Barbara Ehrenreich would make a bad representative of the working poor because she lacks three major things that a woman of that class would actually possess. Ehrenreich doesn't meet the true qualifications of a working class woman: she lacks the background, she lacks respect of the money she earns, and she lacks certain personal or social qualities that ordinarily are possessed by the working poor.

Ehrenreich is part of the upper-middle class; she is "privileged" to have a job in which she makes money by sitting at her desk and writing (E 2). She has never considered herself one of the working poor before this experiment, even though she explains, "the low-wage way of life had never been many degrees of separation away" (E 2). Ehrenreich lacks the working background of the poor class; she lacks the experience of being monetarily and physically put under stress for an entire lifetime...