In reference to JTA’s post about middle-class-ness…
Herein, a list of examples of things I have heard about or seen people do, that confuse and infuriate me. I’ve tried to make it a list of middle-class-isms, but I may have strayed somewhat to more general forms of stupidity. Sorry.
- Boasting about giving money to charity whilst not ever doing voluntary work or caring about people
- Giving money to the most useless charities first, e.g. Donkey Sanctuary before Save the Children, National Heritage before Terence Higgins
- booking the cheapest holiday you can find to an in vogue place just so you can say you’ve been there, rather than using the same amount of money to go somewhere else more interesting and less well-travelled in better accomodation.
- having a complete dining set that you never use, displayed in a cabinet in the dining room
- The feeling that ketchup is wrong and you have to have, I dunno, sun-dried tomato salsa instead.
- The need to redecorate a room of your house every 6 weeks.
- The kind of gardening that never produces food.
- The idea that manners can replace true care for others’ feelings.
- Thinking anyone who hasn’t read and understood shakespeare is an idiot.
- Thinking anyone who went to a comprehensive must have had a shit education.
- Shopping at charity shops and at Debenhams, but never at Matalan.
- building a conservatory that you know you won’t ever sit in, just so your house price goes up.
- Buying a fondue set you know you’ll never use, because it looks good on the dining room table.
- Caring which fork you’re supposed to use.
- Thinking of people who run restaurants you frequent as friends, even though you’ve only ever spoken to them to order your food or complain that your steak is too rare.
- Buying organic food because a TV chef says so.
- ORNAMENTS.
- Thinking that culture is something you can buy in Borders.
- Doing a job you hate so you can afford to pay a maid to do the cleaning you hate.
- Trading in your car for a new one every year.
- Buying personalised numberplates to hide the age of your car. Or for any other reason.
- Buying fabric softener.
- Reading books about other people travelling and never going travelling yourself.
- Deliberately cultivating a neutral accent. (yes, I’m guilty of this!)
- Thinking boarding school and nannies are a good way to bring up children without having to, you know, get involved.
- Polishing furniture.
- Becoming unable to eat takeaway food.
- Reading the Guardian/Telegraph but secretly agreeing with the Mail.
- Insisting on eating a different meal every night.
- Owning a bidet.
- Reading particular literary classics so that you can tell people you have read them.
- Thinking it’s important to know about wine.
- Refusing to buy anything that’s “Tesco Value” or equivalent.
- Not visiting people whose houses are untidy
- Keeping your house completely spotless, so it appears that it’s a showhome and that no-one lives there.
- COMPLAINING about how your house only has 17 rooms, or how you don’t even have a gardener for your 20 acres of land, or any other complaint that would make any normal person go “hang on a minute, are you just saying this so you can tell me how well off you really are?”
- Thinking that swearing is *always* inappropriate
- using really long words just because you like showing off that you know them, rather than because they make the meaning more clear.
- Having lots of dogs but still determinedly removing every last hair from the furniture.
- Having house cats that aren’t allowed in the garden because they’ll ruin your dahliahs.
- Delighting in pointing out mispronunciations by interrupting the speaker
- name-dropping celebrities or rich people who you’ve not really actually had any contact with
- owning a piano when no-one in the house plays
- Having an open fire in a room so big you need the central heating on as well
Ok, that’s quite long. Any more suggestions? I have a few more, but abnib’s going to creak as it is.
Heather | 18-Apr-08 at 3:34 pm | Permalink
I don’t think that the vast majority of those are *actually* middle-class-isms, but more along the lines of complete-and-utter-pretentious-knob-isms.
I would place myself very firmly into the ‘middle class’ bracket (Guardian reading, well-fed Graduate), but I think I’d also fall quite conclusively into the lower end of the bracket (Comprehensive school educated, ordinary housing estate semi, re-decorating involves some Homebase paint and Argos furniture every 10-15 years). Now, obviously, I can’t comment on whether people in the upper end *do* do those things, but I’ve read and re-read the list several times and I can’t think of a single one of those that *I* do. I do indulge in a very great many of the activities (eg, being a member of the NT, reading the Guardian, using complicated vocabulary from the depths of my lexicon) but the various caveats don’t apply (ie, Not giving to better charities, agreeing with the Mail, just for the hell of it [although I did do it for the hell of it in the previous example, normally I use longer words because they have a meaning I can’t convey in shorter ones]).
Does that make me middle-class or not? Am slightly confused and have lost sight of the point I originally came here to make. Perhaps it was more suited to JTA’s post anyway, I’ll go and make it there when I can remember what it is… :-S
Statto | 18-Apr-08 at 3:40 pm | Permalink
I think I’m with you on everything apart from
Having a garden can just be a nice hobby, can’t it? It’s a time-killer, requires some creativity, and your care and attention can have satisfying results which benefit the environment, both ecologically and aesthetically, of those around you. Most hobbies can’t produce food, or anything useful at all, so indulging in one which could without doing so is only as much of a sin as practising photography or cross-stitch, surely?
That said, I’m probably biased.
The Pacifist | 18-Apr-08 at 4:42 pm | Permalink
Buying milk in bags.
Well, Matt keeps referring to it as “Middle Class Milk” anyway…
Feebee | 18-Apr-08 at 5:14 pm | Permalink
yay…i am only guilty of one of those and thats having a personalised numberplate, which i was bought for passing my test.
i agree with claire about the gardening. I can’t stand the idea of a hobby garden, but grew,and ate lots of vegetables last summer, just because i wanted something to do.
jimmy | 18-Apr-08 at 10:06 pm | Permalink
Milk comes in bags now? I’ve been away too long.
