<p>pirt, you have no idea how utterly silly your detailed and careful discriminating description sounds to those of us who didn't grow up around your kind, do you?</p>
<p>snap. 10char</p>
<p>Ecape, completely agree with you here. Pointlesness thy name is whitebred.</p>
<p>"detailed and careful discriminating description?"</p>
<p>read again; there is nothing discriminating in my description. only my opinion. i don't understand how you see anything discriminatory in a post in which i explain why i don'y support a particular brand of clothing.</p>
<p>I meant /discriminating/ in the more sophisticated way. like, you know "discriminating taste." I was talking about your discriminating description of preppy.</p>
<p>What a bunch of tossers! Who cares!</p>
<p>ecape, you started this thread. and the question was "what does preppy mean to you?" i think that a question that is that subjective/ opinion-oriented begs an answer that is discriminating. i gave you my opinion on "preppy," and answered your question. a question like that is hard to answer any other way.</p>
<p>well, did you see the OP? My question /was/ why do some top colleges get the reputation of preppy and others don't, when they in fact all have comparable %s of kids from prep schools? So I was trying to disect what preppy means to the general population of elite-college seekers.</p>
<p>Edit: pirt, yeah, i know. i just couldn't resist making fun of the tone of your post, sorry.</p>
<p>Couple weeks ago this same exact discussion took place.</p>
<p>/no/ not the same. b/c if you read my above post, i'm talking about much more than brands, and my purposes are different.</p>
<p>The previous thread went into much more than brands, if you read beyond the first page or so, although granted it did not talk about colleges in terms of how "preppy" they are.</p>
<p>ecape, if that was the "intention" of your post, then learn to be more articulate. it must really blow not being able to express yourself fully. "what does preppy mean to you?" is a COMPLETELY different question than "why do some colleges have the reputation of being preppy and others don't while they all have the same % of ppl from prep schools?" unless my eyes decieve me, those questions are a BIT different.</p>
<p>haha...I agree with pirt on this one</p>
<p>well, and so I clarified. what is your problem? rarely does a conversation not include clarification and modification of speech by one or both parties, since we have different knowledge bases and backgrounds and I can't predict how you will interpret something that's completely clear to me. </p>
<p>"it must really blow"</p>
<p>once again, I think you're being silly. does that need clarification?</p>
<br>
<p>well johnwesley, i like your conceptualization. but then what is "non-preppy" in the sense of wesleyan ? rich but not safe? wanna-be not-from-a-preppy-family? I guess if you look at % of students not on financial aid, and it's so similar from top college to top college, I have difficulty believing there's actually so much difference between the students beyond how they dress.<</p>
<br>
<p>that's sort of what I try to explain to people. Some of the longest threads on the Wesleyan CC board involve OPs who seem genuinely scared of what they've heard about Wesleyan when, in fact, there's not much difference in terms of the actual demographics. Even alum, as revealed on a recent listserv thread, are incredulous to learn that five and ten years after graduation, Wes alum wind up settling in exactly the same zip code numbers as alum from Amherst, Williams, Brown and Dartmouth.</p>
<p>What I will say, is this: there are a lot of wealthy people at Wesleyan who shy away from the term "preppy" and would rather be struck by lightning than be caught with a snapped collar. I suppose that does earn them some disapproval, perhaps even derision by their peers.</p>
<p>Two Questions:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I know WHAT a snapped collar is. I want to know WHY someone would snap a collar. Is it to give the impression that one just finished testing out a new sailboat off of Newport on a sunny day, and the collar was popped to protect the WASPy fair-skinned neck from the sun?</p></li>
<li><p>Does anybody find it kind of odd that Wesleyan has a radical, Bush-sucks, power-to-the-people, flag-burning political climate, when many of the students come from families who: have made the most of the American Dream, live in rich suburbs and have summer homes on the beach, and can afford to send their kids to expensive prep schools and colleges? It's like if Tony Soprano's kids started a movement to wipe out organized crime, but continued to live at home and enjoy the cushy good life built on mob profits.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>well, this is just from very limited anecdotal experience, BUT when I visited Wesleyan I sat in on a Darfur group meeting. And I felt a bit like we were at some country club women's club (not that I'd actually know what that's like), rather than an activist meeting. Like 30 people were there and they spent a bunch of time talking about selling cookies, and what was "cute". Not saying most activism at Wes is like that cuz I wouldn't know, just saying maybe sometimes people don't have a very good concept of what's "radical" and activist. Subculture can be such a shallow thing sometimes, like I said I've probably known as many genuinly knowledgeable, activist liberals who wore polos as those who didn't.</p>
<p>I also second TourGuide's first question. I'm not sure I've actually ever seen anyone sporting a popped collar, except as a joke. But apparently people really do it, so what is it /supposed/ to make someone look like?</p>
<p>Answer To First Question:</p>
<p>The first person of any celebrity to deliberately start snapping their collar was the late actress Katharine Hepburn who is also on record as having begun the fashion of women wearing men's slacks. The reason for wearing her collar upturned was fairly simple: it hid her neck wrinkles at a time when, in her early to late forties, she knew she was getting on, but, wanted to continue to play romantic leads. How this transmorgrified from an aging, albeit WASP actress trying to extend her career to high school men trying to extend their pedigrees is a bit of a mystery.</p>
<p>Answer To Second Question:</p>
<p>It is odd. But, there is a strong reformist tradition in the American upper class political establishment; The two Roosevelts (Teddy the "Trustbuster" and, of course, FDR), the Kennedys -- even Bush #41 -- all began their respective marches to the presidency well within the moderate to progressive wings of their parties. The word for it is "noblesse oblige"</p>
<p>Thanks johnwesley for answering both questions. I think that's the first time anybody answered a couple questions on this site without promoting his own college, trying to make someone feel like a jerk, or making a grotesque spelling error. It's kind of depressing to know that if Kate Hepburn had just owned a couple turtlenecks, we would have been spared all this collar popping.</p>
<p>I was going to simply say, LOL. But, it's against the rules. Oh, wait. I guess just did. :p</p>