I am a cliché

[ablutiions]

Standing on the service station forecourt doing a few yogic stretches on our drive to holiday, I realised that I'm a cliché:

Middle aged Londoner, heading for a West Country holiday in my small eco friendly(ish) car, wearing a Boden cardi, and 'trendy' mum trainers with a flowery real cotton face mask dangled from my wrist. having eaten sourdough toast for breakfast. Oh, and carrying a chilly water bottle, natch.

And usually I'd be in France, but you know, Covid and all that.

Anyone else a walking cliché?

I agree, @diamondpony80, some people are just trying to be funny about clichés, but I think bragging about wealth and success must hide a lot of pain and unhappiness.

Is private school educated, large Georgian house in the country, married to a director, etc, etc really Middle Class? If so, I feel there should be a new label for those who aren’t so privileged and yet don’t have the blue collar jobs “working class” implies. Because, forgive me if I’m wrong, that actually seems to be significant proportion of the actual population of the UK.

LeQ cannot help herself, #bekind, she has a personality disorder.

and how is your paddle boarding going cliches?

@ablutiions

My god I'm such a wanker

She'll disappear now but she'll be back in a different guise before you can say bluebell eyes.

Well said @Anordinarymum

I have to be honest and say I’m not a cliche at all. Everything in my life has been peculiar. I am now a SAHM and living quite a middle class life but I’ve managed to even make that odd. I refuse to sheep with the rest of them so I make some fucking ridiculous life choices and have turned the rest of my family strange by proxy.

Haha I used to be so cool.

I say this to myself multiple times a day as I’m tying my shoe laces up properly (not just tucking them in), wearing clothes that are comfortable over fashionable and driving my very boring, bog-standard family car

I used to be so much of a stereotype that people used to judge me a lot (teenage single mum on benefits, smoked, listened to rap music, had a banned breed dog) and I was so ashamed of being a stereotype that I tried so hard to not be like that.
But now I look back and think I should have just been true to myself as I was a good parent and I was kind and friendly to everyone, so I shouldn’t have cared what people who didn’t know me thought of me.
I desperately wanted a job but couldn’t find one and I ended up doing an online course to help me but it still looked like I wasn’t working, I tried to quit smoking every day and eventually did it and I was a volunteer at a rescue centre and got my dog from there. So people perceptions of me were way off.

I definitely never judge someone on what they look like.

Notions.

This

I wouldn’t have thought of myself as a cliché before, early doors in all this unpleasantness, having a very confusing conversation about how much pasta I could buy; I’d seen the sign saying two bags only and was sure I’d abided by it. This was resolved by the nice lady I usually chatted with saying ‘she’s not hoarding, she’s Italian’. Turns out it wasn’t two bags per type of pasta…in the subsequent conversation with my husband he did raise the sticky debate of whether making an ‘emergency lasagne’ was the act of a rational person when having people over for a BBQ.

Oops. Meant to quote @blueshoes.
This thread is awful

Isn’t it a bit suffocating? You know. Playing the game and having all the right accessories?
Do you feel free? Do you feel that people see and appreciate you for who you are? Do you ever feel it’s all a massive waste of time?
What’s in it for you? What do you enjoy about it all?

You sound like a lovely cliche! Good on you - and good luck.

Ahhh. Thank you! That’s a lovely thing to say.

This was resolved by the nice lady I usually chatted with saying ‘she’s not hoarding, she’s Italian’.

Stealth bragging is also a massive part of the cliche.

Tick!

The premise of this thread is lost on me.

Is it a good thing, or a bad thing, to be a cliché, taking into account all the laughing-at-oneself/inverse laughing-at-oneself?

I’ve become tangled up in whether people are laughing at themselves, inviting others to laugh at them to show that they don’t take offence and can laugh at themselves, not laughing at themselves, plain laughing at others…..🤯

I think it was funny…
It’s called a lighthearted thread.

@toocold54 I’m actually Welsh-Italian so really have to try and keep on top of my tendency to push pasta, tea and liver on innocent people who have come to the house to, y’know, service the boiler or something!

@Slothkin - you lost me at liver! 🤢

light hearted, yes, but I do love a good middle class circle jerk!

can we have a celebratory 'im a cliche' underclass thread too? that would be so jolly I think! Such a colourful little society we live in, let's not leave anyone out!

I think I am a failed middle class stereotype
We have middle class jobs and so did our parents so we must be middle class but I do find a lot of stuff that people aspire to a bit wanky.

I do like posh coffee and avocado on toast and Waitrose so that's a start.

But

I cannot bring myself to pay for Farrow and Ball paint or Fired Earth tiles when Dulux looks just the same to me. I have not much interest in interior design and our terraced house is usually a mess because I feel too much middle class guilt to get a cleaner.

I cannot stand Boden or Joules clothes and really I have no interest in fashion at all and no particular style sadly. My kids used to have supermarket clothes that I wanged in the trolley on the way round before they got their own ideas.

I could not give a shit about cars and I do most of the driving. I drive a Skoda. We do not have a roof box we just stuff our crap in round the kids.

DH is a 'company director' I suppose. Of himself. I make most of the money and he does a lot of the parenting.

My kids go to the nearest local state schools and I did not research or angst over the decision before sending them. I am happy if they are happy. They have boring normal names.

Our holiday this year will be in a hired camper van. If it wasn't for the pandemic I was going to book Italy to show the kids Rome and Pompei. We like holidays where you can do stuff and have a bit of an adventure. I have never been on holiday to Cornwall. I guess we probably spend most money on holidays and days out more than 'stuff' and that is our luxury.

I don't know what my tribe is
I don't feel I have found it. I don't fit with eco warrior Earth mums at all I am not ambitious enough for the thrusting career women or house proud enough for the suburban people. I don't know what I am.

Fat, middle aged woman, with a hairy chin and no fitness or stamina.

Imagine Melissa McCarthy at the back of an aerobics class...

DS pointed out a FB Group to me, "Middle Class 'Your Mum' Talk.

Very funny: "For mums who love John Lewis, have a love/hate relationship with their book group, and apologise to guests if anything they serve isn't from Waitrose or M&S."

I am all of those things.