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?

@SeaShoreGalore

Stealth bragging is also a massive part of the cliche.

Tick!

There is certainly a lot of that going on!

I feel the same, @CovoidOfAllHumanity.
I suppose I'm middle class but I don't own a pair of leggings, never buy take out coffee and have never found anything I like in Laura Ashley or Joules. I think Dulux is as good as Farrow and Ball and I don't understand the love of all things grey. My neighbour told me that my interior decor choices are "brave"!
I've never felt like I fitted in, it doesn't make me unhappy though!

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

I could e written this, well in to my 50s a d still have no idea who my tribe is supposed to be.

@BeenThruMoreThanALilBit

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…..🤯

For me it’s laughing at myself for all those cliched things I’ve become. FWIW I come from an extremely deprived background and had to fend for myself due to early death of parents but am solidly middle class now. I can’t understand why it’s bragging, though, just rueful humour.

I am working class, didn’t go to university, live in social housing, have more children than is socially acceptable, swear like a sailor and I am covered in tattoos. I also have an 80 inch tele in my living room.

I am a cliche for the working class

FFS, you can get sourdough with avocado in the Morrisons cafe now, stop with this false self deprecation. Nobody is impressed or secretly jealous of your naice life

Honestly don't know if I'm a cliche. I'm not very like the other women I know, who are all wealthy, Boden-and-Joules wearing, Range Rover driving, very middle class types. I come from a working class background, and whilst we're reasonably well-off, our lifestyle is fairly modest. We live in a small terraced house, drive a 2010 second-hand car, and most of my clothes come from charity shops - this is partly an ethical choice and partly a style one.

I suppose I see myself as a bit more boho/alternative than the rest of my crowd, I work in an arty profession (as opposed to law/medicine/IT like most of them) and dress in a more striking, eye-catching way. Maybe that just makes me a different type of cliche though?

@Somuddled

I've always thought a good documentary maker could use this concept to film a few people in their normal lives over a reasonable time and make multiple documentaries which portrayed them in significantly different ways. By choosing just the bits that fit in with whatever cliché the director wanted to show, you could easily create 2 or 3 totally different 'people'.

I think it's been done but not as a documentary - Motherland

Where's UsualSuspect when you want her?

I dunno, mahoosive tellies and hot tubs in the front garden with a sofa beside it, this is her kind of thread if ever there was one.

The great thing about this thread is that it's housing all the bell ends in one place

Never read so much bragging in my life. Hilarious

it's housing all the bell ends in one place
😂😂😂

@JoshLymanIsHotterThanSam

I am working class, didn’t go to university, live in social housing, have more children than is socially acceptable, swear like a sailor and I am covered in tattoos. I also have an 80 inch tele in my living room.

I am a cliche for the working class

You could be - and possibly are -my best friend.

I have nothing but disdain for Farrow and Ball, Boden, Toast, Salt etc. It's the 50p rail in the local charity shop for me, and I buy my children clothes from Tesco or Asda.

We have a massive TV, a hot tub in the garden, a trampoline for the weans, and an outside bar.

We are not the neighbours from hell, we live in a glorious little community in North Wales, with the sea on one side and the Snowdonia on the other.

We are happy and not striving to be better than anyone else.

IDGAF

@HermioneGrunger

*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*

I could e written this, well in to my 50s a d still have no idea who my tribe is supposed to be.

Similar age to you and feel the same!

Christ on a bike I’d rather shit in my hands and clap than lead these middle class lives.

I’m working class.
I have bleached hair and a loud accent and massive boobs that I show off spectacularly.
I like a fried egg sandwich and a Diet Coke for my breakfast.

I am also an award winning novelist and film maker though. Oh and a millionaire

@EarringsandLipstick

This thread is all about a bit of self recognition and laughing at ourselves a bit.

That's the bit I'm not seeing tbh

It does seem like boasting, in most cases, and less of the laughing - more like, this is what to aspire to.

I do find it puzzling as while there's plenty of cliched life choices in Ireland I'm sure, I couldn't look at anyone, myself included, and say they fit any cliche to the extent described here.

For example, clothes. The brands described here are known and some people wear them. But they don't signify anything, they're not a 'thing'. Anyone I know wears whatever clothes they want. Some people are high-street fans, others more expensive but nothing that would group you in that way.

