To think that the middle classes are liars and actors?

[MargaretBrewer]

I know this woman who I always assumed was middle class. Everything she says and values is a walking middle class stereotype. The couple live in a nice house, everything is nice. Forgive my surprise, then, when I found out that she was born on a council estate to parents who were often jobless. After some snooping around, I learned that her husband comes from more money, but his father actually began life as a builder - yes, a construction worker! - who rose to manage the (small) company before buying up a number of local estate agents. I never knew what the couple in question did until I learned that they are landlords to some shops in town. Their son went to a private school and struts around like he is prince of the county! When none of his grandparents were posh! And how is it that the husband and wife own so many properties in town?!

It reminds me of a doctor and his wife I know. I always thought they must come from solidly middle class, if not upper class backgrounds, given how they talk and behave. It turned out that both of them come from families that worked in steel!

And and and there is a writer who lives nearish to me. Single woman, carries herself with this gait and artistic flair that I assumed she must come from an UMC background. Turns out her father was a welder.

Why are these people so MC presenting?? I would never have guessed they had come from unglamorous backgrounds, and there are a few other 'friends' I suspect might be similar. Are the middle classes inherently actors? If so their snobbery is alarming to me!

Had to change my name for this.

Not a fan of social mobility then, OP? 😂

Nasty snobbishness like this is very lower class of course, but also exceptionally outdated. Who the fuck cares whether anyone came from poorer or richer parents? People are free to be themselves and the daughter of a dustman and a dinner lady is perfectly capable of becoming a high court justice and developing a fondness for opera. Nobody owes you conformity to your preconceived stereotypes so they aren't "pretending" anything when they fail to exhibit the traits your prejudiced mind expects of them.

Wtf? You absolute snob.

People can live wherever life they choose to live, whatever background they came from. To believe anything else is deeply classist and offensive.

How do you act middle class and working class? Class is outdated and you said it all when you started with "I assumed".

Great reminder to print myself a t-shirt with my entire history on it just so people don't make incorrect assumptions about how much money my parents had ey? 🙄

Clearly the proles should stay in their lane, munching on jellied eels, breaking into merry choruses of ‘Knees Up, Mother Brown’, and occasionally breaking off their scrap dealing to chirp ‘Awright, Guvnor!’

I mean, comments like that just show how low class you yourself are, OP. Is that what you meant to do? Do your fur coat up love, you're not wearing any knickers.

Ah, you're just like Hamlet, then:

"Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.'
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected 'haviour of the visage
Together with all forms, modes, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe."

The whole play is about the difference between being and seeming.

You think someone's playing a part while not showing the welder within!

I am not an actor, I am a reflection of the world I grew up in

This is the best encapsulation of the answer to the question. Sometimes the world we grow up in teaches us we need to code switch to get desired outcomes. (Being posh may help at times, being street at other times, etc)

We subconsciously each make, with our voices, words and bodies, acts of identity, to fit in with an idealised social group we construct in our minds. This happens in every interaction and is the source of all social and linguistic variation and change.

Fashion, slang, cultures...they are all driven by the powerful engines of each human seeing a group of other humans and thinking "I'd best fit in with them".

It is the evolutionary soup of culture! The middle class are pretending no less and no more than anyone else.

I think your issue is that these people are either snobbish, or you perceive them to be snobbish when you think they have no right to be.

However, your post expresses a certain bitterness which makes me wonder if you're projecting onto some of them, that you assume they look down on other people when they don't, and you're unnecessarily getting defensive. I've come across that before in working class people in the North-West of England.

Why are these people so MC presenting

As a Welsh working class person, one of the things I really noticed about English people when I first went to university was how ingrained class was in absolutely everything. Everything from food to choice in films.

I love goats cheese, olives, grew up classical music literate, like museums, art history (which I studied at a-level), and dress a bit bohemian like. My accent has softened naturally over time, due to a lot of exposure to English people and because I tend to pick up accents.

I suppose you'd think I was also an actor, trying it on, when I'm just naturally being myself.

I'm not sure what the valid opinion is, tbh. There seems to be a slight sense of betrayal that class mobility exists.

A large part of her concern/surprise doesn't seem to be centred on people who are consciously adopting signifiers of a different class to the one they were raised in, but rather people who are of a different social class to their parents.

So if the opinion is that such class movement is somehow subversive or that these people are hiding a shameful background, rather than simply living their lives... well yes, that opinion is a wee bit Austenesque.

