A reader question:
Muffy,
Happy New Year! Thank you for this respite. I also have a question for your readers. I know there have been debates about differences between Northern Preppy and Southern Preppy, or even if Southern Preppy actually exists, but where is the demarcation line between northern states and southern states in any such debate? It would seem that Virginia is squarely in the South, but what about Maryland?
Thank you for your continued work.
The South is still the confederate states: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas. I'd assume there is a southern influence in the border states, particularly Tennessee. And yes, there is a southern prep that is generally less strict about the Ivy Style rules and employs more light fabrics and bright pastels. Charleston and New Orleans are the epicenters. There is also a Texas prep that adds cowboy boots to the mix. Y'all have a good'n!
ReplyDeleteTennessee was in the Confederacy. Kentucky, Delaware, Maryland and Missouri were the border states during the war.
DeleteThere are no rules to being a wasp. You are Waspy or you are not. There are no southern preps. In the land of delusion some people from the south feel that they are preppy.
DeleteAnonymous 1, I checked the list and still screwed it up. Sigh.
DeleteAnonymous 2, do you live in the South? It doesn't sound like it. Have a blissful day.
Me thinks Ferd will be along to enlighten the Community.
ReplyDeleteDear all, as you may recall, dear Ferd, as we knew him, is no more. He has reincarnated. He is I. There is little more to say on this subject other than what Ferd shared some many years ago. He instructed: "Sigh. One of the many tasks asked of us at prep school was to pay attention. I did not ask you to look up the geographic relation of New England to prep. Instead, should you have the attention span necessary to do so, I asked you to look up the word 'poseur'. Res ipse.
DeleteAs for the most recent anonymous genius, your enthusiasm dispels any possibility that you are prep or that you would recognize prep if it punched you in the nose. Writing of prep and Islam in the paragraph is heretical; writing these words in the same sentence is profoundly ignorant. And you know what they say about ignorance. Other than hydrogen, ignorance is the most common substance in the universe.
As for Southern schools of any type, the concept of prep is dead on arrival. There is an abiding indolence, a casual insouciance about Southern life that dissembles in the presence of pure prep. Perhaps more importantly, it is virtually impossible to wear sweaters in June in Georgia. One is reminded of a recent headmaster at Hotchkis who would attend pre-season football games in September in heavy corduroys, a Bean cotton turtleneck, a Shaggy Dog and Bean shoes (without chain tread, of course). He never broke out a sweat. Can one imagine this taking place in South Carolina? Preps not only do not sweat, they do not place themselves in environments where such inappropriate behavior might occur.
Won’t you all please just leave Muffy and Me alone?"
I have just wasted two minutes of my precious life finding out what a cirquitor (more often spelled circuitor) is. It appears that a cirquitor is rather like the eunuch who guards the harem. He thinks he knows everything about sex because he has watched it.
DeleteSpeaking of ignorance, Cirquitor, you misspelled "Hotchkiss," and I'm not sure you know what "dissemble" means. And the correct expression is "break a sweat" or "break out in a sweat," not "break out a sweat."
DeleteThere must be southern prep. Princeton was at one point preppy, and it's a southern school.
DeleteDear WhiskeyDenture, you may wish to spend a few more minutes of that precious existence of yours learning about terms heretofore unknown to you and your kind. As Muffatola and her true disciples know, a circuitor in a medieval abbey was a monk tasked with secretly monitoring other monks' behavior, ensuring they followed the monastic rules by checking for laziness, talking, or sleeping during services, and would wake them, perhaps by shining a lantern in their face, as a form of discipline, making them a somewhat disliked official but crucial for maintaining order. "Somewhat disliked" indeed. Which remind me of Oscar Wilde's quip: 'I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.' I can certainly see that WhiskeyDenture is no enemy of mine.
DeleteDear Sled III. Whenever you correct someone’s grammar just remember that nobody likes you.
DeleteMaybe you should go back to being Ferd. Or at least grow out of childhood. Your adolescence is showing.
DeleteMaybe you should go back to running your pizza parlor
DeleteDear Anonymouse 1726 10:31 PM Maybe you should find something more important to do at 1030 at night. In all events, perhaps more "Ferd" would satisfy your somewhat odd late-night scrolling. Unaccustomed as I am to being a flagellant, it is with slight personal distress suffered from the likes of Anonymouse that I now venture once again into Muffy World.
