AIBU to be angry about another misleading programme on Romany Gypsies?

[IronEverything]

I just can't believe this is happening again.

Some of you may remember the show called "my big fat gypsy wedding" on channel 4 from years ago. It did absolutely awful damage to my community (Romany gypsy). It was complete and utter trash and majority of those featured weren't even gypsies.

Well they're at it again.

They are advertising a new show, something along the lines of "secret lives of gypsy wives". Yet the star of the show is a social media influencer (?) named Trewly Precious who is neither of those things. I think her father was a gypsy but she wasn't raised in the community and she isn't married.

Why are they doing this to us? There are so many amazing gypsy women who could have shown what it's really like to be a modern day gypsy. Yet they have once again chosen entertainment value over the reputation of a community who are already marginalised and hated by a large portion of the public. AIBU to be so angry about this?

I have lived in the area where there were gipsies - like the ones you see on the "big fat gipsy wedding". The programme seemed quite legit to me. I also have a friend who works for the regional council dealing with gipsies/ travellers and who also kind of reinforced the "stereotype".

But I get that this portrayal could be a bit exaggerated; however, no one would want to watch a trash programme about ordinary sensible people. Its the same as portraying people on benefits as retarded job shy inbreds and not as an ordinary people who fell on hard times.

Don't feel singled out- the media do this with everybody- any story in a paper or on the telly you personally know something about will illustrate they wil say any old garbabe that suits their purpose.
My Big Fat Gypsy wedding centred on the wedding dress maker, and she did make it clear all her clients are Irish Travellers not Romany Gypsies.
Like you though, I would be furious too.

Someone mentioned upthread ‘showmen’ - do you perhaps mean people who work on the travelling fairs?

I worked in shops many years ago and we would often get settled irish travellers and fair people coming in. They behaved quite differently and their accents, although only very slightly, were different too. I have an ear for dialects so noticed it more than most (maybe). I also recall having a chat with some of the ‘fair people’ and they were very keen to distance themselves from the Irish travelling community.

edited to say: very interesting thread.

Another vote for the Stacy Dooley programme.

OP

I think the Gypsy Wedding programme did make it clear they were mostly Irish travellers.

You might not know anything about making a TV show but you could do an AMA thread bout being Romany, that would be really interesting.

Wow I'm surprised 41% think YABU on this.

If it were any other culture or group of people I feel like that would be much less!

I suppose the thing is that gypsies are a community that are severely misunderstood already, and particularly vulnerable to a negative media portrayal making that worse.

Making a show that reinforces all those stereotypes about gypsies is just so damaging, perhaps more so than many other communities/ groups.

A traveller once told me that to call him a ‘tinker’ was the worst slur you could - worse than the P word. So I’d perhaps avoid that phrase.

It's outdated now but I'm Irish and it was definitely acceptable during my grandmother's time.

Having said that, she'd be 125 if she was alive today lol.

Just don't wartch it. It's just exagerated to up the viewing figures Like benefit scrounger programmes.

Travelling Showmen are considered a people or cultural group. They speak their own language which they share with older LGBT slang - Polari or Parleyaree.

I think Irish Travellers speak Cant or Shelta.

Polari is where the word Gaff to mean home comes from. I did a lot of reading into them when I was younger oddly. They’re not an ethnic group because obviously people would run away to join them. That’s also why gay men spoke Polari… many ran away because being gay was illegal and the British Showmen lives on the fringes of society. Polari was a way for showmen, and gay people, to talk without the police knowing what they were saying.

Tangential, sorry, but I also find Polari really interesting - I look out for words which might have found their way into Polari and also words that are derived from it such as the example you give.

I found out about it decades ago from reading the Kenneth Williams diaries when they were first published and have been fascinated ever since.

Me too; I love polari. I had no idea showmen used it too. I discovered it long after my shop work, though.

Informative post. Thanks @RoseOliviaAu

This does confuse me now. I always thought Irish Travellers and gypsies were 2 seperate group, but the Furies describe themselves as Gypsies but they are descended from Irish Travellers aren't they?

These things tend to be the result of Irish travellers arriving in the area. I hate that the name Irish is in there because some people will think they are representative of the Irish. I don’t know much about Romany Gypsies other than the trading and begging some of them do in the major cities in Europe.

I think Gaff is from Romani, not polari. Gav is a word in many Romani dialects that means village. I thought that was how it came into English and a quick google agrees, but I’d be interested to learn otherwise if you have any resources? I would have assumed showmen got it from Romani rather than the other way round - gav is a word my grandmother would use and they’re not from England so cannot imagine any showmen influence.

I’ve just done some more googling and actually “gav” is one of the words that you can trace through Romani languages right back to India.

(btw thank you for talking about this in the thread as I didn’t know about Polari and have found looking it up interesting)

It would be fab to see the lives of actual Gypsies and is their a difference between Irish travellers and Romany gypsy as I honestly don't know the difference. I erred in a supermarket for many years and the vast majority of traveler/gypsy were quite hostile, entitled, rude not all but most!

What are your thoughts on the book Gypsy Boy? Does that portrayal represent your experience? A lived account of a boy whose life in the Romani Gypsy community and it was horrific. So much abuse and violence that was accepted as normal.

Paul Baker – Fantabulosa: A Dictionary of Polari and Gay Slang (2002) lists it as a Polari word I believe. There’s a lot of crossover of Polari and other traveller/gypsy languages as well as Italian, Cockney rhyming slang, back slang and other languages. What with it being a purposefully made language so it’s possible its origins were the Romani word.

Off topic but British Sign Language has GSV, Gay Sign Variation used between gay Deaf people. I don't know if it has been influenced by Polari.

That's really interesting, I'm going to fall down a rabbit hole I think.

I don’t use it, and I haven’t heard it used in many decades. This is how it was used when I was little though, as the Irish travellers mended pans.

Just thought I'd come back and update.

The programme came out on Monday. I watched a little bit of it last night and it's pretty clear that the title is just pure click bait.

It's nothing to do with being a gypsy wife, as expected.

Now I have nothing against Trewley or her family and I think she definitely has the personality to be a TV/internet star so I congratulate her on having her own show at such a young age. That being said, if I were her I'd be sad that channel 4 didn't think I was enough on my own to get viewers without using such a title to grab attention.

I certainly won't be watching all 6 episodes as it's not my type of thing at all. But the outrage has been considerable amongst actual gypsy wives and I think that's justified to be honest. There are so many amazing women who could have been represented under that title but instead channel 4 used it as click bait.

Bury Me Standing by Isabel Fonseca is a good book that goes into the historical trauma of this and the prejudice against Roma people.