Those cool, messy, usually wealthy mums

[Shessodowntoearth]

I want to be one 😅
Does anyone know the type?
Usually quite a few kids, at least two, kids are lovely, but generally quite messy/put together in a kooky way.
Houses are beautiful, but messy/disorganised, beautiful pieces everywhere/decoration but with a lived in/messy vibe. The mums are the same, usually seem quite disorganised but chilled out at the same time, generally away somewhere every school holidays and don’t work.
I know quite a few mums like this near me and wonder what this life is like, mainly the having more money. I’d love to be as laid back if people come around, to not care about the mess as the house is so incredible, to not worry if my kids clothes look scruffy in a cool way and to be comfortable in myself. Is this what happens when you come from money?

@WinterDeWinter I take it back. From your last post, you clearly do think your idea of beauty is a standard to which everyone else should reach. It's a good job some of us are capable of seeing beauty outside our own limited parameters.
'When I see badly designed...'. Badly designed for what? Your idea of aesthetically pleasing, or the function. I think Victorian houses are beautiful aesthetically. Functionally, they are dreadful. Overly high ceilings affecting heat, pokey and positively dangerous staircases...
My old primary school was a gorgeous building. Terribly designed from a practical point of view. The modern school I now work in in a local deprived area is not a pretty building, but it is the most functional school I have had the fortune to work in.

You really don't live in the real world, do you? Yes, social housing must be very distressing for you to look at. Poor you.

I have literally had to train myself not to look in that direction because it genuinely upsets me
😂
This post made me laugh. I know what you mean. But it so difficult not to look when you don't want to.

@Mercurial123 give her a break please. She is not looking down on anyone. I think @WinterDeWinter has a good sense of humour in relation to aesthetics, that's all!

The thing is that badly designed depends on the aim of the building. A well designed building doesn't necessarily have to be aesthetically beautiful if it provides a functional, economical and pleasant space for whatever its function is.
Someone who knows what they're talking about would be able to see a certain aesthetic implemented to a high standard Vs the same aesthetic unsuccessfully implemented because of poor craftsmanship.

Some people hate certain styles of architecture, such as brutalism, but others appreciate it. Some people hate the aesthetics of old properties, but it doesn't make it awful and unbearable to look at.

There's a fine line between appreciating different styles, whilst acknowledging taste is often personal, and getting wrapped up in the idea that one is an outlier for an ability to perceive beauty and art in a way that less enlightened people don't.

@LolaSmiles I agree. It's fine to talk about your own aesthetic ideas, do have things you don't like to see. It's not quite so fine to suggest it would be better if more people thought that way specifically.
It's interesting also that what was considered aesthetically negative 60 years ago is now being fawned over by a new generation of these elite aesthetes. So I am not sure how innate it really is and how much trend has to do with it.
I live in the North East. There's a lot of the old terraced streets here, basic housing for the workers. No gardens, only yards. In some areas, someone has decided suddenly that these are aesthetically picturesque. Prices instantly whacked up. Yet this is the housing design that manufacturers like Cadbury's sought to get away from when designing their own worker's housing because they were dark and small with no gardens.

What does it mean not the lunch/botox type? I mean I understand the Botox but the lunch? They don’t eat?

You really don't live in the real world, do you? Yes, social housing must be very distressing for you to look at. Poor you.

That's the whole point @Mercurial123 - I don't have to look at it. But the people who live there do, and I think they are entitled to something whose appearance has been considered.