DeleteFolks, you can't "be" a prep anymore than you can be a fire truck. To be, or not to be, is not your choice. The simple truth is that prep is a vicious intersection accident of breeding, birth place, wealth or former wealth and white Protestantism. If you are Asian, or African, Southern or Californian, Irish, French or Penguin you can't "be" prep no matter how many Land Rovers, Barbours and Alden full strap shoes you purchase. You are all poseurs. Look it up on line.
If you live on the Main Line your accent outs you. No true prep would host an OOOlive in her Martini, go hOOOOOme after golf or, God Forbid, approach such unrefined vacation spots as Avalon or Pocono Lake Preserve. Nobody who lives near Philadelphia is prep, sorry to burst your cheesesteak bubble. Being unusually vapid does not gain entrance to true prep, and there is no exit ramp from the PA Turnpike.
I believe that I have previously dispensed with you Southerns, but I am compelled to share just one more observation from that pinnacle of prep Winnie Churchill who observed that truth is something people occasionally stumble upon, ignore and than move on with their self-deceiving lives. Consider my earlier remarks your dose of truth.
So, as my final pearls before swine, listen up. If you read about, write about or think about what clothing, car, vacation spot, make up or underwear you own or want you can never be prep. To prep, these matters are effortlessly achieved without thought or choice. You may be whatever else you are, but you are not, inexpressively not, prep.
What's that I hear, I think someone is calling you about watching Alabama Spring Practice football over Mint Julies! Enjoy!
Hear, hear...
DeleteThe question that refuses to die.
ReplyDeleteThe Macon - Dixon Line runs along the border between Pennsylvania and Maryland, and is the generally accepted point at which the North ends and the South begins. This puts Maryland as the northernmost Southern state, even though they did not secede and we’re not part of the Confederacy. They were a Slave State, and culturally, they are very similar to Virginia. “Being Southern”, is more cultural than anything else and I have known Southern Preppies who went to Ol’ Miss, where your Blue Blazer better have a Yellow stripe on the inside lining, or you will be socially ostracized
ReplyDeleteThe Mason-Dixon line
ReplyDeleteCorrect
DeleteNorth or South? Line?
DeleteEasy. Just let your ears guide you.
When you hear "Yankee Doodle" you're in the North, and when you hear "Dixie" you're in the South.
Having attended prep schools both in New England and Virginia and having sent offspring to St. Andrew's in Austin, Texas, I believe the question is not fully answered by referring to the Mason-Dixon line. There is a time element involved as well. In the 1950s and 1960s, dress at prep schools in New England and Virginia was indistinguishable and followed the Ivy Canon. The only distinguishing features were a longer season for cooler clothing in Virginia. A Madras jacket in muted colors or a hopsack NBB was needed in September. So even though the seersucker went away on Labor Day, cooler fabrics like Madras and poplin hung around a bit longer. The notion of Southern Prep as something distinct really took hold later. Most of the brighter colors gained traction in the preppy revival of the late 1970s, and things like flared two button jackets and pleated trousers became commonplace, I suspect because this so called revival was marketing driven and capturing devotees and converts who did not understand the concept of a 3/2 sack with a hook vent. At this point sartorial hell broke loose, and those old enough to remember Ivy found shopping much more difficult. Although I am now blessedly free of the halls of academia, I find that many of the better dressed people everywhere have incorporated some of the hallmarks of Southern Prep in their wardrobes. Ben Silver and Andover have more in common with each other than they do with O'Connell's or even Press.
ReplyDeleteWith questions like this, it is probably best to consult the tome of the Official Preppy Handbook.
ReplyDeleteThe traditional Union v. Confederacy and Mason-Dixon Line distinctions are safe to apply here. One important note is that Maryland intended to secede with the South but was prohibited from doing so by the Union given its crucial geographic location to DC. Had the Union not effectively "conquered" it quickly, DC would have been isolated by CSA states.
ReplyDeleteSo this places the culture/mores of Maryland more "Southern" than say Delaware, which is nearly geographically indistinguishable.
Also, within Maryland to this day there are substantial differences. The farther south you go in the state the more "southern" it becomes. Seems like a "duh" point, but it is fairly pronounced. More so than Virginia even. Charles and Calvert Counties are quite different than Howard.
