The other day I was at the dentist and the hygienist she was really scolding me for these tough

stains on my teeth. You know she was like this could come from drinking wine or maybe you're a smoker or having a lot of coffee.

And then she says, and the crowding isn't helping either.

It's true. My teeth are all jacked up in the front.

It looks like they're all huddled together trying to keep warm.

But when she said that, all I heard was, your teeth are crooked because you were too poor.

My parents did fine. They were working class at factory jobs.

But when it came to things like Braces or SAT prep,

music lessons, they were like, nah, we'll skip that. So now I walk around with these teeth, this

literal emblem of my class status stamped right on my face.

I see almost everything through this class lens. Comes up all the

time and my whole life it just kind of sat there on my chest. But I'm done keeping my toothy mouth shut about it. This is Classy, a show

about the chasms between us that are really hard to talk about, but too big to ignore.

I'm Jonathan Manhevar. And this show

it isn't just about me. When you talk to people about class they start

confessing all kinds of crazy stuff.

She said, you know, for the house cleaner, I hide the tag on the $6 bread because I don't want her to see that.

And I just thought, don't you think she knows that you're wealthy?

You know, like, you're hiding the tags from yourself.

My dad said your mom's going to be on TV and then he put it on and that's when he

told me you have a sister. Wait that's how you found out? I didn't even know I had a

sister. Whatever middle class we were, we were the middle class that was, you're also indentured servants

...