What makes you middle class?

[Singlemum90]

So a comment from my mother a few years ago has stuck with me ever since then really. When I was no longer a single mum, and found myself a little less skint, she said 'oh it's so good now you're just a nice middle class mum, I'm so proud of you'

Aside from her clearly looking down at me before this, and deciding class was what defined how she felt about me- I have often wondered what made her decide I was middle class at this point.

How do you define it? (I feel it's very subjective) Is it what family you are born into? Your income?(And what income makes the 'classes'? Is it a specific job type? The way you stick your finger out when you drink tea?
Or is it just a shitty way to divide people and how they feel about themselves?

I also married 'down' and regretted it (as my mother annoyingly predicted). His family turned out to be inverted snobs. They loved to be included in things with my family that they wouldn't otherwise have got to do, but were really nasty behind closed doors because I was 'different' and they took that as some kind of deliberate insult!

Inverted snobbery is rife with some wc people. Its a really nasty trait.

@Springtime43

Inverted snobbery my least favourite thing about dh and his family.. find it embarrassing.

All the ‘we don’t have anything’ competitions and ‘we bought the cheapest’ and being openly resentful and putting people down in the family if they better themselves or want to buy a bigger house… just uuughh

My family - how fantastic they’re going to grammar school, oh yes you must get a bigger house for more space, why aren’t you booking more extracurricular activities, the X brand car is rubbish buy an X brand, don’t buy cheaper than £8 wine - aim for £14+, holiday in centre parcs, buy craft gin etc etc

Yes, wc people will frequently sneer at anything/anyone they perceive to better or more expensive. Its not attractive!

It’s unsurprising that people stick to their own ‘tribes’ as a result of snobbery and reverse snobbery (moral snobbery? I’ve found that it’s very often dressed in the robes of virtue) really. Why wouldn’t you gravitate to those with shared life experiences, where conversations don’t have to be navigated for potential land mines?

@Springtime43

I once brought a £19 bottle of wine… it was passed around the entire table for 10 minutes with each person making their comment and sneering about it, then a whole fuss, flourish, commentary whenever I needed a top up…. Also there was an issue that I had bought a fat face dress (in the sale), rather than primark.

In my family had I brought a £4 bottle of wine there would have been similar distain but nobody would have said anything because they would have been too polite, instead they would have covertly swapped my cheap plonk out for something better or have offered me something ‘better’ repeatedly until I said yes…

I once bought a primark coat and pretended to my Mum that it was from Karen Millen, she spent 2weeks complimenting it, the quality, style and material… eventually I told her and she looked crestfallen as if she had failed as a mother with me shopping there.

It’s all nonsense isn’t it.

Earlier in the thread, I commented that I think I've got a foot in both camps with wc/mc. But either way, I'm quite well spoken, as were my parents. And this frequently results in derision from wc people, whereas a mc person would be very unlikely to say unpleasant things about someone who sounds 'rough.' I get fed up with it.

Well that's a bit of a generalisation! Maybe they sneer at the person who has all the gear and no idea!

A fool and his money are easily parted and all that.

Its by no means ALL wc people, but its not unusual!!!

Nothing describes this better than the Dryrobe.. It was very mc to be sporting a Dryrobe walking the dog.. On the schoolrun conveying the message one was going cold water swimming after dropping off the darling angels at the golden gates... The Dryrobe even had its own hashtag following #dryrobewankers

Then low & behold Primark introduce a near identical version which was suitably called the "Pri-robe" by those who invested 🤣 suddenly the wc were wearing their Prirobe everywhere, dropping the sprogs off at school, walking the dogs, to the shops.. Everywhere!
Suddenly the Dryrobe loses it's appeal to the mc & they stopped wearing on the school run... Back to the Sweaty Betty leggings again 🤣

I once bought a primark coat and pretended to my Mum that it was from Karen Millen, she spent 2weeks complimenting it, the quality, style and material… eventually I told her and she looked crestfallen as if she had failed as a mother with me shopping there

What a very bizarre thing to do.

This was also my experience and bluntly after a while I gave up and confirmed their prejudices. It is exhausting being around people so conscious of class markers. Inverted snobbery is boring but it also explains a lack of mobility in the UK.

I knew I was middle class when I could finally buy that really thick expensive kitchen roll in a 4 pack.

But what is the motivation for sneering at all? What does it matter what other people choose to spend their money on?

You see it in handbag threads on here all the time. Okay, so you wouldn’t spend x amount of money on a handbag? That’s fine, no one is asking you to. Other people happily will, and it’s hardly a waste of money to buy something you like, want, and will enjoy. Each to their own and all that.

