If it was just appearances, it would be less of an issue. The problem is, you haven't really thought about what it means to actually *be poor*. You're working two jobs and you're still behind on rent, because you never get scheduled for more than 20 hours because then the employer would need to pay you benefits. You're eating beans and rice every day and still can't afford to replace your pants when you get a hole in them. You can't afford any of the nice luxuries (vacations, electronics, fancy stuff), and the few things you actually can afford are just making things worse (cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, gambling). Your minimum wage, manual labor jobs are slowly destroying your body, you can't get a decent education, you don't have any connections, and you don't have any presentable clothes for going to an interview to get a good job, and all the jobs you're capable of getting to net yourself some extra cash (drug-dealing, sex work, gangs, etc) are illegal or disreputable or both.

Every time you spend a single dollar on anything ever, some middle-class asshat will wave a finger at you and say "you should have saved that dollar instead" as if a dollar in a savings account at a bank you have to walk 30 minutes to get to is going to help your situation at all. Or, maybe they say "if you just got off your ass and worked harder, you would be able to afford a better life" but like I said, you can't get a good job and you can't get more hours at the job you do have, and the work you're doing is already destroying your body anyway and who's going to pay when your knees or rotator cuff or lower back finally gives out and you need to take time off work to heal?

Poverty is a real problem. We as a society have created a whole bunch of systems and structures which (by intention or by accident) keep the poor from ever being not-poor, but we still manage to blame poverty on the victims of these systems and structures for not working hard enough or not making better decisions with the small amount of money they do have.