To think that the middle classes are liars and actors?

Have you heard of social mobility @MargaretBrewer ?

It's when one generation does better than the previous one (in their family.)

I am 'solidly middle class' by my profession.

My parents were working class, working in mines, living in council houses.

Does that make me less middle class?

It sounds like the only problem here are the judgements you are imposing on people.

A lot to unpick there but I’m pretty sure it says more about you than the people you criticise.

Can I hazard a guess that you read the Daily Mail? Can people not just change and evolve and grow as people that might be quite different to their backgrounds? I grew up very impoverished in a household where we didn’t do anything cultural. Now I enjoy opera and museums because I do, I’m not pretending!

What a weird post. Did you actually read this back to yourself before posting??
you come across bizarre and unhinged, to say the least!

Particularly if the Inner Welder told him to shut up, get over himself and stop listening to ghosts.

Haha it does come across like that, but it might be that the OP is unnecessarily and angrily projecting onto those people what she thinks that they think of her.

You know, I love Hamlet, but it would definitely improved by him having an Inner Welder he talks to in his solilquies.

‘To solder, or not to solder — that is the question…’

I'm not sure what the valid opinion is, tbh. There seems to be a slight sense of betrayal that class mobility exists.

A large part of her concern/surprise doesn't seem to be centred on people who are consciously adopting signifiers of a different class to the one they were raised in, but rather people who are of a different social class to their parents.

So if the opinion is that such class movement is somehow subversive or that these people are hiding a shameful background, rather than simply living their lives... well yes, that opinion is a wee bit Austenesque.

I think your issue is that these people are either snobbish, or you perceive them to be snobbish when you think they have no right to be.

However, your post expresses a certain bitterness which makes me wonder if you're projecting onto some of them, that you assume they look down on other people when they don't, and you're unnecessarily getting defensive. I've come across that before in working class people in the North-West of England.

Why are these people so MC presenting

As a Welsh working class person, one of the things I really noticed about English people when I first went to university was how ingrained class was in absolutely everything. Everything from food to choice in films.

I love goats cheese, olives, grew up classical music literate, like museums, art history (which I studied at a-level), and dress a bit bohemian like. My accent has softened naturally over time, due to a lot of exposure to English people and because I tend to pick up accents.

I suppose you'd think I was also an actor, trying it on, when I'm just naturally being myself.

I am not an actor, I am a reflection of the world I grew up in

This is the best encapsulation of the answer to the question. Sometimes the world we grow up in teaches us we need to code switch to get desired outcomes. (Being posh may help at times, being street at other times, etc)

We subconsciously each make, with our voices, words and bodies, acts of identity, to fit in with an idealised social group we construct in our minds. This happens in every interaction and is the source of all social and linguistic variation and change.

Fashion, slang, cultures...they are all driven by the powerful engines of each human seeing a group of other humans and thinking "I'd best fit in with them".

It is the evolutionary soup of culture! The middle class are pretending no less and no more than anyone else.

Ah, you're just like Hamlet, then:

"Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.'
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected 'haviour of the visage
Together with all forms, modes, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe."

The whole play is about the difference between being and seeming.

You think someone's playing a part while not showing the welder within!

I mean, comments like that just show how low class you yourself are, OP. Is that what you meant to do? Do your fur coat up love, you're not wearing any knickers.

Clearly the proles should stay in their lane, munching on jellied eels, breaking into merry choruses of ‘Knees Up, Mother Brown’, and occasionally breaking off their scrap dealing to chirp ‘Awright, Guvnor!’

How do you act middle class and working class? Class is outdated and you said it all when you started with "I assumed".

Great reminder to print myself a t-shirt with my entire history on it just so people don't make incorrect assumptions about how much money my parents had ey? 🙄

Wtf? You absolute snob.

People can live wherever life they choose to live, whatever background they came from. To believe anything else is deeply classist and offensive.

Nasty snobbishness like this is very lower class of course, but also exceptionally outdated. Who the fuck cares whether anyone came from poorer or richer parents? People are free to be themselves and the daughter of a dustman and a dinner lady is perfectly capable of becoming a high court justice and developing a fondness for opera. Nobody owes you conformity to your preconceived stereotypes so they aren't "pretending" anything when they fail to exhibit the traits your prejudiced mind expects of them.

Not a fan of social mobility then, OP? 😂

Jealous much

I literally don’t understand how their parents working as builders, or not working, means the couple you are referring to are ‘lying’ when they’ve made some money for themselves?!

What an odd thread

I was just about to raise this point. What about Catherine's speaking voice, is she acting?

You will have to read between the lines here folks. The poster has a very valid opinion as she is trying to discuss class issues that are inherent in all communities. Issues of class has become intertwined into human psychology during the various decades. The comments about Jane Austin & novels from the past show people have understood how what the OP has commented on actually links to history as well. If you delve deeper , and understand class issues throu the decades you can see that many societies have what the OP is discussing lol ! The Brits are masters of it due to us having a monarchy and democracy hand in hand. The Europeans , Africans , Asains , Chinese , Arabs , Caribbeans , Americans and even the soviet and eastern Europeans have this going on ! As long as society holds wealth & monetary matters higher over actual goodness & morals- people will always use different "classes " as a yardstick . I don't believe in the concept of class being the " be all and end all" but i understand how it came about ( human nature & historically trying to put labels on people as a form of identification. Human beings have an inclination towards "one upmanship " and so you will find all " classes " want to move and rise up as a form of better- ment on their own terms. Some folks will act up and some will act down - some folks will stay in their lane / class and some will try to break out of class classifications and try to move to a society where it does not exist.... let's see what the future holds lol !

Does it matter that they come from humble backgrounds? Why concern yourself with this?

I'm an immigrant so slightly immune to the class signifier obsession, but it's worth noting that lots of people's accents change massively over their lifetimes. My own Is unrecognisable from when I moved here 20 years ago.

I know people who have consciously modified their accents to improve their employment prospects - and how shit that they felt they had to do it - but others who are more sponge like with accents and their accents change over time.

It's not exactly unusual.

(Also need to take issue with those saying that the middle class is an invention of the Industrial Revolution - the term came about around then but the concept and the demographic in England has much deeper post-feudal roots - one reason for Britain's success as a pre-industrial trading power was the strength (and to a degree openness of) its merchant class.)

💩
Quite.

what an utterly bizarre question. Of course it can! And no, it's not acting.

My parents were both distinctly working class raised in the arse end of birmingham, in fact my grandfather was in one of the gangs peaky blinders is based on (yes, really) and both parents were drug up in the gutters.

My dad ended up falling into an excellent career, rose up through and was working with some VERY MC clients, so adapted his manners and speech to not seem rude/common with them.

Then mom and dad had us, and we were raised middle class, as suited his income, where we lived by that point, and the had the education available to us. my brother earns money my parents could only dream of.

Both my brother and are are 'middle class' because of it, but we came from working class parents who did good. Does that make us actors or just the result of the environment in which we were raised?