Yanks vs. Brits

Most of my online friends and contacts are in the US. As the our old misguided prime minister Tony Blair once put it, “Britain has a special relationship with America”. All too true. The Brits admire the Yanks for their openness, their freedom, their vision, their audacity, and above all, their ability to “think bigger”. They are annoyed with them because of their brashness, willingness to complain, disregard for manners, over-aggressiveness, the obsession with suing everyone, plus their government’s desire to blow away everyone who disagrees with them. One thing the English just don’t get about Americans is the whole “gun thing”. The right to bear arms. I’ll never understand it. Guns kill people. Get rid of guns and less people will die. It’s not rocket science.

However, the guns issue aside, most Brits greatly admire the Yanks. I’ve never visited America, and courtesy of their stringent fingerprinting requirements for all visitors, I’m probably never likely to. But that doesn’t stop me thinking of the US as a groovy place. I love America! All my favourite t.v. programmes are from the U.S. (even though many of them don’t understand true sarcasm), plus my t.v. heroes are Americans. If David Hewlett (a.k.a. Dr Rodney McKay from Stargate Atlantis) ever asked me to America, I’d be on the next plane over, and to hell with fingerprinting and my marriage vows. Principles can only stretch so far after all! (What can I say, I love geeky scientists with a dry wit and sparkling eyes – definitely “my type”).

The little culture differences between the Americans and British never cease to fascinate me. The Yanks are more open about things, and the British are way too hung up on manners and secrecy. For example, the British find talking about money excruciatingly difficult. You can’t ask an Englishman how much he earns, how much his car costs him or how much he paid for his house. It’s definitely “not the done thing”. We have money phobia, and it makes no sense at all. If you can’t ask people how much they earn, how can you possibly know if you’re being paid your market value?

Americans are more emotionally open than the Brits. You will often find an American nude photographer ranting about his personal artistic opinions to the whole wide bloggie world, but you won’t find that here in the UK. Nude blogs are rare here, plus the English often don’t talk about their emotions, or their feelings about photography. Depression is taboo. We have a very stiff upper lip. Therapy is largely seen as for wimps –if you have an emotional issue, go talk to your best friend. Not terribly psychologically helpful, is it? There’s a reason we Brits aren't emotionally well adjusted. We know this, and yet I’d rather die than get therapy (if I needed it, which I definitely DON’T, O.K?!). Emotions are usually suppressed, which isn’t healthy, but it really isn’t cool here to discuss one’s feelings, and certainly not in public.

And then there’s the accent. In my mind, when I read all the bloggie links on the right every day, ya’ll have a frightfully upper class British Accent, because I do, and that’s how my mind interprets reading your blogs. It actually comes as quite a profound shock if I talk to a U.S. photographer or day-job customer on the phone. He sounds so very….um… “American”. The unexpected twang of the accent. We Brits expect the world to talk like us, behave as we do, and to display English restraint at all times. We are a condescending, unforgiving bunch. Gratuitous displays of emotion from Americans are fairly scary to be honest. If I ever did meet the highly luscious David Hewlett, not only would I be struck dumb by his accent (I know he speaks like that on t.v. but not in real life, surely?), but he is often so emotional that I’d run as mile within moments of talking to him. Reality is much more strange than the virtual world.

I’ve concentrated here on the cultural personality differences, but there are many others, usually silly language differences. Diapers vs nappies, fries vs chips, trunk vs boot, rubber (US condom) vs rubber (UK eraser for pencil drawings), fag (homosexual in American English) vs fag (cigarette in UK), Santa vs Father Christmas etc etc. According to my female American friends, when you make tea you use a saucepan or whistling hob kettle to boil the water…electric kettles are pretty rare in some parts of America, and you stir your coffee with stirring sticks??? How peculiar! We use teaspoons over here. In the U.K., the use of the word “gotten” is grammatically offensive on so many different levels.

I could go on, but I suspect I’m getting boring.

Is there a difference in American and English nude art? Well, the Brits have many less famous nude photographers than in the US (you’ll notice all of our links on the right are to American sites). I think this is partially because the US has millions more citizens (and thus more photographers), plus also the privacy laws are more permissive in the US (over here the nude photography sites are extremely closely monitored, including this blog….hellooo Mr Policeman! Lovely to find you reading this!), and then there’s the fact that we have way more surveillance cameras here, and thus less ability to shoot outdoors without the very high probability of being caught on camera and/or arrested.

You guys have bigger spaces and more freedom. We have no human rights. We are very envious. In a perfect Anglo-American utopia, we’d like to move your best US human rights laws to England. But without the guns, or Guantánamo Bay, or your employment laws, which suck deeply. Thank you, Santa, that would be ideal.

So if I love America so much, why don’t I move there? Well, of course I couldn’t fund the US health insurance, I’d never get a long term job or visa (due to health issues), plus of course, I am fundamentally an upper-middle class British snob. My very English opinions don’t stop me thinking you guys 'n' gals are great, or that I’d greatly like to live in Ohio rather than this charming English swamp, but it does mean that it’s extremely unlikely I’d ever comfortably fit in there, in “real life” (rather than my virtual one).

But then again, I don’t fit in here either, so what have I got to lose?!



For the record, Rich says that if I’m moving to America, then I can definitely go without him. He thinks this post is a “sycophantic pro-American suckup”. Hmm. With tact like that, now you see the reason I generally try to keep him away from the day-job customers…