Kevin from ‘Home Alone’ and Everything Else Europeans Consider Low-Class

5 Spicy Food

You, of course, know about the spice trade, which lasted many hundreds of years and brought expensive spices to Europe from the East. But as the Age of Discovery wound down and trade became really efficient, spices no longer were wickedly expensive luxuries that only the very richest could afford. At this point, Cinnamon Toast Crunch could no longer really be considered a high-class breakfast.

With sauces made from spices now being considered something any peasant could enjoy, a new theory of elite food became necessary. Gourmets in Europe now shifted their thoughts and came up with the idea that food must taste “like itself.” Curries, barbecue sauce — that’s the stuff of peasants. But if you’re rich enough, you should find a good cut of meat and seek the simplest garnish possible to bring out its natural flavor. 

We’re not saying anyone’s wrong for enjoying the real taste of meat and veggies. But just know that historians looked at the history of European cuisine and saw the elite stuff suddenly became less spicy, and this was because spices became cheap. For a real treat, mix yourself up something hot and complicated, and pretend spices are still expensive.

4 Non-Spicy Food

That’s not to say that low-class food is universally spicy. The cheapest dishes, naturally, don’t taste of much at all. Consider “Windsor soup,” a brown British soup of dubious composition. A stew of beef stock and parsnips? That would be Windsor soup. Leftovers that had been liquified into some mysterious brown mixture that tastes of shadows? That could also go by the name of Windsor soup. 

The dish became really widespread in the 1930s, when the lowest of restaurants could be always counted on to serve Windsor soup (no elaboration provided) to its least discerning customers. Then came World War II, and rationing continued afterward because the country was still broken. So, a generation grew up on tasteless, cheap bowls of brown goop named Windsor soup. This was evidently served to make the public think the wars’ victims were the lucky ones.

The irony here is that the name “Windsor” doesn’t make it sound like low-class mush at all. It brings to mind the House of Windsor, the royal family for the past century. That’s because there was an earlier different Windsor soup, eaten by the likes of Queen Victoria (this was before the House of Windsor but was named for the older Windsor Palace). People named the brown gross soup “Windsor soup” either in an attempt at fraud or as satire.

The older Windsor soup was apparently much tastier because it was made from wine and calves’ feet, which obviously would delight anyone. 

3 Two-Toned Shoes

Have you considered walking around in dress shoes of two colors, like the ones below? If so, reconsider, if you were planning to pass yourself off as respectable in British high society. 

These are known as “spectator shoes.” Though they remain popular with supervillains and clowns, the British in the 1920s decided that this was a tasteless sort of fashion, suitable only for cads. The other name for these shoes is “co-respondent shoes.” In a divorce case, the co-respondent is the immoral third party with whom one person from the divorcing couple commits adultery.

This association seems to come from how Wallis Simpson liked wearing this style. Wallis Simpson was the American woman pursued by King Edward VIII (also known as the Duke of Windsor, of Windsor soup fame). Since Edward was single and committed adultery with the married Simpson, he’d actually be the co-respondent in that case, not her, so this name doesn’t make much sense, any way you look at it. 

2 Hair Buns

The U.K. has even more stereotypes about low-born people, including stereotypes associated with the specimen known as the “chav.” A chav will wear tracksuits, supposedly, and a chav will wear lots of jewelry (yes, wearing ostentatious jewelry is low-class). Chav women, or “chavettes,” may be known for ponytails, or tight buns. 

We meant tight hair buns, not any other kind of buns, and this hairstyle is dismissively referred to as a council house facelift. A council house is public housing. The idea here is that someone who lives in a council house can’t afford a real facelift, so they achieve the same effect by tying their hair to pull back their skin. 

This is an outdated term now. That’s not because people now prefer to avoid using offensive language but because cheap Botox means everyone today has a horrifying alternative to horrifying facelifts, no matter how poor they are. 

1 People Named Kevin

In Germany, the two names on job applications most likely to earn discrimination are “Muhammad” and “Kevin.” The Muhammad bias is Islamophobia, while the backlash against Kevin is something else.

At the start of the 1990s, “Kevin” suddenly became a very popular baby name in Germany. The cause appears to be the international success of Home Alone, though celebrities like Kevin Costner may also share some of the blame. No similar rise in Kevins happened in the U.S.; though some parents must have named their babies after Kevin McCallister, Kevin was a more common American name for boys in the 1960s and 1970s than it was in the 1990s. It helped that, in Germany, Kevin was the title character, as the movie was named Kevin — Allein zu Haus.

Of course, not all strata of society were equally swayed by this American movie. Lower-class people were more likely to use pop culture as an inspiration when naming their babies. A generation later, this meant that if you’re in Germany and your name is Kevin, people will assume you are from an unrefined family. 

In Germany, this anti-Kevin sentiment is known as Kevinismus. France experiences something similar, and last week, a documentary premiered called Sauvons les Kevin, analyzing the setbacks that the nation’s Kevins face. 

The title translates as “Save the Kevins,” but we trust you already knew that. If you don’t know basic French, you’re trash. 

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