To everyone else - you make some good points and some unfair ones and sorry to respond with bullet points rather than individually. I definitely don't believe myself to be an arbiter and of course what is considered beautiful changes over time and amongst different cultures etc. But what it all has in common is that it has been carefully considered - and I think you can, actually, say that there are some 'rules' in terms of what most humans find compelling and harmonious in terms of colour, proportion and the relations between the elements. The things that I dislike are those where there has been no consideration at all, when it would have cost no more to do it well - or where there's been a cynical attempt to cash in with a bad 'get the look' pastiche of something better.

in terms of architecture specifically - of course generally form must follow function. A building that makes it difficult to do what it's intended for is a bad building. Conversely a building which perfectly fulfils its purpose has a kind of beauty by default. An excellent building has done this and resolved details and proportions with consideration. Buildings of almost any style or period can be aesthetically admirable if they have all these qualities - everything else is taste. Brutalism is an interesting example - I like the boldness of the aesthetic and the honest use of materials (not trying to hide the concrete with cladding for example) of the South Bank but depressed by the naivety/lack of care shown by the architects who thought humans would not feel oppressed by its monolithic scales.

In terms of art - or rather contemporary art - I think this is slightly different, in that part of its raison d'etre is in playing with or challenging orthodoxy. Some of the art I like most could be considered ugly but it is aesthetically interesting and exciting to me because it challenges our expectations. Again, it's the product of thought and care - you cannot successfully make art, I don't think, without understanding 'the rules' at some level, even if not formally educated in them.

'Elite aesthetes' strikes me as both unfair and depressingly populist - look at those snobs looking down on you all, as the likes of Trump and Farage like to say to distract from the real shit. I definitely don't consider myself superior - as I said earlier, I think it's quite randomly assigned, like other qualities. DH is very musical, for eg, and can hear when something is slightly out of tune when I just can't - I don't consider him better than me at all .

I'm not seeing a sense of humour. But I'll continue to comment if I choose to do so. Posts like this are the worst part of MN.

Harsh but 😘

You’re probably thinking about Motherland lol

Yes I know some like this. They pretend to be very relaxed about their children's education. But secretly they're often tiger Mum's.

They always have a tutor for their child but never mention it. When it does get mentioned, they claim its because their child has some kind of fashionable learning need. It's never because they're a pushy parent.

@WinterDeWinter not sure when those two odious men ever said that, they are massive snobs themselves. Fact is, I think it IS a bit the case of snobs looking down on people until someone of their own ilk decides an area is actually quite nice, and suddenly the people it was built for originally can't afford the front door. It's a major reason why a lot of the social housing from the 60s is now out of the price range of the class it was built for. Whilst those who bought under right to buy may have benefitted at the time, in terms of the future of social housing, it was hugely detrimental. My Nan still lives in hers. As a private sale, it would be worth £400,00. A property on a council Estate that 30 years ago was considered an ugly sink estate.

Yes I completely agree with all that @Utterbunkum

Just to add - I don't think anyone, either then or now, would be wrong to find the best of those modernist estates aesthetically (and also politically) appealing - lots of the issues were about maintenance rather than intrinsic design problems. But the shit ones (the 'get the look' cheap exploitative knock-off ones) were always shit, still are.

The reason that your mum's place is now being colonised by the back-slapping middle classes is probably mostly the result of the insane property market isn't it? And they are self-soothing with their 'I live on a brutalist estate, you probably haven't heard of it' bollocks.

'Now we're taking over their estates' as this brilliant video says:

@WinterDeWinter to a degree it's about the market, but it's also part of the cause of the current market. Actually it's been going on for a while. In the late eighties in EastEnders, the invasion of the yuppies was referenced, and characters were introduced to reflect that. That was the boom and bust era which was significantly affected by people buying up properties on the cheap and flogging them on at a high price to people who wouldn't have looked twice at said property when they could have bought it 5 years before for a song. Now, why was that? (Genuine question). What suddenly turns a property from low to high value? Places become fashionable, but why? It's not wholly without basis to say that it is, in part, because they start appearing in glossy magazines with interior designers raving about them. There definitely are elite aesthetes, self-styled or otherwise, who make it their business to endorse what was previously sneered at. You only need fashion designer or interior designer to move in and start publicly raving about the play of light and shadow, or the joys of a yard as a design feature and you're away. And it DOES happen. It might not be you personally, but it isn't unfair.

