A reader question, left in the comments:
If, as Muffy says, "Preppy includes ... town and country," what is the relationship of "Yankee" to preppy? Certainly there are some areas where there are clear differences (sailing is preppy; lobstering is Yankee), but I think there's some overlap. For examples, I'd say woodworking, gardening, and cross country skiing are both Yankee and preppy. Where do preppy and Yankee overlap, and where are they clearly different cultures?
Do prep school preppies and swamp Yankees overlap?
ReplyDeleteOnly at the thrift shop.
DeletePerhaps they also overlap at Vermont Town Meeting Day (coming up next month). Read Frank Bryan’s “Real Democracy.”
DeleteI wouldn't call Preppy a culture. It's more of an aesthetic. Yankee is a culture based on a (increasingly diminishing) set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that (used to) characterize people from the New England region.
ReplyDeleteI agree. Preppy is external, Yankee is internal.
DeletePreppy, or Prep/Trad, is an ethos out of which a style necessarily springs in varying degrees. So, I'd say Prep and Yankee are both internal and can overlap.
DeletePreppy is Yankee with money.
ReplyDeleteThis response is nails it!
DeleteMaybe in Palm Springs. I know plenty of Yankees with money who would cringe at that description - lol.
DeleteHere in Palm Springs there is not much of Yankee or Preppy. My frame of reference comes from my college years in Massachusetts.
DeleteTo foreigners, a Yankee is an American.
ReplyDeleteTo Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner.
To northerners, a Yankee is an Easterner.
To easterners, a Yankee is an New Englander.
To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter.
And in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast.
The author, E.B White, but the punch line has been attributed to Robert Frost.
It is therefore conclusive, I'm a Yankee...Pass the pie please.
Perfect! (You beat me to it... :-))
DeleteTo Vermonters who eat pie for breakfast, a Yankee is one who eats it with a knife.
DeleteIt has to be, don’t forget, apple pie.
DeleteWith melted cheddar on top.
DeleteYes, pass the pie please! Thanks so very much!
ReplyDeleteYankee is a lifestyle from birth, Preppy is an acquired lifestyle.
ReplyDeleteClambakes are for Yankees. Garden parties are for preppies.
ReplyDeletePrefacing this by acknowledging that most labels like these imply stereotypes that often don't apply well to the situation of particular people, the Britannica entry characterizes Yankees as people from New England - so it's interesting New York has the Yankees baseball team. The term is 'often associated with such characteristics as shrewdness, thrift, ingenuity, and conservatism.'
ReplyDeletePreppy has the obvious reference to private preparatory school and the associated fashion and ethos. Prep school, Ivy League universities or comparable private institutions (most of the NESCAC athletic conference: Amherst, Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Connecticut College, Hamilton, Middlebury, Trinity, Williams. If you have visited Wesleyan or Tufts lately, they don't feel very preppy to me), a type of sportiness (leaning toward tennis, sailing, lacrosse, polo, leaning away from football, basketball baseball), understated/classic dress, generally well-off financially and socially if not politically conservative.
I see some overlap in values or characteristics and endeavors, such as not calling undue attention to oneself, social conservatism to some degree, or being outdoorsy or athletic. I know some people who I don't consider preppy but grew up sailing off the Northeast coast - wouldn't want to race them in a 420 or J/24 with money on the line. Yankee doesn't connote the same kind of wealth or dress as prep does to me.
All it takes is one generation for dramatic change to occur. A windfall or bankruptcy, a scandal, or just marrying someone from a different background can change a family, its values, priorities, how it characterizes itself, etc. The all/none words don't work so well for this exercise.
ReplyDeleteI tick many/most/all? of the boxes for "preppy" (Saint Grottlesex alumnus here), I tend to avoid the word like the plague. Yankee better categorizes me. I'm a little too old-time Yankee to consider flamboyant pants, loud belts, or bright polos. I'm too thrifty to buy a fast-depreciating, high-maintenance luxury vehicle. On the other side of things, while I have always had an affinity for my Swamp Yankee family and friends, their ingenuity, and almost anachronistic existence, I'm a little too spoiled for that life.
Call me an old preppy and I'll wince. Call me an old Yankee and you'll be my new best friend.
Boring displaced yankee here. All of these discussed changes in what a “ preppy “ wears are an alarm bell.
DeletePreppy, I have concluded is both transitory and regional. It is what high school kids of means decide is this year's uniform. In the period ending circa Sgt. Pepper it was hard to distinguish from Ivy. Then it shifted to flannel shirts, jeans, and Wallabees. Later, Lisa and the OPHB opdressed that national age cohort in cords, Sperry's, layers including Lacoste shirts, OCBDs, Norwegian sweaters, etc. Around the turn of the century it shifted briefly to Ambercrombie, topped with a frayed gimme cap, followed by a quick turn to VV and frat cleats (drivers), and now in a Filson phase with taller and more structured caps, plenty of torn jeans, and OG footwear. Yankees settle into a sensible style early in life and keep to it, along with other hallowed values, for life.
ReplyDeleteI regret that the A&F name wasn't permanently put to bed when they ceased selling shotguns.
DeleteWe all regret it. The idea of a store bearing no relationship to the hallowed name it bears is beyond sad. Sadly A&F is not the only example. An entire generation is now growing up not knowing what those brands stood for and probably wondering why we speak of them so wistfully since their stuff does not square with our tastes.
DeleteAgreed.
DeleteWhat is a swamp Yankee?
ReplyDeleteGoogle this exact question: What's a swamp yankee? Then click on the link to newengland.com. Below the brief article, the comments are very enlightening.
DeleteA swamp Yankee will use his fireplace as a wastebasket.
DeleteSpent my youth skiing in Vermont; our family had a cabin near Stratton. It was strictly a winter vacation and summer retreat. It was decorated simply and kept rustic on purpose...but kept up, my brother and I scraped and painted it a few times. When we were grown and my parents were too old to ski without risking broken bones, they sold it locally. The person who bought the place built a big barn at the end of the birdseye stone driveway, then filled the barn and most open space around the house with various types of vehicles that all looked broken-down and in serious need of repair. The house itself badly needed a new coat of paint the last time I happened to pass by it. That is what I think of when someone refers to a swamp yankee.
DeleteJohn McPhee’s book “Coming Into The Country” is about Alaska. He writes everyone in Alaska has various types of broken down vehicles littering their yard. The likely also have dirt bikes and refrigerators on the front porch. Swamp Yankees who decorate their property like this are “Alaskans, but they don’t know it.”
DeleteMy grandmother, who proudly proclaimed our family as Swamp Yankees, defined it as those families who have occupied America for so many generations that, due to dilution, there was little left besides the swampland.
DeleteYankee is thrift as preppy is to spendthrift
ReplyDeleteI think the relationship between Yankee and Swamp Yankee is the same as the relationship between Southern and Hillbilly.
ReplyDeleteYankees talk less but swear more.
ReplyDeletePrep is how a Yankee spends money
ReplyDelete