Preppy people, like preppy prep schools, only exist in the "new" states. The states in New England and New York and New Jersey. So called Southern Preppy really should be given another name. Maybe something like Polo/Ralph Lauren Mass Market New Money Aspirational.
ReplyDeleteEpiscopal and Woodberry Forest, both in Virginia, are two of the "select sixteen" boarding schools identified by E. Digby Baltzell in The Protestant Establishment. He popularized the acronym WASP and that's good enough for me.
ReplyDeleteAnd as far as colleges go, Hampden-Sydney wrote the book, literally.
DeleteIf you are interested! https://www.amazon.com/Protestant-Establishment-Aristocracy-Caste-America/dp/0300038186
DeleteThe thing before prep or wasp, barely exists in 2026.
DeleteI don’t care who writes the book they don’t have a clue. Perhaps ask the editor of this blog. I would bet she would agree. Virtually nonexistent today.
The Protestant Establishment was written in 1964, not 2026, and the writer, Baltzell, literally popularized the term WASP. All of the schools in it were founded between 1883 and 1906, not 2026: Phillips Andover (1778); Phillips Exeter (1783); Episcopal (1839); Hill (1851); St. Paul's (1856); and St. Mark's (1865); Lawrenceville (1883); Groton (1884); Woodbury Forest (1889); Taft (1890); Hotchkiss (1892); Choate (1896); St. George's (1896); Middlesex (1901); Deerfield (1903); and Kent (1906). Educate yourself.
DeleteCongrats to Hampden-Sydney College.250 years old this year!
ReplyDeleteHold the phone ... the North is preppier than the South??? Oh no, I can't stop crying. To my sisters and brothers of the Southland: Collars up !!!
ReplyDeleteNo, the north is not more prep than the south. The south is not prep at all.
DeleteGot to love Whiskeydent!!! The voice or reason and good humor. Big smile!
ReplyDeleteSecond that!
ReplyDeleteAs a Virginian, I'm always entertained when this topic arises. I have three thoughts that I will share.
ReplyDeleteFirst: To anon from 1/7 @ 707am: Maryland and Virginia are not at all culturally similar. The only areas where that could be the case are the DC suburbs (commonly referred to as the DMV). But those areas are highly transient and aren't really considered to be part of either state by other residents, so they don't count.
Second: Yes, there are southern preps. They are different from northern preps and vice versa, but they are part of the same larger cloth. Think Shia and Sunni...very different, but both are Muslim.
Third: I agree with what Ferd (or whatever calls himself these days) said. Being prep is something that you are or aren't. If you have to parse what is and is not prep, then you're not. Ergo, given Ferd's in-depth analysis in this area, I'm left to conclude that he isn't.
-Mike
Dear Mike, you are correct. Thank you.
DeleteBut I believe he is a dog lover. That is something.
DeleteOnce again ... and to whom it may concern: If we must disagree, might we do so as Virginians??? Thank you ... and, collars up!!!
ReplyDeleteReally hard to say!
ReplyDeleteAs a lifelong Marylander, I personally don't know any other Marylanders who consider ourselves to be southern. We align temperamentally with the north. The Mason-Dixon Line is an irrelevant demarcation to most of us.
ReplyDeleteThe North(east) or the South may or may not be more prep. What is indisputable is that by any measure the North(east) is a better place to live. It has better health care, less crime, higher incomes (and higher housing costs thanks to high demand), more college graduates, fewer firearms, better skiing, much better pizza and far more quality boarding schools.
ReplyDeleteTo each his own.
DeleteSo be it. But I’m with Anon 5:06PM. There must be a reason for the high housing demand.
DeleteWhew! I need more coffee. What an entertaining little spat.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the great discussion. As a 'white belt' in prepology, I may not be qualified to comment, but I will provide a couple of observations. First, as a Virginian, I'm afraid that it is pretty northern in vibe. For example, I don't consider Richmond or Charlottesville to be very Southern any longer, due to the in-migration of Northerners. Also, I think that religious influences have played a large role in the differences between Southern Preppy and Northern WASP/IVY styles and attitudes. Historically, among elites, Anglican influences in the South and Protestant (Calvinist, primarily) in the North. More class conscious and social in the South, with a more low-key, disciplined culture in the old, WASP north.
ReplyDeleteAm I the only one who thinks of Charles Nelson Reilly when reading Ferd/Cirquitor's posts?
ReplyDelete