U.S. Makes Up with Classes

I stepped out of the convention building and drove along Maryland Street in my car.

After one kilometer, I came to a junction. Everything is a mess, and buildings are being constructed. I turned left onto Bladensburg Drive.

Neglected buildings, lonely pavements. I need to pass to the other side of the road. After some time, I turned onto a street. The interiors are more crowded. There are black silhouettes in front of the houses.

I am looking for an address, and when I look around, they look at me. A policeman parked his car, waiting in the middle of the street. I moved a little more. I found it. I need to park, but I don’t want a spot in a lonely place. I approached the main road. A billboard warned, “If you came here to buy drugs, you will be taken into custody, and your car will be impounded.”

I got out of the car and walked toward the main road. I found Capital City Diner.

A few months ago, a guy who is in his twenties and worked for the Department of Justice opened this place. He is saving money. He buys a diner from Ebay for $20,000 and plants the wagon after he finds land in Trinidad, which is known by its criminal incidents of Washington. I sat down in front of the kitchen and ordered waffles and coffee. Talking about the class distinction in America is the simplest way to disturb people.

Having gusto, traveling a lot, knowing celebrities … and someone comes up and reminds you that you belong to the middle class. Something remained from the years of wars with Communism. Something remained from the lie “There are no class in our society.” …

Just go and see an ordinary American neighborhood. You will see several Americans who advocate the equality between the doctor and the cleaner of the neighborhood. They may not be close friends, but on paper they are equal.

I told the Trinidad story for that. Now, they are beating that reflex. They are naming the story from the debate of “Joe the Plumber” to the growing tea party. In every political discussion, they are talking about the class distinctions. Someone compared this to the sex issue: “When talking about sex, we were getting embarrassed before. But now, we are pretty comfortable when mentioning it. This class thing is like talking about sex.”

In Trinidad, I did not only eat at a diner. I witnessed an officer’s first steps as he tries to survive in a low class neighborhood. That is how newspapers wrote it.

Wearing a Harvard T-shirt Without Seeing Harvard

In the end, social relations got the importance they deserved.

In 1980, when Reagan was marching towards presidency, a book called The Official Preppy Handbook was published in the U.S. There is no counterpart for preppy in Turkish, a kind of expensive college student classification. Like being from Kolej and belonging to the faculty of the Ankara University Political Science Department and in addition to that, carrying the prestige of Bosphorus University.*

The story in the book is not something different than simple lifestyle recommendations that you can find in an ordinary newspaper. Wearing three Izod items at the same time, wrapping a pink sweater over a blue t-shirt, etc. During this period that this lifestyle conquered the newspapers, nobody except sociologists considered the book in the frame of “classes.” That was only a book for fun.

The book became so popular because of the people who were wearing Harvard t-shirts even if they had never seen an original preppy or Harvard in their lives. With more than 40 editions, it remained on bestseller lists for years.

It has been 30 years since the handbook. That time’s preppies are grandparents now. But the concepts are not same anymore. The old edition could be found for $1,000 on Ebay. The author of old edition, Lisa Birnbach, wrote a new preppy book last month. After 30 years, an updated one.

You can’t compare the contents of these two books because the new one is not a book for preppies’ college years. It is written for their middle age times.

In her first book, even if she says that the book was written for WASPs (white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant Americans), she does not handle any part of it within perspectives of class. However, in her latest book “True Prep,” she sets everything onto class equations.

Same as in the story of the Trinidad officer.

Some preppy quotes from the book:*

1. Mom and dad are separated. Dad sometimes dates your friends.

2. There is a dog in the house. An expensive kind. Its name is Henry.

3. Thirty years ago, adoption was taboo. Now it is a popular preppy act.

4. Your money is handled by someone else. Most of their budget is limited.

5. During freshman year, hair is loose. Sophomore year, a ponytail. Senior year, a bun. For the boys, natural.

6. Be careful; anything you wear should not seem new.

7. You must know your logos. Lacoste’s crocodile is 2.8 cm. Fred Perry’s width is 0.875 inches. Ralph Lauren’s height is 1.25 inches. Nobody must sell the imitations of them to you.

8. You can buy a piano to put your family pictures on it.

9. You can never play sports. Maybe sometimes, when drunk, you can watch them on television.

10. If you do not have any success story to tell, you don’t go to graduation ceremonies.

Social Climbers, Confess!

Lisa Birnbach releases a reading list for the original preppies. Interestingly, one of the recommendations is Paul Fussell’s book Class.” After the handbook publication in 1980, Fussel writes Class and brutally criticizes Birnbach, claiming that she ultimately admitted to class distinctions.

Consider the billboard in Trinidad under which I parked my car. A police warning about drugs. According to Birnbach, this warning shows that the neighborhood is controlled very well by the police. For Fussell, however, it is a kind of confession that everyone who goes there can find drugs.

In his book, Fussell describes class in a way that disturbs the reader. For instance he says, that a carpenter with a fat wife belongs to the upper class. But if his wife puts on more weight, they move toward the middle class of the labor force. When she gets annoyingly fat, she loses friends in her own class.

By using this provocative language in his book, Fussel says to preppies, “Dear, like everyone else, you are also social climbers who are trying to jump upward. The only thing that you can’t confess to yourself is that you are indeed from the middle class.”*

I wonder, who told Birnbach to put her big enemy in her list after 30 years? Her editors at Knopf?

People Who Come to New York

In his book, Fussell describes class notion so: for people at the bottom, it is all about how much money you have. For the ones in the middle, money is important, but education and your job are at least as important as the money. For the people at the top, your taste, style and behavior determine to which class you belong. We have a holiday soon. Some of us will visit New York. People from Nisantasi will stay three days, whereas from Atasehir will stay 10 days. And according to Fussell’s tourism description, most of them will spend the money they saved and for a while, they will pretend like they belong to another class.

I explained preppies. And I want to ask two questions from the class test of Fussell’s book. Take the test, think about what Fussell’s thoughts and decide what kind of New York vacation you would like to experience.

Who is From Which Class

Q1: A nice young man on the plane. Wears a dark-colored suit with a waistcoat and white shirt. While speaking, uses the words interface, background, dialogue and lifestyle.

Q2: A nice young man on the plane. Wears a dark-colored suit with a waistcoat and white shirt. While speaking, uses the words patina, quattrocento and V & A.

A1: From the middle class, in fact high labor class. A white collar from a very big company on the way to a conference. He thinks he is being perceived as a high middle class person, but he is mistaken. He is planning to be promoted in the company, but he is mistaken again.

A2: Either from middle high class or high class. Bequeathed a legacy but likes to work from time to time as a museum curator or in a light gallery job so he can deal with classic pieces.

*Editor’s Note: These quotes, though accurately translated, could not be verified.