’s problems are complete fluff. I just find it difficult to believe that the best example of a protestor for this cover is someone who claims that investments made in post-secondary education are useless, while working at a Santa Monica art gallery and aiming to become a professor.)
