Raymond Briggs
What has happened to poshness? Recently, a friend gave me a copy of the Lady magazine, and there, on the cover in large white lettering, were ‘Tips for Calming Your Pussy’.
The Lady used to be for women who looked upon themselves as ‘ladies’, well-behaved, dignified, possibly upper-class; ‘posh’, though they would not have used the word. Nor would they ever have used the word ‘pussy’ to mean anything other than a cat or a kitten.
So what is going on? It is much more than ‘dumbing down’; it is a complete change of audience and marketing for that audience. Who is doing it, and why?
Then, today in the village shop, there were copies of Tatler magazine. And there on the cover in white caps was, ‘what’s inside your man’s pants? it’s not what you expect.’ Another heading on the cover says, ‘rub me there. the hottest masseurs.’
The biggest heading of all is ‘wild, sexy, free. Posh girls have more fun.’ This on top of a photograph of a girl with her hair all over her face, wearing a uniform coat with brass buttons, undone, showing her to be naked except for her slim black pants. Inside, there is an entire page reviewing ten different pairs of men’s pants, each one illustrated, with captions like ‘white jersey mid-thigh shorts. This is the gold standard of bog standard. It’s normcore and modern enough to be f***able. Nothing to see here... unless you like to take a look, of course.’ There are nine more to get through.
This is all borderline porn. Even the F-word is used without the asterisks. I doubt if we would be allowed to use it here in The Oldie [quite right – we asterisk! Ed.].
Also, the more these words are used, the more commonplace they become and so they lose their power. Whatever has happened to all the ladies who used to read the Lady or Tatler? Have they simply died out? What magazine are they buying now? Does no one want to be a lady any more? Is the idea old-fashioned, even corny?
‘posh girls have more fun,’ reads the headline. So they haven’t abandoned the idea of poshness. They appear to be grafting porno onto poshness, thus creating posh porn. The best, or the worst, of both worlds.
Maybe I have been misinformed and they were referring to cats, after all; despite looking through the 82 pages, I could find nothing rude at all, and there was quite a lot about cats. Still, maybe the designers were pulling all our legs by knowingly using ‘pussy’ as an in-joke? It’s all getting too tiresome. I’ll get the kettle on and put a saucer of milk down for my cat; next door’s, actually.
Then again, today in the village shop, the owner showed me his top-selling red wine. It is called ‘19 Crimes’ and the label shows a convicted criminal’s identity photograph in black. Nothing whatsoever to do with wine! But, having at last deciphered the small print on the label, I see the criminals were deported to Australia, instead of being executed. Many died at sea and many more died after they arrived. So it was a different, slower form of execution, and led to this very nice red wine.