> must simply "lower their standards" to act working class.

You make that sound easy, but I see the situation as symmetric. For example, my wife grew up wealthier than I did - and when it came time for us to buy a car, her first question was "how big a car would we need to comfortably move our family around" while mine was "what's the most affordable?"

it's a completely different mindset - she is frustrated that I default to a poor mindset and I am frustrated that she defaults to a rich one. Neither one is easy to switch.

I'm talking about the case where a person doesn't get to "choose" to act poor. The poor person doesn't get to choose to think other than what is affordable, where someone with more money gets the choice to thinking of things other than affordability, like comfortably. The mindset that develops from a lack of agency in one's life is more traumatizing than one that does have that agency but must learn to change their mindset. Different people might not be as effected by poverty however.

You don't need anything even close to overly "fancy"; if you're the average poor person, you can vastly improve your image simply by wearing any sort of formal clothes, as in a suit and tie. Even if others "know who you really are" they'll still appreciate that you're making the effort to relate to them, and that's what matters. We tend to forget stuff like this as we lose sight of the value of enduring traditions, but if you look at visual records of how older generations behaved you'll see plenty of poorer folks looking quite comfortable in formal wear.

You're still not going to look right, though. You will have the "wrong" shoes, or you'll keep them so long from thrift that they'll go out of fashion. Your one set of nice clothes is precious to you in a way that the one-out-of-ten is not to someone in the upper class, and that will make you wear it differently.

But poor people hate feeling like they have to change their appearance to get the approval of the privileged classes. Feeling like you have to visually and verbally code switch to get "better" people to respect you just feels bad. Spending precious money on the cheapest formal wear you can find just so people will take you seriously further cements the divide poor people feel.

> But poor people hate feeling like they have to change their appearance to get the approval of the privileged classes.

You say that like everyone else isn't doing the exact same thing. Being privileged is all about playing the "get everyone else's approval" game. But coming from a different social context it's even more basically a way of showing others respect and earning their trust, so it's not without consequence.

It loops back around at the top. It’s why there’s an eccentric rich person trope and why it’s called “fuck you” money.

If you’re totally financially independent you’re more free to do what you want, independent of class behavior expectations (or even in contradiction of them). They no longer matter that much (unless you’re doing something that requires politics or people).

You're right, everyone is doing that to some degree at some point through out their life. But consider that there exists people who feel they need to dress better just to get the basic respect they deserve. In the case where someone cannot afford the appropriate clothing, it ostensibly seems they are unable to show the respect you speak of and are deemed "less than" because of that, but really their minds and character is the same regardless of clothing. Being privileged is having the agency to pay for the kinds of clothes that impress people and causes them to respect you, and in some cases, without having much other than a nice suit to justify such respect.