And also I disagree with about half of them- if internet wasn’t costing me 8 dollars an hour in this little town I’d take you to pieces. But in summary-
“blah blah I’m right, blah blah you’re wrong. And you’re the most middle class person I know.”
QED
p.s. Another one for your list: “people who insist latin is a language, and not a conspiricy against the common folk.”
Mister JTA | 19-Apr-08 at 10:56 am | Permalink
Aye, I agree that gardening is probably allowed. Also, if you say it’s middle class, at what point does the line happen; is mowing the lawn gardening, or not? I reckon it is, because it makes the garden look nicer, but I can see how you could argue either way.
Also, of course, it’s traditionally a thing done by people with big houses who want a pretty garden to wander round under a parasol…
O, and I had a question on
I don’t know about that. We had that at Hadley, because some goon had knocked two rooms together back in the 70s, and we had to have the central heating on because they’d at the same time as making two rooms into one huge one taken out the fireplace at one end. Divots.
And central heating does more than one room. So we’d have the heating on to try and keep the heat in the rest of the house, and burn whacking great chunks of pine and the like to keep the big room nice and cosy. (No, we called it the Big Room. Mainly because that was how I started describing it when I was, I dunno, some sort of toddler, or something).
Regarding forks: I like the bit in Pretty Woman where Mr. Morse says he can never remember which, and just eats with his fingers. Although Hector Elizondo’s character is better for giving me the warm fuzzies. [You can balance this bit by imagining I wrote some more stuff about some football match, or something]
Ruth Varley | 19-Apr-08 at 3:44 pm | Permalink
Well, mostly your list just made me mildly uncomfortable in a “I really hope she doesn’t think she’s talking about me here” sort of way. Especially:
“Reading the Guardian/Telegraph but secretly agreeing with the Mail.”
If that was meant to be directed at JTA and myself then you seriously don’t understand us.
The only one I can be arsed to take issue with that hasn’t already been commented on is:
“Shopping at charity shops and at Debenhams, but never at Matalan.”
Now, I own several items of clothing from charity shops and lots from Debenhams (and again, I worried that this one was pointed at me since I don’t know of anyone else of our acquaintance who regularly buys from there). I have never been in Matalan (although I have bought clothes from similar places in the past). The reason for this is not snobbery but simple economics. The jeans I am wearing right now cost me £8 from Debenhams. I expect them to last several years. Clothing from the Matalans of this world costs about the same (maybe a little cheaper) and, in my experience, falls apart inside six months.
Heather | 19-Apr-08 at 9:09 pm | Permalink
Buying milk in bags isn’t Middle Class, it’s Hungarian.
I know.
I’ve seen it.
Scatman Dan | 20-Apr-08 at 10:40 am | Permalink
Also a nice post. And just about frivolous enough to tickle me more than JTA’s perhaps-more-genuine one.
Eskoala | 20-Apr-08 at 8:22 pm | Permalink
1st thing: I was very, very hungover when I posted this, which is why it’s a ranty list rather than a well-thought-out argument.
2nd: no, really, if you have room for a garden and you don’t grow any veg at all, you’re doing it wrong. If you have a veg bit and a lawn and a few trees and a few flowers, that’s fine. Using all the space for pretty is when it becomes a problem, especially if you’re trying to grow some random exotic plants that use lots of heat and water (bad for the environment) when you could be growing carrots.
3rd: Nope, I don’t think that Ruth and JTA are secretly Mail sympathisers. That’s why I put that caveat on the end, so you wouldn’t think I meant you. Or so I thought. And yes, Matalan clothes can be quite crappy, but you just have to pick and choose: don’t buy going-out clothes there, only T-shirts, jeans and underwear. I like Debenhams too. It’s refusing to go to Matalan because poor people go there, that bothers me. I don’t think you do that.
4th: Jimmy: blah blah stupendous retort blah blah I win. And you can talk, Mr “daddy worked for a bank”. QED.
Only joking, of course I’m middle class. I’m trying to identify what’s some people do to keep up with other middle class people, not pretend that I’m somehow working class and therefore better. Oh, the irony.
5th: Heather: if you only meet the first part then you’re doing it for the right reasons. I have a large vocabulary but I actually tone it down for most people because I don’t want them to think I’m showing off. I read the Guardian if any paper, but mostly my news comes from the BBC. So you’re middle class, but not in the annoyingly pretentious way.
6th, and final: JTA: I think in your case it’s not exactly your fault that there’s a big room you can’t heat that happens to have a fireplace at one end. But if you had been responsible for creating a room that’s too big to heat with fire, and yet insisted on a fireplace, it might count.
Wow, I didn’t expect such a response. Good going, people. I hear that Beth wrote something good about the working class disappearing and being replaced by a dole-scum underclass, which I think is exactly right. This post was meant to be just a light hearted dig at a few middle-class idiosyncrasies, not any sort of proper argument really. Thanks for taking such an interest!
Scatmania » Blog Archive » Super Munchkin | 23-Apr-08 at 1:46 pm | Permalink
[…] been quite a lot said recently on abnib about class. JTA opened up the debate; Claire followed up by listing some of her least favourite things about the stereotypes of the middle class, and […]