Posh People: Tatler

How to be 'posh'. For whatever reason we all admire the rich and famous. Why? What are these people really like? How do we replicate it?
Posh people have a lot of codes and rules of etiquette, such as: eating a pair with a spoon, definitely only one kiss when greeting someone with absolutely no saliva at all, compliments should be delicately given as to not embarrass anyone or seem creepy, and, most importantly a gentleman is never rude unintentionally.

There are many rules that posh people follow when communicating with each other. The guide to etiquette is necessary as a posh person to not offend anyone and to conduct yourself delicately and elegantly. Posh people are very interested in their friends and social circles. They are very interested in gossip and news from their parties and social events. They aim for the limelight to be on themselves and this often leads them to do shocking things which ends up in many pictures of semi-naked people, drugs, alcohol, people letting their hair down and partying with rock stars. It is stereotypical for upper class people to be famously out of touch with their emotions, they are known as brisk and rude. People often 'bark' at each other during sporting events such as racing and polo. However the point of etiquette is to prevent any real offence being made.

Upper class people obviously enjoy high culture. They are well known for living in the lap of luxury, and why not, with the bank accounts most dream of having. Being born into such a highly sophisticated social circle and having every need catered for from such a young age. No ones complaining about that. So what sorts of things could you only find the poshest people enjoying? Pony clubs, horse riding, polo and all other horse related hobbies. A key point here is that this is always a hobby, they enjoy some hard work, but very rarely. It is important for these people to have staff to maintain the upkeep of the horses (or gardens, land, ect.). Posh people seem to get a kick out of knowing and sharing gossip about people they know, or people in their social circles. There has to be a lot of coverage of parties and social events, which will include the fashion and peoples distinct style.

Sub-cultural groups are sensitive to contemporary trends in fashion, style, and music.

Subcultural groups are large groups within a culture. For example, ‘hipsters’ is a popular group in our western society. Members of this group are usually young. They avoid most pop-culture things. They often wear clothes that you’d expect older people to wear such as plaid shirts, glasses, and cardigans. This group of people also like to do things that most other people don’t do. Such as using old technology, wearing vintage clothes, being vegan or vegetarian. These people are often artists, musicians, writers, or have other creative professions. This can make them hard to relate to for non-hipsters or people who aren’t interested in creative things.

Gration, Reilly, and Titford had the theory that people join groups to fulfil common needs. One of the needs that would be fulfilled from being a hipster would be communication with others, because within the hipster community there would be a lot of ways to communicate, most hipters use apple products and would use instagram or pinterest to communicate. Another need would be able to be with people who share a common interest or purpouse, within this social group there would be many common interests such as fashion, art, theatre, and books or writing.

The hipster style is usually a cynical performance. Most people could easily find traits of hipster within themselves but it would be easy to latch on to this and then try to be more hipster than what is natural. Having a cynical performance can be a successful defence strategy, this is because there is less possibility of getting hurt if there is not much of your true self being shown.

Lower To Higher Class Analysis : Bicycle Courier To Polo Player.

In the documentary 'faking it' we see many relative theories of identity in practice. At the start of this process his self concept is comfortable. There is a large gap between his ideal self and his real self. Which lowers his self esteem. As a common result of this he's lowered his ideal self, expectations of himself and his aspirations which has given a pretense of higher self esteem. because of this, he uses lots of self maintenance strategies. an example of this is when he tells the camera that he's ridden a horse once and it didn't go very well. However he tells the trainers, When he first meets them, that he has never been on a horse - 'never ridden a horse'.

In terms of the ‘Johari Window’ theory. At the start of the process he has a small open self, a slightly larger blind self, a very large hidden self, and also a large unknown self. He has a small open self and a large hidden self because he is trying to protect himself quite a lot from any judgement. This relates to his low self esteem and he is very defensive and doesn’t want his esteem to be any more damaged by failure of this challenge. He is not emotionally invested at this point because he doesn’t want to be hurt by failure and is protecting himself to the point that makes it even more of a challenge. He has an average blind self which is made up of the things that are giving him away. Some of the things other people can tell about him that he doesn’t realise are: the fact he’s not from the higher class, because he doesn’t talk confidently about his back story. His unknown self is large at this point because he has a lot of potential for finding new things out about himself is very large.

We can also apply the Goffman theory of self-presentation to Woody at the start of this process. His persona is very much himself. At this point we have no evidence that he is any different from his real self. His performance is very sincere. This is himself. He is very close to his real self. He says his presentation isn’t even about rebellion. It’s just how he wants to look and act, he is happy with this. He becomes more himself – emphasises his identity – when he’s around people he’s uncomfortable with (the type of people he’s not used to). His staging is the city he’s from, Manchester, and his main props are his bike and his clothing/ make up. In every day life he doesn’t have much of a ‘team’. He lives alone and he doesn’t mention anyone else in this life at the beginning. His roles include ‘bike courier’, ‘alternative reputation’, and according to him, he is ‘himself’. His personal style is how he wants to look. He paints his shirts and jackets. He wears clothes that are easy to move in because of his very active job.