She shares how gross and unkept the kitchen was by stating, “the floor is slick with spills, forcing us to walk through the kitchen with tiny steps, like Susan McDougal in leg irons,” because Susan McDougal was apart of the Whitewater scandal that was very popular at the time of this book being published; therefore, the audience would find similarity in her context and understand exactly how awful the condition of the kitchen was (Ehrenreich 30). Ehrenreich laughed when she opened bills from places like “The neighborly market I used to cruise for produce now looks forbiddingly like a Manhattan yuppie emporium,” because she can no longer find an excuse to spend so much money on simple things having lived on the penny-pincher side now