Interesting point. (Though you can actually say someone “is chav”, I think your point probably stands.) Speculating wildly, I wonder if the self-identifying chav is some kind of reaction against the New Labour notion that we should see poor folks as victims, awaiting a nice kind of middle class government to come along and give them ‘opportunities’. Part of the ‘chav’ identity is to be working class but npt poor, hence all the bling and conspicuous consumption. It’s like you’re defiantly rejecting the Blairite hand of ‘inclusion’, but a large part of that is insisting you’re doing okay regardless.

The last subculture we had which was so class-conscious was skinhead, which had none of the conspicuous consumption aspect to it. It’s uniform was reappropriated workwear, braces and Doc Martins. The ‘blinging’ thing is closer to Mods, who went the opposite way to skins, and were more like social climbers.

And yet in another way, it seems as though that ingredient’s still active in the mix.

I’m struggling with that “subcultural vs. socioeconomic” thing…it seems to me there’s something wrong in that, like the idea that one could — or would — choose it. From what I’m picking up out of this thread and out of these links, to be a chav is to be a vulgar person, right? Except there are plenty of vulgar people who aren’t “chavs”, one presumes…and (or perhaps because) vulgarity’s not an absolute sort of a concept anyway, it’s an expression that is utilized by different people, for different purposes.

White trash…damn it, this is really finicky, Gavin…”white trash”, the socioeconomic thing about it is true, but kind of throws too much cover, because a person isn’t a white trash, you know? It’s a lot different to call a person white trash, than it is to say they are a piece of white trash, because the latter says they’re innately worthless — if you want to fight someone you would call them a piece of white trash. But just to call someone white trash, it’s not much, you won’t fight. Whereas it sounds like you don’t call a person “chav”, you don’t say they are of chav, you say they are a chav.

Do I have that right?

So I think the “subculture” thing is giving me a shiver, like that’s the worst of both worlds…you’re stupid and vulgar and you chose it…so the clothes aren’t vulgar in themselves after a while, just becoming “what a chav would wear”…

I apologize for the stream of consciousness here, by the way. Not imputing any base motives to Gavin, I hope it goes without saying! — just struggling, as I said, with how to reconcile the connotations that apparently swirl around this term. “White trash” inevitably has a connotation of “country folk” — uncivilized, provincial. Calling someone white trash isn’t nearly the same as calling them a redneck, but in either case the underlying thought is usually that they’re not fit for city living. The person who works at the coffee shop and rents the basement apartment with the hot plate isn’t white trash, for example.

I know this sounds really scattered, whoops.