This is chavvy, that is chavvy. Fuck off with the use of chavvy

[SPsCliffingAllOverMN]

AIBU?

All I seem to see lately is the word chavvy to describe names, items, clothes etc that people don't like.

So far names that aren't Arlo or Benedict, are double barreled or start with a K are chavvy.

Using Nanna is chavvy.

Wearing character clothing (children) is chavvy.

Everything is fucking chavvy. It makes me wonder what people think chavvy means? Am I the only one who has noticed this?

hat Still post, its still going

This thread really reminds if. Tracy Ullman sketch from years ago where there was a plane that was separated into working, middle and upper class. The working class section had sausage and chips for their meal, the middle class section had oysters, food gras and champagne and the upper class section had sausage and chips.

The only people who worry about who is chav and judge everybody for everything including their names is the middle classes. Everyone else just gets on with it.

I have read articles by Tom Parker Bowles extolling the virtues of BigMacs, Monster Munch and Tangle Twister lollies. Hardly a chav.

I thought the word came from the Romany word chavale which means brothers ( as in a community sense). Not quite sure why it came to be universally applied to boys wearing hoodies ... I hate the way it's used to just describe anyone who is obviously not well-off - whether they act 'common' or not.

i hate it too, and u are right about the word coming from the Romany, where 'chavvy' means child i think, same in the Andalucian dialect where 'chavale' means boy, mate. so all that nonsense from the gels of Cheltenham Ladies College about "Cheltenham Average" is,,,,,,nonsense.

Any phrase that becomes overused is annoying. In its right place, I don't have a problem saying something is chavvy.

Surely you can be of limited income but not be chavvy?

To me it means someone who ostentatiously displays a relatively high disposable income at the expense of having made more sensible choices. (Which will almost always come back to bite them on the arse in 10 years time)

Lots of Bling, Designer labels on the outside of their clothes, smoking, Stupidly expensive buggies (that are identical to the other non-named buggy that came off the same production line) , dressing their babies in new, expensive, designer clothes (when they'll be grown out of them a month later) {not an exclusive list}. Leaving school at an early age because they "know" everything already.

They are the "Nouveau Riche" of the 21st century, equally ridiculed, but possibly with more reason. At least the "Nouveaus" had worked their butts off to get where they were and buy all their shiny new things.

I don't use the word because I know other people apply it differently.

20+ years on the townies I knew (although we called them Sharons) are the ones who've paid off their mortgages and can afford sex pools and sparkly tiles.

'When I was a student we used the term Townies to describe people our age, but who weren't continuing in HE, had got jobs and wore lots of pastel coloured cotton and white heels, and drove around in souped-up Fiesta XR2s/Escort XRis, etc (this was the late 80s). They weren't what you'd call intellectual, or cultured.'

But we all did that in Essex, and it has been said that we are some of the most cultured citizens around!

That's why we voted for Thatcher too.

Isn't saying 'fuck' a lot supposed to be a sign of a chav?

Speaking as a formerly poor person that grew up in a WC part of Birmingham a 'chav' was, at least to us, a person who was WC but was a MC wannabe. They would wears street market clothes like the rest of us but they would save up and pair it with the cheapest designer bag that they could afford.

So 'chav' is also a label some WC people chuck at their fellow WC peeps as well

Heck, the lecturers in Essex drove around in souped up Capris. They were a cut above the students!

'Isn't saying 'fuck' a lot supposed to be a sign of a chav?'

That's why I always felt that Alastair Campbell and some of that New Labour mob were more chavvy than the Tories.

Chavs aren't necessarily poor.Look at posh and Becks the king and queen of Chav!

One of my lecturers used to wear stonewashed jeans, but he was German.

To me a chav is someone who can't afford the complete package and ends up pairing Primark with a designer handbag for example.

Posh and Becks can hardly be accused of committing fashion faux pas.

YANBU

"If you haven't got anything nice to say don't say anything at all" is my motto!

just my opionion but I hate to see the use of "Fuck Off" in a thread title - I now have an opinion of you that might or might not be justified and it certainly isn't complementary!

