Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [80]

Fashion helps. You’re supposed to be dirty now. If you’re clean, you make a target of yourself. People think you’re showing off, trying to be better than they are. Among the younger kids, being clean is a great way to start a fight. Cory won’t let us stay dirty here in the neighborhood, but we all have filthy clothes to wear outside the walls. Even inside, my brothers throw dirt on themselves as soon as they get away from the house. It’s better than getting beaten up all the time. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 80

Note

Scarcity rewritten as dress code. The passage opens with a two-word sentence that treats the inversion as settled common sense — hygiene has become ostentation, and filth has become camouflage. The detail that the children keep a separate filthy wardrobe ‘outside the walls’ and wait to get away from the house before soiling themselves maps an interior/exterior boundary of the neighborhood onto a public/private one inside the family.