I've been thinking about this all day, actually. It's been what? Five years since that thread? And I'm still pissed at _wage. And I'm still pissed at the term bougie and across 50 miles of commute, across 21 credits of class, I think I know why. It's self-censorship. It's punching down. It's a way for poor people to continue to be poor, to think poor, to revel in being poor. More than that, it's an argument that anything unique is corrupt. Anything handmade is suspect. Buy your goddamn cheez whiz and like it and don't you dare aspire to anything different. Know what never gets called "boujie?" Fucking iPhones. Your goddamn iPhone X, which you spent a thousand dollars on, ain't boujie because there are ads for it on TV. And as we all know, it'll turn your voice into a fucking talking poop or some shit so obviously it's fucking essential. Know what gets called "boujie?" Tazo. Fuckin' $1 a bag tea is boujie for some reason because apparently the act of spending even the tiniest bit extra on something a little out of the norm is deviant. And see, if you're wealthy, and surrounded by wealthy people, you buy what you want, you drink what you want, and if you have a collection of BMWs you're just into cars. What do you call a guy who vacations in St. Croix every winter? Lucky. But ohhhhh shit if you're poor. If you ever have any cash-flow difficulties, everyone you know is going to sweat you on your choices. Everyone you DON'T know is going to squeeze you for budgeting differently than you. I had a guy do $1200 in damage to my car in a parking lot (in ten minutes) because it's a Porsche. And fuck me, right? Porsches are boujie as fuck. Never mind that my Schadenporsche cost me $25k and is 16 years old - I've stepped outside of the mainstream and must be punished. If he found out I was there exclusively to buy peppercorns I'm sure he would have slammed my door twice; I mean, who the fuck needs fresh ground pepper in their life? If you have money, you maybe spent too much on that yacht. If you don't have money, jesus H christ why do you own dijon mustard? "Boujieness" and the calling out thereof is classist self-censorship. It's sour grapes to keep people from wanting more. I mean, here you are feeling guilty about not sleeping ten to a bathroom. Here's Elizabeth feeling guilty for eating at a restaurant. Here's ref defiantly refusing to wear Axe or some shit. God help you if you actually spend your own hard-earned money on something you want - it can only be on Cheat Day and you better feel good'n'bad about it. Once upon a time the idea was that everyone got more and more successful and ended up with the stuff they wanted and lived happily ever after. But now we live in boujieville and we're all supposed to feel properly Lutheran about the splinters in our shorts. It ain't granpa that walked 20 miles in the snow uphill both ways, it's us because it makes us virtuous or some shit, I'm guessing because we need to signal our virtue because the principles of this country are that if you're virtuous you get ahead and we're not. And if we're not, it's probably because we bought Chanel No. 5 instead of Axe Body Spray. Enjoy your talking poop iPhone, though. It will allow you to castigate those guys buying tea that not only isn't Lipton, it's mutherfucking loose leaf.
I've ruminated on this and come around. I say bougie to signal that I'm not an out of touch douche, because obvi any spending over the bare minimum is inherently unjustifiable. (That sort of signalling is also behind my making fun of white people. To signal that I'm aware of and empathetic to the plight of non-whites, wokeness, etc. even though I love a lot of "shit white people like". I guess signalling is at play a lot of the time.) Bougie's a term meant to shame others. The point of this post was to ask if anyone goes, You know what--fuck that shame.
I get it. I wanted to provoke the rumination because I hit a point about a year and a half back where I went "you know what - fuck that shame" about everything and it was goddamn liberating. I think it's that switch you flip when you decide that nobody is going to give you shit about wearing birkenstocks with socks anymore. It was when I picked up my daughter in a Porsche convertible wearing vintage '90s Gargoyles sunglasses, cargo shorts and a Front 242 t-shirt and felt every goddamn eye at the school judging me. I realized I was clearly full "weekend dad" and probably a divorcee going through a midlife crisis and that I was being called to account for fucking enjoying myself rather than working 90 hours a week for The Man so I could make payments on the Prius. Because, after all, my kid's on scholarship and oughtn't I have some decorum? Fuck to the no. No decorum. Cargo shorts & convertibles. Happiness is sitting in First Class wearing a Killing Joke hoodie.
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/garrett/1939/02/haywood.htmA newspaperman tells the story that before Bill left, he met Bill smoking an expensive cigar. How, asked the news reporter, can you, a leader of the proletariat, smoke a rich man’s cigar? “Nothing, answered Bill, is too good for the proletariat.”