I'm not sure that it's just an Anglo-Saxon thing in Britain. I don't know (but someone will tell me) whether Italians or Indians or French people living in the UK become classless, or that English people cannot place them. However in their families' home countries, there are definitely class gradations: India still has a very rigid caste system and inter-marriage is severely frowned on according to the BBC World Service programme I heard in the middle of last night.

The French invented the bourgeoisie and petit bourgeois is still a sneer, and don't delude yourself that BCBG is anything but a Gallic version of UMC; a friend of mine once gloated that her daughter was married to the eldest son of a (French) duke.

Yes I wonder why it makes so much difference as to how people spend their money. I recently made some moves to improve my circumstances and get the distinct impression from some they would rather I had not. And they endlessly discuss class. I find it boring. Is there some special ladder or prize for gathering class markers so you pass? I don't think it works like that in practice.

Of course people spend their money in different ways, but I don't think it's class related. I have (obviously) the same upbringing as my siblings, but the way we spend our money is very different.

More that people see someone who has the clothes, accessories, car, holidays, leisure activities that they associate with a certain class, so in their mind that person is that class.

People need to stop making such assumptions. It's not considered acceptable to talk about race like this, so why is class or perceived class apparently fair game?

@MadraUisce

How do you mean?

To shop in primark or pretend I had?

I was early 20s and knew my mother would have a problem with it, she’s insist to buy me a replacement and so on.

So I showcased her snobbery in such a way that she couldn’t say the cost was crap, because she’d spend 2wks saying the opposite.

Naturally it did fall apart quick, went out of fashion quick and the colour bled… but for those 2wks I was winning! 😂😂

I don't find that at all. A lot of WC people are actually obsessed with designer gear and looking "expensive". I see it all the time where I live.

@Beezknees it wasn't my spending that my WC in-laws seemed to get annoyed about. They spent far more than I ever did on all manner of crap.

Rather, they objected to me using words of more than two syllables, liking things that weren't mass market, and ordering food that they felt was 'posh'. They were really quite vocal and brash about it, assuming that I acted differently from them deliberately. They just couldn't fathom that some people were brought up differently and was natural to me to act that way. Yet they understood money very well and were obsessed with who had what.

And another really annoying thing was that they couldn't get their head around me - a woman! - doing things they associated with men. Lifting a drill to put up a shelf was met with absolute shock and confusion or anything that involved improvisation. Then the breathless questioning from SILs about 'how do you know how to dooo that??!!' and 'oh I would be terrified to do aaaanything like that'. Basically saying 'you are really strange and not like us and therefore you do not compute' when in reality they would all have been perfectly capable themselves if they didn't covet their very boxed in identities so much!

@Beezknees

WC: hair done frequently long and bright, very long unpractical nails, lots of fake tan, high heels, balenciaga trainers, Louis Vuitton bags fake or real, uggs, river island, primark, those face razor things, Nike or adidas depending on where you are in the country.

MC: hair done less frequently, shorter and less bright in colour, shellac or mani, relatively short, no tan, expensive skincare, minimal make up, celine, burberry some LV cross over, mint velvet, Oliver bonas and a whole bunch of other yummy mummy brands especially ones that can only be found online, Birkenstocks, asics/new balance/veja trainers.

@Superlambaanana

It’s because so many of their DH’s are in trades or know someone who is so the thought of doing anything stereotypically male is foreign.

And they keep to stereotypical gender roles much more closely.

You should have seen the fuss I created by suggesting FIL pay for tesco delivery during lockdown….

Did it for a week. Then it was, no absolutely not will queue up for Iceland or put others at risk getting them to go out for me. 🤷‍♀️

You're forgetting William The Conqueror.

I think it's mostly upbringing.

I also tend to think that it's when you're "not particularly worried" about money. Even if you don't earn that much, you've always got good savings, or someone out there who would bail you out.
If, for example, I needed 5k tomorrow, I know I could go to anyone in my immediate blood family, who would give it to me, no questions asked. And I feel like my two closest, oldest friends would do the same as well - as I would for them. And those people (and myself) would be annoyed/cross, but by no means destitute if I/they failed to pay it back.

Yawn! Not this AGAIN!

You could always search Mumsnet for one of the billion previous threads on the subject.

I'm very WC and there are definitely some that have a chip on their shoulder about "posh" accents and stuff but I can hand on my heart say I've never come across any WC person who would be shocked at a woman doing DIY. That's not working class values, that's just straight up 1950s rubbish!