A vestige of blatant cultural stereotyping in commerce. The same machines often sell homies also.
So I'm being naive to call it a vestige. Cultural stereotyping lives on in gumball machines. And elsewhere.
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Nicholas Noyes
niznoz
Member since 2004
- Taken on March 16, 2005
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knautia 100 months ago | reply
It's funny how some stereotypes are allowed, while others (at least here) are complete and absolute no-go areas - although it's always interesting to see how somee offensive stuff is just repackaged, and sold as pertaining to a different group - eg here you can talk about 'chavs' as much as you like these days (Chavs probably being the equivalent of 'Sharons' and 'Kevins' of the '80s) but down here in the southwest the word chav used to mean 'gypsy' - and it's replaced 'council', which was a briefly fashionable term of abuse, but too close to the knuckle to pass into the popular media etc...
niznoz 100 months ago | reply
Yeah the chav thing seems somewhat dubious. Interesting about it originally refering to Gypsies (Roms, Travelling People?). I've heard "Pikey" (i.e. One associated with the turnpike, or road, a gypsy) used in a similar way to Chav. Reminds me also of the "Essex" jokes (interestingly chav seems like it might be "essex" vocabulary). "Council" is like the Scottish "Schemie" (i.e. one who lives in a Housing Scheme, i.e. Public Housing). As I understand it both a term of derision and badge of pride.
I wondered if Chav has the same etymological roots as the term "Shaver" as in "put down those apples you young shaver, and don't let me catch you scrumping round 'ere no more."
knautia 100 months ago | reply
In places like London, chav and pikey are interchangable. I'm told that in Swindon, chav has refered to gypsies/romanies for a while now. I'm also interested in how chav is used - in some cases it seems to mean 'white trash', regardless of wealth or status of the person (eg Britney Spears, while in others it very definitely means 'Essex', and others is just about the poor underclass - bascially a term you can apply to anything you want to.
Interesting idea re 'shaver'... I started to google to see if I could find any truth in it... have you tried putting "chav" in? The outpouring of bile is kind of scary. The new class war?
(I just looked it up on wikipedia, and was amused/pleased to see the references to classism...)