In a place like London (which is all I know about) I still think it's fundamentally about the market, although I agree with you about the mechanism. If there were enough affordable property in West and North London, no-one would ever have come to East London because it was so deeply unfashionable. But when the need becomes strong enough the upper middle classes who have been priced out of chichi land try and mitigate the risk by following artists and designers, shifting the fundamental value of desirability from 'wealthy' to 'cool'.

The artists and designers were initially there because a. it was cheap and they are generally poor and b. much of the architecture was beautiful and/or Romantic in the patina of its industrial or faded grandeur - so in the end it does often come down to intrinsic aesthetics too.

On an individual basis it's in people's interest to attract others like them/increase the value of their asset.

I think Sarah Beeny could be a bit like this.

Oh I think she's much too driven @Janedoe82. Not wafty enough!

Sarah Beeny has built a mock stately mansion, that doesn’t fit in with the casual boho mum to me.

Hideous!

@WinterDeWinter I am not really talking about the poor artist already living there. I doubt he or she would have much influence on the young professional bankers, accountants, etc. No, Elite Aesthetes who influence are the interior designers with their own companies and stylish suburban abodes who want a pad in the city. They are the sorts who are commissioned to do double page spreads for homes and gardens about the romantic architecture, after they've bought a home there, prettied it up a bit and sold it to one of their existing clients for an arm and a leg. The poor artists who were already there end up selling for the same reason the poor everybody else does. They need the money. And so it continues.
And then TV got in on the act. All those shows about how to flip houses and make a mint, resulting in a replication of the eighties carpet baggers who artificially inflated prices by buying up and selling on quickly at a high profit value. The phenomena of TV programs teaching the world and it's mother how to renovate a house to attract maximum profit has been well documented as a market disruptor, and since many of those shows were fronted by interior designers, then yes, elite aesthetics has played a role, as well as factors you mentioned.
Whilst standards of aesthetic beauty are often touted, I remain unconvinced except on a basic level. No two humans see things the same, not just because of differences in physical vision, but because we don't only see with our eyes. If you ask 4 people to describe a car, they will all start with the four wheels basic. After that, even though they are describing the same car, every answer will be different and that might depend on how much interest they have in cars, whether the car itself prompts a memory...If one of those finds the car beautiful and another doesn't, is either of the right? Suppose the one who thought the car was ugly said, similar to you, how much better it would be if more people thought the same as me. We would have more beautiful cars. Cars like this wouldn't be made'. How do you really think the person who thought the car was beautiful because it reminded him of a similar one owned by his father would feel? Do you think he would file that the person who thought it was ugly was being a teensy bit arrogant to assume that his 'ugly' trumps the other's 'beauty''?
Beauty is always in the eye of the beholder, because it is never just about form and symmetry. People don't like the things others find repellant necessarily because they can't see the flaws or have no choice. They see beauty for a hundred and one different things-emotional connections, affinity with the colour, etc. Can you truly say you have a higher sensitivity to aesthetics merely because you see flaws in form?

But then, what do I know? I think telephones are beautiful, even the ones we had as kids that came from BT and you only had a choice of brown or beige. I am probably your diametric opposite, in that l believe there's no such thing as ugly things, there's always beauty in a thing, it's just I can't always see it.

I quite like cleaning but that might be because I don’t have a system so it doesn’t feel like drudgery. My job isn’t physical and requires deep thought so I appreciate the functional physicality of housework. I even like ironing, but I have only ever had to iron my own clothes. I used to do it while watching TV. I suppose I hate sitting still after a day infront of a computer screen. I like going to the gym and realise that it’s purpose is to enable me to carry out everyday tasks like cleaning. I would love to get a cleaner in because when I have hired one in the past they do a much better job than me. Then again, I would hate my home to look like a showhome. My ideal is for it to be lived in but neat and tidy - to be a pleasant, welcoming place.

I found the first post of winterdewinter here quite humorous, but I admit sometimes I get the context wrong as I am not a native English speaker.
Nevertheless I find your comments unnecessarily aggressive.