Stop chavving a laugh
Smirking in Burberry is just middle-class snobbery
Last Saturday saw the first Derwent event of the new term, wittily billed as ‘Chav D’. The premise was simple: hoodies, Burberry, football shirts, huge hoop earrings and a lot of alcohol. Less simple was the snobbery underpinning it. You needn’t look far around campus to realise the vast majority of us are white, middle class and come from comfortable backgrounds. That’s not wrong in itself, but it easily breeds negative attitudes toward minority groups, in this case those from a poorer background.
Dressing as a chav is the classist equivalent of the Black and White Minstrels, but clearly the latter would not receive official sanction from YUSU. This is because the white working classes are the only group left whom it is socially acceptable to snub and mock. Racism, sexism and religious intolerance are rightly condemned as divisive and immoral, yet heir to the throne Prince William often dressed as a chav for ‘bling’ parties at Sandhurst (another from the Royals’ inexhaustible supply of fancy-dress gaffes) and no-one batted an eyelid. Harry, on the other hand, was universally condemned for his Nazi outfit, contrary to our ethical sensibilities.
If you take a moment out of your day to peruse the website chavscum.co.uk, you’ll find that the ideas expressed there are far from liberal. Discussion of the ‘worldwide chav epidemic’ are supported by the forum, which contains the following comment: “All chavs should be sent to an island off the coast of Norway or sum otha reject country like scotland or St. Helens where they will be trained not 2 be SUCH F**KING SCUM!!!!”
In 1729, Jonathan Swift, the great satirist, suggested that the famine in Ireland had an ingeniously simple solution: eating babies, “whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled.” Is it really so difficult to imagine the chav-bashers suggesting such an idea as a way of saving benefit cash? “Yeah, let them eat their babies, they’d only grow up dirty little chavs themselves.”
Our friends at the Daily Mail have their own litany of chav-based phrases, including the ‘council house facelift’, coined to describe the effect of having too tight a ponytail. A constant stream of drivel about feral youths and their total inability to be cured of a need to commit crime exacerbates the existing problem of ingrained class consciousness.
For once, the Conservatives have taken it upon themselves to look at solutions for delinquency, rather than laughing at the dress sense of the working classes. Cameron’s ‘Hug a Hoodie’ campaign, though liberally gloss-painted, at least acknowledged some common responsibility. Similarly, Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice seeks the involvement of politicians of all colours in fighting for a fairer society. If right-wing politicians recognise a problem in attitudes, students classed on Facebook as ‘Liberal’ ought to have thought twice about Chav D.
It was probably a great night for many of those in attendance. But sometimes the unquestioning nature of great swathes of the student population is worrysome. Chav D sends out a clear message to anyone at York who grew up in a place where those clothes were simply what everyone wore: You are not one of Us. The bland acceptance of ideas of such questionable taste is something we should all be wary of, and Chav D is a prime example.
