Oh no! I sound so middle class! How embarrassing....or not

[TangerineCandyfloss]

Hi,

Just a light hearted one, but does anyone else get slightly irritated when people tell you how mortified they are at being/sounding middle class, but go into great detail as to why, leading you to believe they're probably not all that "mortified".

Example: "dd asked me today - mummy, can we have sea bass with capers tonight? It's my favourite fish" Oh, I was so embarrassed! How middle class do we sound?!lol"

Now, don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with a child liking sea bass...or quinoa...or kimchi or anything else "middle class" sounding, but why do some people pretend how embarrassed they are, only to tell you or everyone on social media?

It's just obvious that they're not embarrassed at all, so actually has the complete opposite effect.

Does anyone know what I mean?

Since when is calling someone middle class an insult?
I’d say it’s pretty stand comedy fare, Kevin bridges, Michael McIntyre,Jason Manford

I really like it when people do this - normally because it's quite funny. And you nearly always get some funny responses in the comments.

I grew up working class, as did a lot of my friends, and the most exotic food I had growing up was pineapple out of the tin served with gammon.

My grandparents wouldn't eat 'foreign muck' like pasta, pizza or garlic, so it really tickles me when someone posts that little Billy asked for samphire with his tea.

Yes - it's a humblebrag, but funny self deprecating humour.

I actually do find it mortifying when my children loudly ask for sushi or ramen or whatever perfectly normal fast food option, because I have a working class background and family who do feel excluded from these food cultures and I can't help hearing it with their ears. And I also feel judged as a mum for letting them have fast food.

I am not pleased to be confused for the middle classes and I find the idea that wc people should aspire to be middle class really problematic. That said, when people do hope to be accepted as middle class and are anxious about not/ proud when they do, I find it really horrible that they are put down for that. The whole world tends to act as if being working class is something one should attempt to self cure, like halitosis, or alternatively do that sort of patronising romanticism ala the 1990s attempt to reframe disability as being 'special'. No wonder working class people can sometimes be anxious to dissociate themselves from their own background, given that everyone treats them like objects of condescension or scorn.

I am like 100% sure if people saw me feeding sushi to my chavvy family, people would think I was either pretentious or should be encouraged in my aspirational food choices for my kids. The idea that I could just eat a fucking meal in peace, without it being framed as my own attempt to communicate class or parenting values is just completely out of the question both as someone with a working class family or as a mother.

YANBU

It's not unusual for children to eat non-children food. Pretending your little Quinoa is special is cringey humble-brag.

It's not "unusual" to do anything half their school mates are doing either (reading, time table, anything...)

I have seen enough buffets or bbq where the kids (not my kids especially, kids in general) grabbed and enjoyed the so-called "adult food".

The fake shock when one eats (and like) sushis.. it's rice. It's sold in any supermarket. Half the kids like sushis. Just be quiet about it.

I don't know where my DS gets it from. Insisted on taking 63 A levels while captaining the world cricket team and spending the summer ending global warming, while being entirely plant based!
I mean, at his age DH and I did nothing but party on vodka and class A's, living out of a cornflakes box over a squat in Phuket.
No one can quite believe he's ours...

I am like 100% sure if people saw me feeding sushi to my chavvy family, people would think I was either pretentious

cross-post

but anyone who think sushis are pretentious (again, any supermarket and supermarket petrol station sell them!) is a reverse-snob , which is worst.

I used to do it. "My PFB won't eat from the child's menu, she doesn't like chips, she's got very sophisticated tastes'. My PFB developed an eating disorder in her 20s. I would have given anything I had to see her eat chips. Karma's a bitch.

@LaMarschallin

I've been reading too much Jilly Cooper. Can't get the bit from "Rivals" out of my head where the aspirational Valerie waves a basket, shrilling "Crusty bread anyone? Ay won't have sliced bread in the house".

Oh this is funny, my aspirational MIL likes to bang on abut crusty bread, despite not actually eating bread.

@UnderHisAye

I just think threads like these are designed to bash middle class people. Basically, a middle class person have to pretend in front of others that they don't do typically middle class things so that they don't come across as humble braggers. If something lets slipped (like the example with the sea bass in the OP) the person has to publicly declare how embarrassed they are that people will now think they are middle class. Then they get ridiculed for that. There is something very wrong with that.

We don't have class tiers here in Ireland but I sent DS into school with sushi once. In my defence it was leftovers and I'd no fucking ham and that's the only thing he'll eat on a sandwich.
I bet I'm the wanky blow-in to the village now.

I know what you mean, it's so transparently pretentious, or as I prefer to phrase it, wanky. I feel embarrassed for those people. Soooo Abigails party.

