Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
The Language of Flowers: Status-Signaling, Virtue-Signaling, Etc
Tulip by Quartl, Wikimedia Commons, Cropped
Anyone imagining that just any sort of flowers can be presented in the front of a house without status jeopardy would be wrong. Upper-middle-class flowers are rhododendrons, tiger lilies, amaryllis, columbine, clematis, and roses, except for bright-red ones. One way to learn which flowers are vulgar is to notice the varieties favored on Sunday-morning TV religious programs like Rex Humbard’s or Robert Schuller’s. There you will see primarily geraniums (red are lower than pink), poinsettias, and chrysanthemums, and you will know instantly, without even attending to the quality of the discourse, that you are looking at a high-prole setup. Other prole flowers include anything too vividly red, like red tulips. Declassed also are phlox, zinnias, salvia, gladioli, begonias, dahlias, fuchsias, and petunias. Members of the middle class will sometimes hope to mitigate the vulgarity of bright-red flowers by planting them in a rotting wheelbarrow or rowboat displayed on the front lawn, but seldom with success.
Thus do I discover that I grew up in a high-prole setup without even realizing it. Mums, poinsettias, and Play-Doh-red geraniums were staples among our potted plants and (except for poinsettias) outside garden. I’ve always been fond of flowers too vividly red, especially tulips – it was a great sadness to me in my childhood that we had rabbits who’d eat any tulip, no matter how prole, before it could bloom. I admit to hating zinnias while loving columbines and tiger lilies, so perhaps I’m not hopelessly déclassée. It’s also true the work containing this stunning classification-by-blossom was published in 1983 and fashions change. Still, this paragraph lives on in people’s online essays, even though the work containing it is no longer available online (it once was).
But is any of it true? Was any of it true? I was born in the 80s. If it was true back then, I should have noticed. Not because I could discern class distinctions well as a child, but because I noticed flowers, which were plentiful in our neighborhood. I drew them and painted them, as girls do, especially those splashy red tulips with fiery black-and-gold hearts. I tried to garden without killing them (mixed success there). And I was the child to scold if our neon-red geraniums wilted, since keeping them watered and deadheaded was my simple, undemanding chore.
Now it’s true we grew up middlebrow in what was supposedly a highbrow town (supposedly) and my parents nursed a rebellious streak. My mom could take perverse pride in preferring the cheerful and showy to the allegedly “elegant”, especially since her own mother cultivated an astringent “good taste” in home décor (while nonetheless growing Play-Doh-red geraniums, come to think of it). But I had never thought to judge flower preferences beyond, you like what you like. I recognize that signaling status is a thing, and that it’s bound up with signaling “virtue” of one kind or another (perhaps simply the “virtue” of not being “prole”), but I ask you, is the language of flowers really this fraught?
If so, how do we tell?
If not, what else might be less fraught than is commonly supposed?
Published in Humor
From the Tigris area? (no, i didn’t check the link first)
This is one of my wife’s favorites. Ours didn’t survive The Frost.
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. The blooms are a deep violet when they first open, then fade to lavender, then to white. Blossoms of all three colors will be on the tree simultaneously.
This is her other favorite: the Royal Poinciana – we swiped some seed pods from a tree on a walk and are trying to grow some from seed. We’ll see how that works out.
No Tiger-like (from the link), though I suppose that might be speciesist.
I don’t care about that. (I plant Mexican Sunflowers after all. )
I’ve just never heard any other name for ’em.
Or at least cultural appropriation.
But they are from Mexico. (i checked the link)
Oh, does that still matter these days? ;-P
That makes it worse.
You mean, we should build a wall to keep Tigridia out?
My favorite flowers are dark blue and violet pansies……because I think they look prettier than other flowers. Other than that, the only thing I really want in my yard are a lot of large trees.
I wonder what critical theorists would make of that?
Dark blue and violet are definitely not red, but the other end of the spectrum. Large trees are older than the nouveau-riche smaller trees. I guess that makes you high class – congratulations!
I read Fussell’s book back in the 80’s, a year or two after it came out. It struck me at the time (in my late twenties) that although he was supposed to be an impartial viewer documenting the American classes — the ”foibles” of the upper classes were always presented in a rather positive light, while those of the lower classes were pretty obviously sneered at.
It was an interesting read, but I came away from it feeling a little grimy and having no respect for Fussell. He seemed to me to be trying to flatter the uppers and distinguish himself from the lowers. Which made me suspect that he himself may have been from a lower background. I looked him up later and found that he was a solid (and probably insecure) middle.
Ah Ha! I’m actually ahead of a trend! I knew letting the thistles, dandelions, and abundant clover take over was the right thing to do.
I initially misread that as “build a wall to keep Titus out”.
You might have read it different, but not wrong.
Well I’m doing clematis and honeysuckle on trellises all over my front porch, with a future plan to plant some of my great-grandmas tulips along the front path, and a hydrangea tree out front. On a scale of 0 to Literally Hitler, how racist and bourgeoisie does that make me?
It depends. Are they very red tulips? Are you gonna plant ’em in a rowboat?
A rowboat would roll off my front lawn, unfortunately. :(
Mostly red, orange, and pink tulips.
The pink softens the high-prole red and gaudy orange. Perhaps it will create a tasteful sunset effect, thus achieving the elusive prole transcendence?
Clematis and honeysuckle seem high-class enough.
The fact that they are your grandmother’s tulip bulbs also elevates the tulips.
Your garden may qualify as suburbified chichi bobo hipster yet!
Shishi-poopoo? Or would I need to add a few gazing balls on top of metal trellis towers and a fountain?
In thinking on this for a while, I do remember at least one instance of flower snobbery. We moved out of our house when I was ten, but frequently drove back by it as it was near to my grandmother’s house. My mother was horrified when the new owners put out what she referred to as a “damn tacky half barrel” and filled it with (I think) geraniums. Every time we’d drive by our old house she’d remark on how tacky she thought that barrel planter was.
Be careful with those gazing balls. I’ve heard the wrong type on the wrong stand can completely declass a garden – unless that’s what you’re going for, then knock yourself out: they even make garden gnomes that’ll hold your balls for you!
I think something like this would be shishi-poopoo enough…
Shishi-poo AF.
Maybe some of these giant metal balls for good measure.
Gotta show off the balls. Class the place up.
Also… Phrasing!!
Why not just get some caltrops? That’ll also keep enemy vehicles from tearing up your flowers.
Ball gnomes? What is this world coming to?
The graveyard most of my dad’s family is buried in has a lot of people buried there whose relatives put things like solar lights, pink flamingoes, river rocks, tiny fences, and all manner of those little flappy wing bird lawn ornaments all over. Mom told me that if I ever decked her grave out all tacky like that, she was going to haunt me.
Well, I would but there’s a bunch of kids who like to run through the yard and I might actually feel a little bad if one of them got caught in caltrops.
You don’t know the half of it.
Some of those globes gaze back at you.
They’re watching… always watching…
You can teach them how to navigate hostile territory.
They’re scared of me! I came home on Thursday. As soon as I got out of the truck, they ran from my backyard to my front yard squealing like the boogeyman was gonna get them. I had to walk towards the front anyways to shut off the sprinklers and they stared at me with their eyes all big and one screamed “She’s gonna get us!” while herding the others towards the other side of the street.