Stamps

Social-Status and One’s Worth


Bethlyn Madison Webster attempts to provoke readers to take a closer look at today’s society in a poem simply titled “Stamps.” Imagine being judged every day on social status, and being taught that self-worth is determined by the dollar amount in your savings account. For approximately 15 – 20 million Americans who required the aid of Foodstamps each year, this could quite possibly be the case. For those people, possibly even the whole general public to some extent, strangers judge and are judged solely on social status. The worst part of these hasty generalizations are that they leave a person’s worth to be determined by “status,” and further, some actually feel guilty and ashamed for not fitting in to the mold of some unstated standard.
Although the speaker is the first to judge, judgment is obviously a defense mechanism for her. The first two lines establish the speaker’s apprehensiveness of the outside world: “I’m ...