You see, wearing running shoes outside of an athletic context is just a mechanism for the upper class to assert that the poor don't deserve higher wages. /adjusts glasses

It's a contrived packaging of their politics.

There are some good reflections in the second half about child rearing, but otherwise... no, self improvement and exercise are not exclusive upper class values. And by my observation, the people who insist on removing gluten from their diet, or biking casually in full race gear, are more often judged negatively and then mocked when out of earshot, instead of being considered virtuous and high class.

I know many people who exhibit similar behaviors and my impression is that these are signals of identification with a specific group. Social classes are not linearly stratified anymore, and the same behavior induces admiration by some groups and derision from others.

I agree that the central point of the article is on target.

The notion that this is somehow a "Victorian" thing, though - that the Victorians have some special responsibility in history for inventing this strategy of social dominance - that's an error.

Humans have been doing this for much longer than that.

I don't disagree but it's a really keen comparison. The Victorian Era has been romanticized pretty heavily but it's close enough in memory for there to be general knowledge about it while being far enough away to seem foreign and allow us to examine it with a more critical eye.

The Romans and the Greeks wrote endlessly on this topic. Everything Confucius said, too.

Perhaps the only significances of the Victorians was the rise of a middle class and "more" upward mobility. Before it had been "act your class/caste", the one you had been born in, but for the Victorians is was the class you wanted your _children_ to be born in.

But for sure, was an interesting comparison, until the vomit forced into the last line.

> But for sure, was an interesting comparison, until the vomit forced into the last line.

I’m glad that I wasn’t the only one who found that to be offputting. What a way to ruin an otherwise excellent article.