You know, I love Hamlet, but it would definitely improved by him having an Inner Welder he talks to in his solilquies.

‘To solder, or not to solder — that is the question…’

Haha it does come across like that, but it might be that the OP is unnecessarily and angrily projecting onto those people what she thinks that they think of her.

Particularly if the Inner Welder told him to shut up, get over himself and stop listening to ghosts.

What a weird post. Did you actually read this back to yourself before posting??
you come across bizarre and unhinged, to say the least!

Can I hazard a guess that you read the Daily Mail? Can people not just change and evolve and grow as people that might be quite different to their backgrounds? I grew up very impoverished in a household where we didn’t do anything cultural. Now I enjoy opera and museums because I do, I’m not pretending!

A lot to unpick there but I’m pretty sure it says more about you than the people you criticise.

It sounds like the only problem here are the judgements you are imposing on people.

Have you heard of social mobility @MargaretBrewer ?

It's when one generation does better than the previous one (in their family.)

I am 'solidly middle class' by my profession.

My parents were working class, working in mines, living in council houses.

Does that make me less middle class?

Though who wants an indecisive welder who’s freaking out because his mother married his murderous uncle and has a bad habit of stabbing people through arrases without checking whether they’re assassins or just boring family friends?

The oiks should know their place @MargaretBrewer !

They should be happy to live down to the narrow stereo type you have for how a working class person should be.

I am not from this country so the class thing has always been funny to me. One thing I’ve noticed time and again though, is the bile those who are ‘properly’ middle class reserve for anyone of a WC class background improving their lot in life.

How dare the povs have nice things - it’s all crass ‘noveau riches’ tat.

How dare they have neutral or posh accents when they should be dropping their Hs and cursing like fishwives.

How dare they pay for private education for their kids when the real MC are having to wait for their parents to peg it before they can get their hands on that kind of dosh.

Right now many of the established middle classes are actually downwardly mobile and as they descend they are even angrier than usual at the oiks having the same or better standard of living.

If this is a joke, be funnier

All the jobs you've mentioned are decent. Builders, welders, even steelworkers can earn a competent living.

How completely and utterly bizarre, sometimes the insight I get into the workings of people's minds on MN is just disturbing.

OP you sound like you have an enormous chip on your shoulder, I have no idea why, I don't know if you are trying to shove the middle class wannabes back to working class or if you are annoyed that they aren't shouting their working class roots from the roof tops. I really don't care what class people are, just that they are decent people. This fixation is so strange.

Middle Class presenting? I was educated in the 80’s and went to Uni then. Went to the best grammar school in the city. From a working class background, both of my parents had jobs in the 80’s so we thought we were lucky.
I had friends at school who had ponies and tennis lessons. Also friends who had far less than me.
I can tell you decades later it was the kids who had very little who have done the best out of all of us. And by that I mean multi-millionaires in all sorts of jobs and industries. They lost their accents along the way because sadly that was very much required.
The middle class friends have stayed that and are all doing well, but the real true go-getters came from very, very humble beginnings. The teachers at our school did look down on them and the ones who chose not to go to Uni, thereby disgracing the school, have absolutely flown.
One lad was in a care home until 16, and actually went to live with a teacher’s family for Sixth Form. Back when background checks did not exist. He got a 1st at Oxford and whenever I see him now (usually online) he is beautifully spoken and his career has been stellar.
I have probably moved from working class to I am not sure what! Still have my accent as I didn’t go too far for Uni. I haven’t changed that much, to be honest I feel like a bit of a plodder compared to the high-fliers, but I know that big money careers also come with huge pressures.
Like it or loathe it, the school and its reputation opened doors and for ‘ordinary’ kids like me it changed my world. I can remember going for my first ‘big’ interview and they didn’t even request a reference. The gentleman interviewing me was friends with the Deputy Head, and the job was mine.
The grammar system then was tough, and very snobby, but it absolutely transformed opportunities for many pupils.

It's because being middle class is precarious. There isn't the generations of land and wealth to back it up that the upper classes have. It's very difficult to rise in this country - although on Mumsnet every poster started life on a "sink estate" and is now a millionaire, this is not typical for the UK at all - and very easy to fall.

Now that fewer households are able to own properties, this precariousness and the fear it engenders, will only increase.

It's the insecurity that makes people talk about it - they're self-checking and self-soothing that they're still where they want to be.