To feel a bit miffed about the Big Fat Gypsy series?

[NannyState]

I dunno. It just doesn't sit comfortably with me. I am third generation Irish Traveller. My grandparents 'married out' and so left the community. However, I still identify with the culture to some extent and am proud to be from Traveller stock.

I know that there are elements of the Traveller culture and traditions that are old fashioned, conservative and certainly not female-friendly. I am a in no way defending a lot of what goes on within Traveller communities.

However, I really feel like the 'Big fat Gypsy Wedding' series is just taking the piss out of Travellers, really, and I cannot see C4 having the gall to do that with any other cultural group.

Am I alone in this? It isn't telling even half the story of the Travller experience. And it doesn't feel like a genuine, documentary 'glimpse into Traveller culture', it just feels (to me) like an excuse to all have a good laugh at the chavtastic pikeys and their big meringue dresses'

I agree that the programme focuses on the ott elements of Traveller culture; but at the same time I am glad to see Traveller culture on screen.

Perhaps there are viewers who watched it wanting to laugh at the dresses and poke fun at their culture - and it was a programme designed as entertainment; but I hope they did empathise with the young couples and understand even just a little of Traveller culture and understand that different people do different things.

But I also feel that it the programme should be shown for Traveller Pride. A wedding is a Big Deal in Traveller families; especially for a girl.

The tradition is to marry extremely young, after spending your teenage and childhood years helping your mother and other relations with chores and childcare. The one day in your life that you are the centre of attention and you don't have to work. No wonder you look forward to looking like a fairytale princess and being treated like one. You are young, teenage, and virgin. You are a fairytale princess in a way that modern marriages in settled culture don't match.

And although we may not find the dresses to our taste; this is a cultural hang up of ours. To the Travellers I know the bridal and bridesmaid's dresses are gorgeous. For the bride it generally is the bigger the dress the better; the heavier the dress and the more material the costlier it is - which is why if a girl's hips are bruised and cut by the dress she can boast to her friends.

Traveller families save up money for their daughter's weddings from a very young age. I have been shown troseaux (sp?) of silk and satin undies and nightwear of barely teenage girls that their mother has been buying and keeping in the bottom drawer for the honeymooon. Spending the highest amount of money on your daughter at her wedding is advertising the fact that not only can you afford it; but that she is worth it; the glory reflects on you as parents, and also on your daughter.

So:

Am I correct in thinking that

a) 'Traveller' is more a creed or culture like 'westerner' or' asian', than an actual description of habits?
and

b) The dress is the equivalent of 'wearing all your gold at once'?, ie a demonstration of affluence.

I don't mean to be derogative, I am interested in understanding.

My own personal experiences of Irish Travellers are very negative through working in retail, but I am happy to accept that those bad eggs aren't representative of the whole community.
But it does seem that Travellers don't want to integrate, is that correct? And if so, how are we to learn that they aren't all bad, if only the bad ones come near us IYSWIM?

they described SWANLEY as a manual worker but IMO he had a job to bend down and distribute the hay around to the horses, in the most part i just found it interesting to see a different way of life to my own,

I have two previous experiences with Travellers, both through work. A few years ago I worked in petrol station cafe and my experience was groups of young men fighting on our forecourt, or stealing from our shop.
I now work in an open prison and we have sadly had large groups of Travellers in prison for fraud offences and affray. Never for very long, but always a group (fathers, sons, brothers, cousins) never on their own.

MBFGW actually gave me a chance to see them in their day to day lives and it was nice not to have it focus on the sides that I have seen.
I plan to watch the rest of the series with an open mind.

Disclaimer: I'm not stupid and I realise my experiences were of a minority and both sets of men were always very considerate and polite to me, especially the latter.

tyzer2001 Romany Gypsies and Irish Travellers are recognised ethnic minority groups under the Race Relations Act as each groups shares its own customs, culture, language and ethnicity. They should be capitalised like English etc.

Romany Gypsies have their own language btw - some of which like 'kushti', 'lolipop', 'hickory dickory dock' have been incorporated into the English language for hundreds of years.

Irish Travellers also have their own language; Shelta or Gammon.

b. Weddings are forms of conspicuous comsumption for families of the bride. You spend as much as you can afford as you are advertising that you are proud of your daughter and have brought her up as a 'good girl' with an intact reputation. If you were to be seen to have a very simple, quiet wedding, people would be asking why and if you were trying to hide anything.

