often seen in the street without a hat

Oh, I thought I'd changed the sizes! Boo. And I vaguely remember someone telling me (who may have been you) that we British are two-faced according to the Dutch. Is there a historical reason (did we do the dirty on them), or have they just met many deceitful Brits?

For the what couldn't you do at school, I meant more the unwritten social rules. Did you obey the rule about not eating in the street? And what was the stupidest strict uniform thing? Did they have rules about your underwear? (Do not read last sentence in pervy voice.)

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yiskah.livejournal.com

Yeah, that was almost certainly me, in that I had the following conversation with a Dutch colleague:

DC: The Dutch think the British are really two-faced and deceitful. What do you think about us?
Me: ...We think the Dutch are really blunt. As you have just demonstrated!

I think it's basically because the Dutch ADORE direct communication, to the point - as the above conversation shows - of what British people would think of as rudeness; they find our communication style terribly circumlocutory and hard to read which, I guess, they (sometimes?) interpret as deliberately obfuscatory. But that's just how I communicate IT'S NOT MY FAULT.

Unwritten rules! We were supposed to wear our skirts / dresses just-covering-pants short (a rule I flouted by wearing mine below my knees). We also had the choice of grey tights or grey long socks in the winter, and for years it was social death to wear long socks until a group of the cooler girls co-opted it as their Thing and it became acceptable again. In general though my secondary school was terribly nice - there was very little Mean Girls unpleasantness.

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I wore virgin socks (the white lacy knee socks) at primary school (4 - 9), and looking at class photos, so did plenty of people. As a teenager I had very little fashion sense, but I wasn’t stupid enough to imagine that anyone in the world wore virgin socks beyond aged 10.

I have some white running/trainer socks, which I avoid wearing whenever possible.

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I think I was helped by having spent the year before I joined my UK secondary school (in year 8), living in a hot country where knee socks would have been ridiculous, otherwise I can imagine having made the mistake. Once, maybe, before I found out what a bad idea it was. I was a dreadfully unfashionable child and teenager.

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Fortunately my high school allowed trousers (I was SO RELIEVED), which saved me from itchy tights, cold legs, and the minefield of skirts and socks. It's probably a good thing there wasn't a summer uniform, though, or I'd have worn it.

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Mum was horrified when she discovered I'd been putting my white socks in with my dark wash. I was horrified when she offered to bleach them for me. I was delighted when the final pair wore out...

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Parents can be so cruel.

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snowballjane.livejournal.com

I was once hauled out of assembly and yelled at for having a pink hair elastic in, which was annoying because I'd set off to school wearing regulation navy blue, but it had snapped and I'd borrowed someone's spare.

My old school now bans fake tan. Yeah, that rule couldn't possibly cause problems in any way...

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Hee! I was thinking more about things that you couldn't do for peer pressure than for rules. But no pink hair elastic seems extreme.

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snowballjane.livejournal.com

Honestly, I think our school was so absurd about uniform rules that we were all quite laid back with each other about it! At one point they tried to mandate black outdoor coats midway through winter, with no regard for either cost or road safety.

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sollersuk.livejournal.com

I couldn't answer the last two questions because white kneesocks were part of our uniform, and in those distant days we were not allowed to wear backpacks; it was satchels, with a single long strap that went over one shoulder (as I discovered decades later, very bad indeed for the spine)

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The satchels always look so nice in pictures, but I can see that they might not in fact be best practice in ergonomics.

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steepholm.livejournal.com

I thought the not showering thing was an American stereotype about the French! By the rules of one-stereotype-per-nation, it can't apply to us.

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oursin.livejournal.com

I have come across it as an Australian allegation about Poms.

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yiskah.livejournal.com

Yes, likewise - I'm half Australian and I know a lot of Australians who are horrified (or feign being horrified) when they find out that showers are not universally fitted in UK homes (much more so now than when I was a kid in the 1980s, but still not universal). Many do not seem to think that baths are an adequate substitute. ALSO I have known Australians to be disgusted at British people not showering daily, without taking into account that something that might be necessary when it's 40+ degrees is less pressing at 10 degrees.

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I share your distaste for white socks. We could either wear tights or white knee socks, but only one or two people ever wore the latter. We wore our backpacks on one shoulder (Mum was convinced that I'd injure my back).

What wasn't done... Denim jackets were never worn buttoned up with jeans in the same colour (unless you wanted to look like a French Exchange student), and the optional summer uniform was never worn (blue and white cotton dress).

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Cullottes! For some bizarre reason we could wear navy blue skirts or trousers but NOT cullottes. My skirt was slightly caught between my knees when I was talking to a teacher once, and my head of year swooped on my declaiming in horror as she twitched at my hem. She saw it was in fact a skirt, smiled, and walked off again. Very very odd.

ETA: We also had the occasional unannounced sock inspection. We had to walk past the Headmaster and raise our trouser leg slightly to reveal our socks and check we were wearing the regulation navy/faun/white. It was very Adrian Mole.

Edited Date: 2013-02-05 01:32 pm (UTC)

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A sock inspection! I am almost charmed.

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So did you ever wear rebellious red socks (under your regulation ones or otherwise).

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I did actually, bright red musical Christmas socks, worn underneath my regulation navy ones. I tapped my ankles together in maths and nobody could work out where the music was coming from...

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jinty

I knew that South Americans think of British people as non-washing smelly folks, but didn't know that USians also thought that.

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Australians too, it seems! We are a renowned smelly people.

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sam-t.livejournal.com

I wonder if it's a stereotype caused by travelworn tourists being unprepared for Really Hot Weather.