Jenai - during that period I spent a lot of time in Germany. There was no shortage of middle aged German men wearing stone washed jeans. Not a pretty sight.

It is just a way of judging other and it does really come from fear of being judged yourself and found lacking. You can say its just laughing at people like Collen Rooney who are a bit blingy but if you look at some of the threads in here you can see it's more insidious than that. I mean who really gives a shit what you call your parents' parents?

I see myself as working class because of my background (father and grandfather worked down pit) but I work as a teacher in a very middle class environment. I always say breakfast, dinner and tea because that's the way I was brought up. I would never say dinner for evening meal and would feel even sillier saying supper. I would feel a fraud. I know the codes. Less and fewer, pudding not dessert, fireplace not mantelpiece, grandmother not nana etc. I just don't subscribe to them (apart from the first because that's grammar and the rules of grammar are finite!)

It's much easier to not give a shit and not tie yourself in knots about how people talk, what people wear and what names we give our kids. Really posh people don't call their kids Antigone or Lucius anyway. They call their children plain names like James or Jane and then give them ridiculous nicknames like Binky, Shrimpy or Bobos.

I work with someone 'proper posh' with a title and everything. She drives round in an old banger and shops in charity shops. She swears more than any other member of staff too.

Oh, and Prince Charles eats with his fingers. I bet a lot of Mumnnetters would think that was really chavvy!

way I understand the term it fits the Beckhams but they are so well off that it wouldn't bother them in the least how we judge their taste. They spend a lot of time in the US where apart from maybe the New England bunch, I don't think it is hugely difficult to break into elite circles if you are rich and/or famous.

For me chav is just another class term. Nobody who is upper middle class IMO wears the kind of clothes I associate with this term and I don't think many middle class people do either.

As an expat dc, this is one of the 2 things about the British lifestyle which I will never really understand. Why is it so important what class people have? (The other thing is why a nice cup of tea is the answer to every problem). A lot of countries have some kind of upper-class but it isn't such a huge focus in people's lives. I see so many threads on here on whether to say toilet, loo or lavatory, or perhaps scent or perfume. They're all little class testing exercises. For me it is a totally bizarre preoccupation. When you are overseas in an expat world, this kind of thing fades to insignificance, then when you are back in the UK again, you see how big a part of everyone's life it is, even in my day for students at university, which seems so odd to me now.

When I look at Scandinavia which I think are much more egalitarian, they get by without all this, I don't know if there is much of a sense of class left in Sweden or Norway. In Demnark I noticed there is a castle owning aristocracy, landed gentry but they seem to be ok with hunkering down with the tourists and having a beer and a chat. The difference is stil there to an extent but it feels different to me. When I am in the UK, I always notice how people try to place you, gauge you on the basis of your accent, what you do, where you went to school. I think a lot of people are on edge with this in conversations and I wonder why anyone really still bothers with it.

'The other thing is why a nice cup of tea is the answer to every problem'

I prefer a nice cup of tea and a biscuit. It is because that is a calm way of solving a problem or reducing tension than having an all-out ding dong.

If Gordon Brown would have adopted that advice, rather than (as allegedly reported) throwing mobile phones around, then history may have been different.

Sonnet Your opinion of me does not matter. I'm not the first or the last to swear in a thread title. You may judge me on what ever you wish to. Good motto btw

'A lot of countries have some kind of upper-class but it isn't such a huge focus in people's lives.'

It is because those countries have much greater equality and social mobility than our country. As you rightly say, Scandinavia is more egalitarian.

Our ruling elite have looked down on our working people (in a similar way that we have recently witnessed the contempt which the Tory leadership has for its own voters) and have created rigid stratifications in order to keep them in their place and prevent them climbing the ladder of social mobility. That is where the whole U and non-U thing stems from.

claig - affluent countries like the Swiss don't have sink council estates like we do. In comparison, their society is quite homogeneous so of course there isn't going to be this social divide.