To ask what makes you working class? (Lighthearted)

[MissAlabamaWhitman]

So, the whole 'what makes you middle class' has been done to death hasn't it?

We're all pretty au fair with avocados, elephants sodding breath, the ubiquity of joules et cetera.
And lovely as it is to have such knowledge of the middle classes, none of it applies to me.

I'm working class and I'll explIn to you that which denotes this in just a minute.

Incidentally I heard that there's a few of us about so perhaps we can make our own list of our very own class signifiers.

Who's in?

I shall go first.....

Love of charity shops, this week I picked up a leather Hobbs bag for 3.99 and a couple of Abercrombie & Fitch tops for DD1 1.49 each!

Love of Iceland/Heron foods/Home bargains/B&M. Yes I know I could get everything I need in Sainsbury's but I actually prefer scrabbling around for bargains and topping up at Lidl.

Chardonnay. I love it, tastes fab. I can't be arsed to pretend that I prefer a Beaujolais or Cab Sav. I don't.

One bathroom/toilet in a five bed house.

Regional accent which I take pleasure in.

Children who play football and wear replica kits whilst doing so

Girls who wear pinkI draw the line at bloody Jojo bows though

Getting drunk at barbecues and performing impromptu Karaoke.

Allowing my children to 'play out' in the cul de sac from age seven.

Cleaning my own house.

Holidays at Center Parcs rather than overseas.

Owning a Huskita

Letting my children watch TV and eat crisps in full view of other parents.

Having a 'pop man'

Listening to LBC rather than R4

Not really giving a fuck about trans, one way or the other.

I'm sure there's lots more besides which I'll try to remember.
How about you?
What makes you sit back at the end of a hard day and think 'yep I'm a fully paid up member of the old working classes?'

Constance

It doesn't matter what you think.
You can't change my social class because it doesn't fit with your perception of how a WC person should live/behave/converse.

It doesn't work like that, sorry.

Does the pop man sell booze?! I've only had sass in dodgy nightclubs in the 90s.

Ive found the more tight fisted a person is, the more richer they are.

What's Sass?

What am I missing?!?

I always find these threads on class really interesting, I have a very diverse group of family/friends/acquaintances I know people from council estates and country estates, a lot of things people say are WC/MC/UC are shared between the two poles and spread in between. My DM was working class her family were miners, my DF upper middle class all went to boarding school etc, and I have been to both state and private schools so I have a pretty wide ranging experience of the class system.

Most of the things listed on this thread are simply personal preferences and your class doesn't come into it much, and a lot of it is regional rather than class based imo. MN seems to have an obsession with class and I think that is because the majority of users are probably aspirational lower middle class, many of the things people on here consider MC I don't at all, I have never known anyone MC go to centreparks for example, and I know middle class people who dress to the nines with fake hair/nails loads of makeup etc. for a quiet drink in a pub. It's a shame these threads always descend into slinging horrid stereotypes rather than a measured discussion on class markers.

I eat what I like I don't need to eat fancy cheese to impress anyone.

I had no idea that you are meant to have a messy house if you're middle class. DH and I are completely middle class, both our dads were company directors, my mum was a teacher and daughter of a CEO and DH's never worked yet I have never known anyone in our family, DH's family or any of our friends to have messy houses. Both of us grew up with a "daily" a lady who came on every day to clean, iron and babysit and as a parent I don't recall going to any of my children's friends houses, all middle class professional families, which are either dirty or messy.

Cheddar isn't fancy though, is it?

I didn't mean the cheddar

I always have cheddar on my pasta.

You are probably right Bratsy. I sort of sub divide wc into upper and lower too. We do have a few MC friends. They have more assets than us. Homeowners (we live in a HA property), have either had help from family to buy or bought years ago, will likely get an inheritance at some point, have usually been to uni and have management jobs etc.

But atm we have more surplus income so are cash rich. We can't afford to buy a property as DP is 50 and has had health issues but we can afford to have a good standard of living and a bit in savings.

My family is 'proper' wc as is dps. No money left over at the end of the week, credit in the form of catalogues and mail order accounts, no real savings apart from Christmas clubs, breakfast, dinner, tea etc.

Apart from home ownership and the potential for inheritance there isn't a great deal of difference between our MC friends and WC family. Neither can afford a random holiday, both shop at aldi, both use charity shops, both automatically pack a picnic for a day out rather than use a cafe etc.

But at a BBQ you get better fed and watered at a WC one than a MC one. Last MC one we went to it was all chicken legs and jacket potato. WC one there was every type of bbqable meat, huge prawns, loads of salad and gin!

I have it on my Donner meat and chips, 'tis food of the Gods.

Discussions about class like this make me glad I do not live in the U.K. anymore!

Not sure these work.

I'm a university senior Lecturer the daughter of two professors, DH in management -

We shop at lidl
Don't go abroad for holidays as work makes me do that anyway and can't be fucked with a toddler on a plane
I buy all clothes from charity shops
DS is watching alphablocks now

My favourite tea is egg and chips (home made not frozen) loadsa salt loadsa vinegar loadsa tomatoe sauce (not ketchup) loadsa bread fee dippin.
I am heavily invested in the soaps.
I clean my own loo.
I have never been in a Waitrose.
I run past the seed and organic aisle to reach the biscuit aisle.
I call a pasty on a bench a treat for dinner (gingerbread man for pud)
Love a pound shop and get quite stabby when I discover an item that is over one pound - it's a fucking POUND shop people!
I swear like a navvy.
I drink blossom hill. With lemonade. Which makes it lambrini really.
There. I'm working class.

-playing out
-sometimes (ok too often) eat our tea while watching the Simpsons
-campervan holidays are our usual summer holiday
-drinking in the park (is that WC or just no class? great way to meet people though)

And I was shopping in charity shops before it became the fashionable middle class thing to do (when I was a teenager I got almost all my clothes from charity shops as I was going through a hippie phase and they were the only place to get hippie clothes)

What's so pernicious about British class is that there is nothing you can do about it. It's what you're born into. Lifestyles, taste, belongings - these can all change through circumstance. You can never change your parentage. That's the whole point. It keeps people in their place.

Consider:

Wayne Rooney
Donna Air
Kate Middleton
Tony Benn

I was born WC, but am now well MC.

But I want a bloody pop man.

The charity shop thing is funny in the 80s early 90s kids were ashamed and teased if it was found out they had been bought stuff from a charity shop, "you got that from oxfam" was a regualr insult. In recent years charity shops are a real mc thing (and prices are to high but that is for another thread!)

Hippies are the very definition of middle class.

Working?

Most of the WC people I know wouldn't recognise any of the above as class signifiers - it's just life.

The fact that people are at pains to list what makes them WC indictates to me that they're nearer MC.

The inheritance and home ownership issue is interesting. Most of my parents WC immigrant peers saved like mad and are actually very well off now.

'Playing out' seems to me more a relic of the 70s and 80s than a class indicator.

I always associate how loudly people speak in public with class.