Chavtivity play

My usual choice of commute reading in mornings is City A.M. - partly because I have been blessed with the same initials, partly because running to the platform a City A.M. under your arm makes you look more important than if you were doing the same exercise with a Metro - but today my trusted distributor wasn't at her normal spot outside the ticket gates, so I had to amuse myself with an abandoned copy of Metro I managed to fetch from the escalator railing. And not in vain, my friends, not in vain, for there was this funny image:

Those people, they are chavs. It is the second of the two words I had surely heard of before moving to Britain, but of which meaning I didn't really know. The first was 'posh', which I thought had something to do with the way you dress, but apparently it merely refers to the way you speak. It took over ten years from me, though now I've finally understood what made Victoria different from Scary, Sporty, Ginger and Baby in those mid-90s music videos. Oh Joonas Hytönen, Katja Ståhl, Marika Makaroff and Pizza Pekkarinen, why did not you ever tell us?

Posh accent is how the middle-and-upper class children in Britain are stamped when they are small, so that their parents would still recognise them when they are old, weary and sightless. It makes them feel safer, and perhaps justly so - after all it is true that for instance the unfortunate events of Genesis 27 could have never taken place in Britain.* Which is a positive thing, of course. It's kind of interesting, anyway, that you can tell someone's status and social background almost entirely from the way they pronounce words, and as far as I know there really are no equivalents to it among other wealthy countries. Though let's go back to those chavs.

[*Spot the illogicality.]

It's slightly a vague concept, but chavs as a social group seem to comprise inconveniently regularly reproducing, explicitly white citizens whose income level is as low as their education - inside a search engine, a typical Chav keyword module would include at least ASBO, Adidas, Kappa, Burberry and Stella. Chavs stand for the post-industrial proletariat, if you want to put it that way.

Here you can play Chav Games, here you can have a taste of how the finest of Britain sometimes like to put up Chav Parties, and if you can't remember the original story behind the afore-posted picture you might want to read its Chav Version e.g. from here. Should you feel more serious or somehow critical - for some odd reason that you may well consider keeping to yourself - about the issue in question then be a party pooper try the articles here or here.

Chavs are very likely to remain as chavs and to breed chavs who will be equally likely to remain as chavs, since later today I also read that social mobility in Britain is at the same level it was thirty years ago. If you are a chav and cant fookin read, go and see some pictures instead - in Bargehouse there's an exhibition on contemporary British poverty, running until the end of the year.

I remember myself reading, from some random publication I in this hour cannot recall, that Victoria Beckham is a chav, but can't see how that could be possible if she just ten years ago was a posh and there's no social mobility on this island.

Last and least, as a nice little brainteaser I challenge my Finnish readers to come up with a fictive invitation - which must (a) be to a proper chav party, (b) be in Finnish and (c) sound natural. Here goes my try:

Hei kaikki!

Juhlin synttäreitäni ensi viikon lauantaina ja kutsuisin sen johdosta koko remmin viettämään iltaa tänne viihtyisään poikamiesboksiini. Tarjolla on pikkusuolaista ja kuka ties vähän väkijuomaakin, minkä lisäksi halukkaat voivat myös saunoa. Bailujen teemana ovat pienituloiset ja matalasti koulutetut, ja toivoisinkin että pukeutuisitte/eläytyisitte sen mukaan. Vain mielikuvitus ja uskallus olkoon rajana!

-Aapo

PS. Kartta asunnolleni löytyy oheisen linkin takaa. Jos alaovi on lukossa, kilauta niin heitän avaimet parvekkeelta.