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medland.livejournal.com

Wearing your backpack on both shoulders was a cue for INSTANT SOCIAL DEATH. Although most of the 'cool' kids had record bags. The other cause of SOCIAL DEATH was wearing a white bra under your white shirt - the more garish the better.

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cellardor.livejournal.com

The backpack thing was the same at ours, until sixth form when kids from other schools came and refused to conform. Bless them.

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Gosh! It's like a stirring teen film come to life. Rebellion against conformity!

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cellardor.livejournal.com

It is, except I still couldn't get over it and stuck to the one shoulder, even though that killed all the way through school. Heavy bag yo.

I put my backpack on two shoulders now though. Finally over it.

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serriadh.livejournal.com

Bizarrely we had the backpack on both shoulders = SOCIAL DEATH thing until there was a counter-revolution over the summer one year and both shoulders = INSTANT COOL, which lasted until about Christmas and then it went back to one shoulder only.

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starfishchick

apparently we also never shower. (I think this is meant to be that we don't wash, rather than we prefer baths or sponging ourselves.)

I do remember going to England and not really understanding that people took BATHS every day and that showers almost did not exist in family homes. At home (in Canada) a bath was a special occasion sort of thing and a shower was for every day.

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So far only British people are aware of the no showering thing!

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peeeeeeet.livejournal.com

Oops, got the last one wrong. The following things were not allowed due to peer pressure: having ginger hair, having acne, finding boys attractive, being good at any subject expect sport, being not good at any subject that was sport. I HAD A WHAAAAALE OF A TIME. Also the bleeding on my RE book thing was technically POSSIBLE, but it carried heavy penalties

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Bleeding on RE books should be LAUDED not punished.

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katlinel.livejournal.com

Peer pressure things - there were loads at my secondary school. Wear a hand knitted cardy with a zip, wear a flared or A line skirt (it was the early 80s), wear any clothes that looked homemade, wear the school tie with the fat end showing - it had to be the narrow end with the fat end tucked into your shirt, wear a vest over your bra if you didn't like the scratchy seams of the school shirt against your skin, not fancy boys who bullied you every day, know what sexual euphemisms meant, not know what sexual euphemisms meant, answer questions in history class, be abominable at sport. Guess who did all of these?

I had no idea about the shower thing. I wore white hi trainers for a while when they were a thing, and I disliked my socks not matching my trainers so I wore white sport socks with those. I can't remember the last time I wore white socks. Thinking on it, ISTR that we were supposed to wear navy blue or grey socks at secondary school, not white ones.

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It is funny that the only non-Brits who have taken the poll didn't know about it either. Perhaps we are not irredeemable!

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demiurgician.livejournal.com

Definitely never heard that Americans think the Brits don't wash. Everyone knows that's the French - Brits just have terrible teeth. Duh.

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I was quite surprised to find it was thought of me! Sometimes people assigned general European characteristics to us too (armpit hair, mostly), and I tried to explain that while Britain was in Europe, we didn't really think of ourselves as European in the same way.

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joyeuce

I was caught by the "not done" uniform stuff, coming into boarding school at 13 when nearly everyone else had been at the prep department. Since they were on the uniform list and the shop assistants didn't know/say, how could I know it was social death to wear the cream blouses rather than the blue, the A-line skirt rather than the kilt, and the official overcoat (pity, it was nice) and tracksuit top (hideous bright yellow) at all?

My brother and I were both caught by what wasn't on the list too. I didn't realise we could wear casual clothes at weekends. Three years later, he didn't know he was supposed to bring his own bed linen - because I was in what turned out to be the only boarding house where we were forbidden to!

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Uniform vs actually what people wear is so weird. I think we could wear grey shirts and purple v necks if we wanted, but no-one did.

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notmarcie.livejournal.com

I didn't read the edit so gave rules.

Things that were against the peer rules
Eating any lunch
Having breasts that were too big
Having breasts that were too small
Fancying boys who were at different schools
Enjoying PE

By 5th yr it was much easier to be an out and out non-conformist than to balance the ridiculous line that had been drawn up.

If you were in band/orchestra then knee socks were part of the uniform for performing. They had to be those ones with a pattern made of holes. It's hard to get those to fit 16 year olds.

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It seems very odd to have knee socks as a part of the uniform for performing. We had to wear black skirts/trousers/jumpers instead of grey for our performing, though.

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antisoppist.livejournal.com

No-one wore virgin socks after the first year of secondary school. We wore thigh-length white woolly socks held up with bits of elastic. I have no idea why these were fashionable rather than tights but in my fourth year class photo we are all wearing them. This in a comprehensive whose uniform rule was just "black skirt, white blouse".

Wearing a school uniform shirt rather than a frilly collared blouse with lots of ruffles (this was the mid-80s) was also frowned on. In the same fourth year photo I am the only one wearing a school uniform shirt with a pointy collar. My mother said I had to wear them out. When I was 15 I got a clothes allowance and spent the first month's on frilly blouses.

My mum knitted me a bobble hat in the school colours and I had to "lose" it instantly. Backpacks at all were extremely uncool and putting both arms through the straps instant social ostracism.

When I taught English to Finns they were terribly worried about this "small talk" thing we were rumoured to do in which we say things we don't mean just for the sake of saying something rather than keeping silent in company as is only right and proper. This was very mystifying and terrifying and suspicious.

I also taught them that "I don't really think so" means "no absolutely definitely not" rather than "I am not sure".

Edited Date: 2013-02-06 10:30 am (UTC)

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