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Original poster

What makes someone middle class?

283 replies

lilibet · 31/08/2006 17:03

Just had a conversation with a mate and a mutual freind has described themselves as middle class.

He works in a shop for a living, his parents work for a living, to me he is therefore working class.

I appreciate that a brain surgeon is obvioulsy a bit higher up the social strata than me ( I work in finance in the NHS), but to me if you have to work for a living you are working class.

Thoughts and opinions?

OP posts:
southeastastra · 01/09/2006 22:57

we live ina classless society anyway (i'm sure someone told me that)

expatinscotland · 01/09/2006 22:57

He's just gross, Dumbie.

Glassofwine · 01/09/2006 22:58

classless, smarshless

DumbledoresGirl · 01/09/2006 23:00

PMSL. How can this be a classless society? This whole thread proves the lie to that one!

southeastastra · 01/09/2006 23:02

it really doesn't bother me, like the royal family, we have always had it, i dunno

Glassofwine · 01/09/2006 23:03

My DH and I describe both our families as the kind of working class families that think they're not.

UselessMum · 01/09/2006 23:13

fatfox, it's mamas&papas. I think it prides itself in being italian and all but honestly no one in italy has ever heard of it.

oh and definitely this is not a classless society. I've never cared one bit before nor felt as I was just an italian 'immigrant'. but since officially becoming a british subject myself (and dd) by marrying dh I started reading the signs. they're evrywhere, like this thread proves. and more so when children are involved.

UnquietDad · 01/09/2006 23:27

So who buys all the jars of olives, focaccia bread, polenta and organic veg they sell in Morrisons, then?

I've always seen quite a mix of classes in there, personally. Could be because ours is in a "socially crunchy" area... and Waitrose is a bit far... On the other hand, down in Gosport where DW's brother lives, Waitrose is the normal high-street supermarket where everyone goes. ??

expatinscotland · 01/09/2006 23:28

Supermarkets are bourgeois. Even my half-French mother admits this.

DumbledoresGirl · 01/09/2006 23:29

Do you mean bourgois? Common surely?

UnquietDad · 01/09/2006 23:30

Most French towns have decent fruit/veg markets and old-fashioned boulangerie, etc. Supermarket culture isn't quite so insidious over there.

expatinscotland · 01/09/2006 23:31

Oh god! How to translate that one . . . it's like trying to translate 'eminence grise' or 'une personnage'.

It's just . . . bah it is just bourgeois. Like engagement rings with huge diamonds.

southeastastra · 01/09/2006 23:31

we can make this country a non classless society - let' s have a big hug ahhh

DumbledoresGirl · 01/09/2006 23:32

So bourgious is something to look down on according to your mother? Is she aristocracy?

SEA, have you cleared up you living room yet?

PretendFriend · 01/09/2006 23:34

epis's spelling is correct, DG!

southeastastra · 01/09/2006 23:35

i [heart] my living room

PretendFriend · 01/09/2006 23:37

Bourgeoisie

The social class above the workers and peasants, and below the nobility; the middle class. ?Bourgeoisie? (and bourgeois) has also acquired a contemptuous sense, implying commonplace, philistine respectability. By socialists it is applied to the whole propertied class, as distinct from the proletariat.

expatinscotland · 01/09/2006 23:38

Aristocracy! OH GOD NO!!! She is half-French. A couple of centuries ago, many aristocrats there were divested of their heads.

I had a nightmare the other day that my elder daughter married a man who was the son of a duke.

I was crushed! It took me a while to get over it.

UnquietDad · 01/09/2006 23:39

I think "bourgeois" has become quite a pejorative word in French. Flaubert wrote: "the whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois."

expatinscotland · 01/09/2006 23:39

Bourgeois is showy and ostentatious. That is tasteless and attention-seeking. Yuk.

DumbledoresGirl · 01/09/2006 23:40

Sorry, i do know al that about the borjewarsie and also how to spell the word, but I am currently on overtime re my sleep.

JessaJam · 01/09/2006 23:43

Is bourgeois the equivalent of bling? Or a footballers wife?

Or is it actually showy and ostentatious and posh?

Compare a WAG with an IT girl...which is bourgeois?

shimmy21 · 01/09/2006 23:43

I did a french exchange many years ago. The family asked me if I was bourgeois and I said no, thinking of all those negative connotations the word has in English. They looked shocked and said 'Oh, but we asked for a bourgeois girl!' I only later found out that it has a whole different ring to a french ear.

expatinscotland · 01/09/2006 23:46

I'm not really sure how to translate it. I'm really not.

It's just what it is.

It's not footballer wife per se, b/c so many of those WAGS are so woefully uneducated.

It's just a sort of way of being.

JessaJam · 01/09/2006 23:47

obnoxious?