Well I know someone who likes to think she's better than any human being, how no one is as great as her, how she's so posh because she now lives in London, mothers that let children on iPads are rubbish mothers. She then has a child and literally just feeds him happy meals and unlimited hours on iPad. I swear she thinks McDonald is posh, the amount of times she will mention McDonald's out loud for her child

DH jokes that our DD sounds like a weird mix between Hyacinth Bucket and Alastair Sim as headmistress in the St Trinian's on the phone. I must confess, she does...

@5128gap

I don't know where my DS gets it from. Insisted on taking 63 A levels while captaining the world cricket team and spending the summer ending global warming, while being entirely plant based! I mean, at his age DH and I did nothing but party on vodka and class A's, living out of a cornflakes box over a squat in Phuket. No one can quite believe he's ours...

You must be so proud of Joshy,did he built that hydraulic dam in west Africa with his own hands? Bet Joshy,Olly,Filly and Ptolemy had a super time after scoring A* and grade 13 piano, back just in time to start their Russell Group uni

Not bothered by class, just amused by pretention

Had a colleague who bought a cottage in the middle of rural nowhere in our general vicinity for weekending and holidays from London, and on the first weekend there rang me up outraged that the one village shop had neither pesto nor creme fraiche.

And am always amused in parent/toddler groups about the parents chasing their toddler around loudly imploring them to eat their organic hummus dipped crudites. Toddler voting with feet. Hard. Everyone else quietly hiding the packets of their crisps to not look like A Much Less Good Parent.

How long before there's a thread asking what middle names will suit little Quinoa (NN Quinni) and his sister Tapioca?

Growing up poor on a Scottish island we ate lobster, crab, trout, sea trout, mussels, cockles, razor clams, mackerel, wild garlic etc, they were free... and I remember my little sister once saying loudly at school pick up "oh not lobster for tea again mum", still makes me giggle and we remind her of her "middle class roots"

One of my daughter's friends has been raised in a healthy/posh eating bubble.

We've introduced her to pastry based food and chocolate that isn't 85% cocoa. Our name is mud in their house but she loves coming here for the "exciting" food we offer (they are teenagers so in the non lockdown world they'd rock up on a whim). To be clear there are vegetables in the mix...but of the local greengrocer variety - not the imported on the back of a camel from the unspoiled hills of Madagascar variety.

On the flipside they are trying incredibly hard to get my daughter to eat like them...with little success however I don't mind them trying, one particular incident was daughter coming in and heading straight to the cupboard declaring that oysters were aliens and she was both traumatised and starving.

I bet they're things you lot grow already in your back gardens, but she buys them from Ocado for a million pounds

That would be rhubarb then. I grew up slap bang in the middle of the Rhubarb Triangle (google it, it's a real place) and it pretty much grows like weeds round here and during harvest season you find great piles of it at the side of the road that have fallen off tractors, or we used to pinch it out of the fields, so it amuses me greatly every time I see it in shops and its about three quid for a few skinny sticks of the posh forced kind and you see loads of recipes about how to turn it into a coulis or some such.

Plus we had asparagus growing in our garden when I was a child, but we didn't know what to do with it in 1970s Yorkshire. DM did say that she thought it was edible, but never tried to feed it to us, IIRC.

But I'm always baffled about how innocuous simple and cheap foods that half the world eats as standard, from rich to poor is seen as aspirational in the UK. Eg hummus, lentils, quinoa, or all the fuss that was made when Jamie Oliver suggested people made spaghetti puttanesca with dirt cheap store cupboard ingredients.

I just think threads like these are designed to bash middle class people.

I don't think it is that. The majority of examples are people posting on SM, not a child saying something that then embarrasses a parent, who is embarrassed. It's a conscious attempt to project a certain image. People who are middle class (but it could be anything really) just are. Try hards are annoying and embarrass themselves. They're the Mrs Buckets of the world.

Sure thing, these things can be annoying, but why all the drama about someone who isn't you doing something you wouldn't do?

We do not have this issue, in fact youngest complained yesterday that DH and I eat "much posher" than them... Yes that's because my kids are ungrateful little fuckwits who act like your trying to poison them if you give them anything but Tesco value pizza😂

but anyone who think sushis are pretentious (again, any supermarket and supermarket petrol station sell them!) is a reverse-snob , which is worst

Indeed, and it's only rice, fish, crab sticks, avocado etc. You can even get one that involves scamp if people can't face eating something with no beige component. They have a proper counter making and selling it in our Asda, exactly the same as the one they have in Waitrose.

Meanwhile, Quinoa is licking the fucking dog bowl.

But I'm always baffled about how innocuous simple and cheap foods that half the world eats as standard, from rich to poor is seen as aspirational in the UK. Eg hummus, lentils, quinoa, or all the fuss that was made when Jamie Oliver suggested people made spaghetti puttanesca with dirt cheap store cupboard ingredients.

Same, especially when you consider you can buy all of these plus the aforementioned sushi, smoked salmon and sea bass in Aldi. Ok they’re not all going to be cheap as chips but Aldi is hardly posh/middle class!