There is a general culture of conspicuous consumption in the Traveller community which sometimes leads to misconceptions and envy from the Settled community. It isn't necessarily that Travellers are absolutely rolling in it as they have the finest trailers or cars: there may be a distrust of banks and any wealth they have goes straight into the trailer or vehicles.

This may seem like a lot of cash but if you are a Traveller, are nomadic and self employed, you are unlikely to be ever in a position to have a mortgage. It is, as far as i know impossible to get a mortgage for a mobile home (for anyone I believe - mortgage companies do not allow it) which means that to buy a trailer or mobile home you either have to do so in cash or (very popularly in settled sites) rent a new trailer from private companies.

Cash is king and banks therefore not so useful. Some families may seem to be well off - but unlike the settled community they do not have the security of equity in a home or savings accounts or stocks and shares. What you see is not always what you get.

very interesting twosides, sounds like you really enjoy your job.

Thanks hifi I really do enjoy my job. Travellers are only part of my job, but I have really enjoyed spending many years getting to understand their culture and see how they experience our culture

If you set aside the caravans, lycra and big dresses it's very much like way my Irish great grandparents lived- strong catholicism, girls brought up to be wives and mothers and to be 'clean' before that, men being the bread winners and holding the cash.

It makes me sad that they see the high point of their lives at 16 years old.

Hmm if we're talking about old school gypsies-the ones that set up camp whereever they like and then refuse to move...all the while NOT paying taxes, then they deserve the type of negative press benefit con. trixsters receive. They should not be exempt because they are "gypsies".

igatmorelovefromthecat i dont know what ur dp was watching but at least half the people that were shown in that series were romani gypsy i would no as im a traveller get ur facts straight

Maybe if gypsies/travellers were not so secretive and segregate themselves from others then people would not hold them in such suspicion.

How can gypsies be ethnic minority? It is bizarre!!!

I won't write my own experience as no doubt someone will be posting that it is not like that and that I am wrong.

yeah right coffee they willfully segregate themselves...they're not at all long suffering victims of being marginalised then??????? methinks you'll find there's a difference.

I found the few shows I watched really interesting but still so much I don't understand or just confused about. Reading this thread helps.
I do feel for the girls and the lack of education though, regardless of traditions or reasons. And education can be home schooling not just the schools we consider as normal.

Can anyone explain somehing that has confued me?
In one of the episodes it showed a girl getting married, so her 13 yr old sister was then having to leave school to take over her 'duties'. She was shown having to clean the caravan thoroughly every day, cook for her siblings and look after them, take them to school etc
Where was HER mum though? What would she be doing all day as they do not work outside the home???

If they have georgeorwell, they have been for good reasons.

Do you really think businesses shut down and cancel booking while the gypsies are in town just to be spiteful to them?

Or is it because the disruption, damage and losses do not make staying open worth while?

If you have nothing to hide.

I have been facinated by the series, and wonder how they can have such strict morals as far as contact with the op sex but then allow the very young girls to dress as the do!

Dropdeadfred The mother of the 13 year old girl had really bad arthritis so was unable to do housework.

I watched the series and totally agree with the OP.

On the other hand I learned some things I did not know and maybe appreciate more the difficulties experienced by families.

I was also screaming at the TV last night "if you don't want harrassment and judgement deal with the zoo element which gives the bad name". I am thinking particularly of thiose who are NOT law abiding and who Trading Standards have to pick up the pieces of after.

I never tar anyone with the same brush and in my work with the traveller community have never found them anything other than polite. civil and grateful for care. As a midwife I sometimes saw several of the camp when visiting a Mum because they wanted advice or support with various issues. The men were always fine with me too.

mangotango - thanks, but no that wasn't the girl I meant. The one wih arthritis was the one who lived in a house and had got divorced because of DV

dropdeadfred- I wondered exactly the same thing. It was odd that the narrater didn't explain the situation.

Could some of the travellers who've posted above explain why housework is so important and seems to take up so much time?

Dropdeadfred Wasn't the DV victim/arthiritis sufferer the mother of the bride and the 13 year old the younger sister of the bride, who was crying at the wedding because now her older sister was marrying she would have to take on all the chores that her mother couldn't do because of the arthiritis? Maybe I misunderstood it.

The mother with arthritis lived in a house, definitely different to the 13 year old's family.