Author: Ross | Submitted: Sep 26 2004 at 05:48:32 PM "Chavs" Right, fuck this for a game of soldiers. Enough is enough. Who else amongst the CKGT brethren is sick to the back teeth of seeing the word 'chav' all over the media?
'Chav' or 'chavie' started out as a Romany slang word originally meaning baby, later developing into a term of friendship akin to, say, 'mate'. (So I read, anyway. I was always told it was an abbreviation of 'Chatham' but apparantley I was misinformed. I'm sure my great nan's turning in her grave, if she's not trying to sell pegs to Brian Clough) In my time growing up in one of SouthEast Kent's more toiletty satellite towns, 'chav' has always meant 'sportswear clad dickhead who might give you a kicking and take your wallet, or if you're lucky just give you a kicking'. Every suburban centre has always had its equivalent. They're known locally as scallies in Liverpool, charvers in the Midlands, rudeboys in South London, I dunno...rapscallions in St. Albans. You get the drift. Wherever you are there's probably some wide cunt who wants to give you a hard time. Dialectically, they're called different things in different places.
Now the word 'chav' is everywhere across yer media, often in clueless articles bemoaning Britain's 'NEW youth tribe'. Even the dear old Daily Mail (hack, spit, burn in hell Simon Heffer etc. etc.) has caught on today, with their article "Welcome To Chavland" (and I had to fish this out of my parents' bin to quote from it, so y'all had better still be reading)
Now, the problem I have with this and similar articles is that 'chav' seems to have now been adopted by the media in order to sneer at some perceived peasant underclass rather than how me and my mates used to use the word, to sneer at some cunt who'd thrown a lit match at my trouserleg cause I was wearing a Nirvana t-shirt. But get this, from the Daily Mail today
QUOTE: CHAV SNACKS Most meals are eaten on the hoof. Chips are a given, but now and then Chavs will push the boat out and go somewhere posh (any place that uses knives and forks) or really posh (Pizza Hut).
Oh, fuck off. No, really, fuck off. This has now gone outside a term of denigration parochially used to mean 'wideboy' and nationally used by the middle class media to laugh at people with less wealth than them. Earlier in the year The Mighty Reptile told me about an article on a webzine that was railing against the nascent 'chav' fad and arguing a similar point to the one I'm trying to make here, which I dismissed as missing the point. 'Surely a chav just means a bit of a dickhead. No one's making it a class issue, are they?' Well, fuck me, they appear to be now!
So then, get thee to the forum and discuss, kids. Am I overreacting, with my working class shoulder chip that magically grows bigger when doused in alcohol and/or has a butchers at the Mail On Sunday and all? What images does the 'chav' thing conjure up to you? A bloke in a Burberry cap that's hawking a lager 'n' sputum cocktail at your back because you look a bit different (my perception c.1996) or someone who hasn't got a lot of money, likes eating chips and '(listens to music that)..to normal people sounds like a fast banging noise' (the Mail On Sunday c. today). To sum up, what do you make of my argument that the phrase 'chav' seems to have been adopted in some quarters as a nice 'n' easy way to have a good old fashioned sneer across the class divide?
See, of all the Kentish regional phrases to get given national exposure fast, it really should have been 'fried gold'. |
