The Devil Wears Joules

When I was at school the children would form their own cliques, and membership to one of the cliques was a key to having ‘friends’. At my school there were the ‘Smart People’, who always got the best grades and were smarter than everyone else, there were the “Beautiful people”, who were the prettiest and followed fashion, and there were the “Others”. The others didn’t really fit into either group, they were not that smart and not that pretty. The others were not really a group, they were the leftovers from the other groups and they didn’t have any form of cohesive bond between them. You can see these roles stereo typed, plus the Sportsman (jocks for those in the US) and Rebels in John Hughes “The breakfast club”.

After leaving school I had always assumed that these groups broke up as people mingled more into general society and while I have not seen much grouping on the “Smart Set” and the “Pretty Set” I have seen a rise in women that fell into the “others” category that have formed a new clique exclusively for themselves. They are the “Yummy Mummies”.

The Yummy Mummies are women that at school would not have fitted in the pretty set, and they despised the pretty set for their natural looks. They did not fit into the smart set, and they despised the smart set for their intelligence. Now as adults they have a chance to strike back and they have created their own clique.

You may wonder what defines this clique. There will be a queen bee that effectively runs the group and defines the entry criteria. There is a look, bobbed blonde hair (most brunettes end up resorting to bleach after joining), not thin (UK size 12+ is mandatory), country set clothes (Joules sweatshirts are a must, referably pink or green), they must join the dinner party circuit, do voluntary work rather than have a job, appear wealthy but not too wealthy, drive big expensive off-roaders, have at least one child at private school, and they must conform to the defined behavioural norms of the group.

There is one another criteria, you must not have been a member of either the Smart set or the Pretty set at school.

Now the yummy mummy set is growing fast in the UK, given there were always more people in the Others than in Smart or Pretty. They have found that they can wield the mighty weapon of exclusion against anyone who does not conform. This is a relentless weapon and demonstrates all the things that we believed children would leave behind when they grew up. They will look through you, they will not answer you, you are invisible. More worryingly, their final tool of choice is that they are passing this to their children who are now forming new sets where the factor that determines their membership is not based on their personal traits likes or dislikes but is based on whether their mothers are part of the Yummy Mummy club.

Is there hope for mankind in the face of this plague of Stepford wives?

Personally, I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

So what has this to do with us? Lin is turning 40 in two weeks time and has, since our children started school, been excluded from more and more activities as more of her friends have joined the club, so she has decided to join the Yummy Mummies. Personally I’m not keen on the idea. Lin has two degrees and will not fit easily into a group that despises smart women with jobs. My preference is for Lin’s L-von-B alter ego to grow as our circle of photographic friends grows. But, I’m just a guy and what do we know about these things?!

The photograph to accompany this image is of Cheeky Lee and Lin wearing a red Zentai suite and looking like some sort of strange space alien (what was I thinking in this set?) Lee and her partner Paul are photographic friends who are coming round for coffee and a chat this afternoon. Lee is most definitely not a Yummy Mummy.