To ask if anyone else’s family had this belief growing up?

[Latenightthoughts111]

NC for this as it seems like all my threads lately have been about my family and don’t want them linked

late night thought tonight is about when I was growing up (late 80s born to a mid 40s born DM) I was told that drinking from a can and eating in the street was like being a prostitute

im not exaggerating I can clearly remember being about 10 and told that walking home from swimming with my hair down and wet and drinking from a can made me look like a prostitute! What was this about?? Where did it come from?? Even now I struggle to drink from a can and I don’t think I ever eat whilst walking!

My Nan and great Nan didn't think people should be seen walking along eating, it was like street urchins. When late night fast food was newly evolved and the loutish behaviour of drunken groups of lads walking along eating their chips or kebabs was a thing, I remember they were scandalised. I can recall my Nan telling me that eating my Mars bar on the way home from the school bus was unladylike and the only things you could eat outside were picnics and ice creams, but you should be sitting down.

Re: Pierced ears
Associated with foreigners Spanish, Italian. Gypsies, Catholics -
as opposed to proper more puritan Church of England and Protestant. More puritan altogether.

yes I was told it was common (chips were ok after swimming or at the beach)

I still don’t do it …

I was brought up being told only whores (actual language) wear makeup to work.

Only girls who "went with fairground boys" had tattoos.

I'm mid sixties and yes all the pre mentioned things, but to be fair there really weren't places you would buy food to eat in the street back then, it was more smoking.

Another thing was making you look poverty stricken, that was more my problem as I always had rather boho taste and liked dreadful things like not wear short white socks (always white, coloured socks on girls were common).

Imagine Mumsnet if it had existed back then.

To this day, my Mum carefully decants milk from the bottle into a jug rather than poor it directly into her tea. A woman who doesn’t has no standards in her home making apparently (i don’t own a milk jug).

It’s an international phenomenon though. My Italian pal’s Mama was utterly horrified when she realised that I planned to leave the house with wet hair. It was already about 25c at 8am and I planned to roll my wet hair under my hat in a vague attempt to stay to cool. Apparently marked me out as a fallen woman rather than a sweaty tourist.

And the anklet! My own dad told me when I was about 12 and dead proud of my little gold anklet with tinkly gold bells that if I wore it on my left ankle it meant I was available for sex work and if on my right then an appointment needed to be made! When I was a bit older (about 15) and I got a temporary henna tattoo around my right ankle, he said the same in front family and extended family at a party. Designed to take me down a peg or two, as he so liked to do, and I smartly asked how he knew so much about prostitutes. I've never seen him so angry, practically spitting with rage.

I’m born early 90s and never heard this!

im curious, is it just walking along whilst eating? Does it apply if you were to sit down on a bench in the city centre to eat? Sit and have a quick snack whilst under the bus shelter? Does it extend to all form of outdoor eating eg no picnic on the grass in the park?

and was it just applied to women eating?

I was born 1960:

Mother and school forbade the following on the basis they were vulgar:

Eating in the street or not at a table
Drinking from bottles or cans
Smoking at all (school); in the street (mother) - in fact mother invited me to smoke in the house rather than be considered vulgar whilst doing so outside
Chewing gum
Not having correct table manners

Grandma
Ankle chains and red shoes made women look like cheap prostitutes. High class ones were found in high class hotels and difficult to distinguish, except they arrived alone with very little luggage.

To be perfectly honest I still dislike eating in the street/chewing gum/drinking from cans and didn't let the children do it when with me and certainlynat home they had to sit at the table to eat - even a snack. They are mid 20s now. Their schools took the same view.

Mother thinks the habit of everyone swigging from a water bottle in the street is common and vile and was perturbed when she took the dc to McDonald's 20 years ago because there were no knives and forks - people were eating with their hands - I think she nearly swooned.

I didn’t hear those things from my family, but I heard them from other people around me. Also, words like ‘prostitute’ didn’t just refer to women engaged in actual prostitution, but to any woman who might have had ‘too many’ sexual partners. The exact number that constituted ‘too many’ was never revealed.

I've definitely heard of similar to this but not from family. Not prostitute more bad manners and common. It's definitely something you rarely used to see, especially from adults.

Also red shoes. Very tarty apparently. I’m not talking skyscraper stilletos, just the chunky red suede lace ups I bought when I was 16. DM style, although not DMs. It’s funny how a raw egg landed on them so soon after being told I wasn’t to wear them.

I feel ok eating an ice cream or maybe a chocolate bar but nothing else, whilst walking. It was deemed "unsightly" by my family. But yet put a tartan rug down and stuff yourself with pork pies and Wotsits.

I was taught it was not considered right to eat and drink in the street - certainly not ‘ladylike’ or ‘gentlemanly’. But I never heard anything about it being related to the habits of prostituted women.

I think I read somewhere the French still frown on eating in the street. They would think you should be sitting down and eating the food in a more leisured and enjoyable way, which makes sense.

My mum never said it was like a prostitution but she made it clear it was very 'common' and totally unacceptable. she is still an insufferable snob

We were never allowed to eat ice creams walking along, we had to find a bench or wall to sit on to eat them. Once my mum bought us lollies from a local shop and we took them home and had to eat them (melted) from a bowl!😂
I can't remember ever eating anything else outside unless it was a picnic. Drinking from a bottle or can was (iirc) "vulgar", and my mum once said I was "sluttish" for eating a piece of toast without cutting it!!

volezvoo
Does it extend to all form of outdoor eating eg no picnic on the grass in the park?.

No, a picnic would be fine.

She said that the anti eating in the street came about because of soup kitchens and not wanting to be identified as poor enough to use them. Before that street food has been available in every culture.

@Ponoka7 that's very interesting. I can believe it. My WC mother said something similar about eating in the street being linked to having to get "handouts" so it was a pride thing never to do so. Whereas my MC friends as a teen were never told anything like this and happily munched their Greggs on the way back to school/Uni.

Well I'm common as shit then! 🤣

I think it comes from looking like you're poor. If you're eating on the go it's because you're too busy to stop because you're having to work so hard to make ends meet.

When I first started wearing makeup my mum told me that I MUST take it off every night because ‘only tarts sleep in their makeup’. To this day I am fastidious about taking it off no matter how tired I am, lest I ever be labelled a tart.

When I was about 14 I bought a pair of green suede sling back shoes, I thought they were amazing, then my school friend told me her father had told her that only prostitutes wore green shoes! Took me years to realise her father probably had no opinion on my shoes since friend and I only met at school. She was a mean girl before mean girls were a thing! My mother on the other hand didn’t like eating in the street, a neighbour was a lecturer at a local teacher training college ( he was also a published author and poet) she saw him licking a lolly in the street once and was incandescent “ Look at him… what sort of an example is he setting to those young teachers he is supposed to be teaching!” I used to baby sit for him and I didn’t dare tell her about the very unsuitable books he had on his bookshelves.

My Mum said the same about chewing gum. She didn't say prostitute though! But chewing gum outside especially mouth open and you looked 'like a tart!' Haha

Blimey I think we are long lost twins!!! I’m still not allowed to say kids or what! I’m 36!!!

Ladies shouldn’t drink out of pint glasses, wear white stilettos, ankle bracelets were a definite no-no. No leggings or mini skirts if you don’t have the legs for it or are over a certain age. Swearing and more than one piercing in your ears were common.

to be fair I would still never eat in the street!