Similarly wealthy families are all wealthy in their own way, rather than being able to be classed like they are here.

I'm glad, reading some posts here.

I'm in Ireland and was thinking the same thing. Maybe you have to be a Brit to see the humour in this but from an outside perspective, it sounds excruciating.

I don't know how people can tell by just looking at a person whether they are wearing Boden or Tesco. Are those brands more ethically sourced or something? What's the appeal?

@peaceanddove

Hell yeah, I'm clichéd up to the hilt and love it.

Privately and university educated. Happily married to a successful company director. Both teenage daughters attended a top performing village primary, followed by a top performing girls' grammar school. Eldest DD off to art school this September to study Fine Art & Photography.

We live in a big Georgian house, in the middle of a naice village. Interiors are all about Farrow & Ball and John Lewis, with Laura Ashley curtains (I paid extra to have the curtains hand finished by someone called Blodwen at their Welsh factory, which is the height of privileged twattery). We have a cleaner and a gardener, obvs.

Groceries come from Waitrose or M&S or Cook, but we eat out a lot at the weekend. I have just started yoga in the village and obviously look a complete cliche in my Boden yoga gear + matching yoga mat (yes, really).

We should have been on holiday in the Italian Lakes last month, but because of Covid we booked a frou frou Shepherd's Hut in Cornwall instead - of course it had an outdoor firepit and a Gaggia coffee machine. Obviously, I packed my Seasalt bretons, my Lotta from Stockholm clogs and my Toast white linen shirts (because, yes, I have an actual Cornwall holiday wardrobe as opposed to my Italian holiday wardrobe which is a tad more glamorous).

Right now, I'm wearing silk mix, paisley PJs which I 'sourced' (not just bought) from Etsy while drinking coffee and chatting with DD2 about her possibly doing a year out in Paris to polish her French as she wants to study French + Economics at university. Luckily, my cousin's DH is French and they keep a bijou apartment in Paris where she can stay. Which is nice.

[implodes in a torrent of her own clichéd cuntiness]

You sound like a character from a Jilly Cooper novel!

Oh so glad to see some Irish people here . Cannot believe this thread. Have you any idea how you come across ??
'Self recognition' - hilarious.

Ridiculous bragging and boasting . Maybe it's cultural and acceptable over there . And I am not saying this from a position of envy as we are very comfortable .

But to list off all the privileges you have when there seems to be so much poverty over there ( much more than here in Ireland ) is actually making me feel ill.....

Love all the barely concealed stealth boasts

Middle class signifiers have become more and more important to them as the cachet of actually being middle class has disappeared.

Once upon a time going to university made them stand out. Now over 50% go.
Once upon a time they went to private school. Now they can’t afford it.
Once upon a time their professions - teaching, accounting etc were respected. Now they’re looked down on as boring and badly paid.
Once upon a time working class people aspired to their life style. Now it’s a joke.

@ablutiions of course my half child is called Dave

It sounds like they aren't embellished, really, which is quite depressing.

You must be joking! They're obviously send-ups with their tongues so far in their cheeks that surely nobody could mistake this for seriousness. Especially the one other PPs have piled on so vociferously to tell her how embarrassed they are for her. The responses at least have no trace of irony so on that point it's not too difficult to say who looks the more foolish.

It's a bit of a joke, that's all. Some of the humour is funny a lot of the po-faced admonitions are, too.

As far as MN cliches go, what's it's certainly full of is people who like to piss on each other's chips.

(Gets out popcorn ...)

I'm a bit of a muddle I think!

I'm university educated and am a (supply) teacher whilst dh is a sahp. We drive a Merc. We take our dc to as many museums, galleries and historic sites as possible.

We also live in social housing, my dc go to the closest state primary and we eat Tesco's own cocopops for breakfast. We're currently on holiday in a caravan on the east Yorkshire coast because we can't afford to go abroad and are wearing our comfiest asda/tesco/sainsburys clothes.

I honestly didn’t realise Bretons are a bit jolly.

Still wearing mine . I’m more likely to eat a McFlurry in a service station car park than do yoga though.
Obs I send DH to buy it.

Clichéd aka rich.