so i've lived in br*tain long enough to adapt to most of their weird ass ways, except the phenomena of class aesthetics, which still makes no sense to me. being on the spectrum doesn't help i guess, since it's mostly unwritten and subtle rules
which wouldn't matter really except that i'm trying to do organising. and i've been literally told to my face "well you're middle class so what the fuck do you know about our problems". a few times that was implied, one time word for word. and in that particular case i literally only had time to offer a leaflet, so i know it wasn't anything i said, just purely from looking me up and down
i'm an estern european immigrant working minimum wage?? i've no idea what am i doing to make people think i'm anything but working class. one of my comrades gets it too, but she's got a london accent, so she just accepts it like fair enough
i'm mostly just venting because it seems like such a stupid problem to have, but if anyone actually has any suggestions i could use that would be great
i don't dress fancy, especially not to organising. jeans and a tshirt. the most expensive piece of clothing i own is a £150 leather jacket. guess i look gay? people tend to assume i'm gay. nobody can really place my accent, they have to ask where i'm from, so i guess i don't have a generic eastern european accent. i can't imitate the local accept well, not without it looking like i'm taking the piss anyway. what else can i do
lol yeah i would believe it
i was living in a shoebox and making so little money that the guy at the bank laughed at me. but the local supermarket was a waitrose, and even though it wasnt noticeably more expensive than tescos i had to hide it from everyone like a dirty secret because otherwise theyd act like i thought i was better than them
i think the class hierarchy was something like iceland > aldi/lidl > tesco/sainsburys > waitrose > marks and spencer, and anything above tescos made you basically landed gentry in most peoples eyes
anglos and their consequences
innit!!!!
don't even get me started on people i knew at uni who would shop at lidl and call tesco expensive, only to then go on holiday to japan and post pics from their parents mansions
Lol this is oddly relatable as an American. In the local gated community full of CEOs’ summer homes, I’d get called a townie. Amongst my coworkers, I’d get called a rich kid for shopping at Wegman’s. But the CEOs’ families would all shop at Walmart. This was while I was making minimum wage.
that'll probably be it
university here is almost exclusively for the middle class until very recently
yeah true, i went for free, but still. i don't generally bring it up though, since i have the world's most useless degree
quick primer then:
if your parents went to uni, you're middle class
if you went to uni, you're middle class
if you work a "profession" AKA anything that traditionally requires a degree, you're middle class
it's less about actual material conditions and more about shared experience tbh, though going to uni gives you a huge leg-up on everyone else