How was National Standing on Doorsteps Week for you? For most, it’s a case of grabbing a picture two or even three days after la rentrée, when you remember that you’ve missed the annual obligation to record the progress of what Mumsnetters call the ‘DCs’ (darling children).
Assemble them by the front door, roar at the one who’s kicking off to SMILE and look at ME, lament that you failed to get your sons’ hair cut before they went back as overnight they’ve come to resemble Hamburg-era Beatles, press the button and then bundle them into the car.
Later, you ping the picture around the family WhatsApp group and stick it on social media, perhaps recalling, with a maniacal laugh – as you finally open your laptop to start work – those vague intentions to be up, showered and have done 20 minutes of pilates before you woke the kids.
But for a certain type of high net-worth individual, the back-to-school photo has become the new wealth flex. On their Instagram accounts you’ll find Seraphina or Hugo parked between the neo-classical columns of their 32,000 sq ft new-build or in front of the great red-brick Victorian monolith in which they are about to be incarcerated, presumably to run some far-flung colonial outpost when they emerge five years – and upwards of £300,000 – later.
Towards the end of last week, the same type of message started flying around between some of my similarly anthropologically-minded friends. ‘If I see another boasting post about the little darling off to Radley/Marlborough paid for by intergenerational wealth I might just vomit’ was generally the flavour – accompanied by a flurry of Instagram screen-grabs.
In a typical such post, a child sits cross-legged in the back of Range Rover Velar wielding a lacrosse stick and a tennis racket, a Longchamp handbag (£120) over her arm. She is surrounded by a vertical flat-lay of monogrammed tuck box and trunk, containing at least £1,500 of uniform and kit (you can double this for Eton), which you just know has been neatly machined with Cash’s name tapes – and not by the woman who took the photo.
There may even be a series of snaps for you, so that you can marvel at how they haven’t been affected at all by Rachel from Accounts’ Budget. ‘Oh, is there VAT on school fees now?’ they scream. ‘We hadn’t noticed.’ The formula runs thus: first pic in front of the rather naff family home surrounded by luggage (I zoomed in and identified a Louis Vuitton holdall in one – for a 13-year-old!); second snap in front of their new boarding house, perhaps next to freshly Botoxed and highlighted Mummy in her velvet trouser suit and white trainers; and the third in their dormitory, which appears to be recreating the latest Mini Boden campaign.
In a typical such post, a child sits cross-legged in the back of Range Rover Velar wielding a lacrosse stick and a tennis racket, a Longchamp handbag (£120) over her arm
Before Mummy heads back up the M4 to work on her start-up or wander aimlessly up and down the King’s Road, she’ll add a caption to her vulgar wealth flex, to show you how having £60,000 of net income a year to splurge on their child’s education (plus extras) is actually really, really tough. Another declares: ‘Willow started her new school today and was so brave and happy. Mummy held it completely together… not!’ Don’t these wretched women who are so distressed about sending their adolescent away to be looked after by someone else realise that there are marvellous things called ‘day schools’ – where Willow can come home at night? Some of them are even free!
In a double wealth flex, a hashtag-motherofboys – four boys – posts about how quiet the house is as the youngest has joined his brothers at an exclusive single-sex prep. She’s wistful that there are no wet towels on the floor and all the lavatories have been flushed. One has to admire her chutzpah, if nothing else, at flaunting the fact she is farming out the parenting of an eight-year-old boy, in an era where this is increasingly seen as an unacceptable way to educate your children – and writers and journalists from Alex Renton to Charles (Earl) Spencer have documented the long-term effects of ‘boarding school syndrome’.
My phone pings with another classic of the ‘Oh poor me my children are at boarding school’ post. ‘I can’t believe this day has arrived so quickly,’ it wails, accompanied by a row of broken heart emojis. ‘Missing her so much already, but excited for this new chapter!’ (Hopefully the child’s £20,000-a-term education will teach her that it’s ‘excited about’ – not for.)
I click through to the school’s Instagram account (full marks for a triple-flex if you include the exclusive institution’s social handle) and watch a video of a woman with an extraordinary strangulated RP 1930s accent read aloud to a group of small boys in their pyjamas. One sucks his thumb, others cuddle cushions as they look into the lens like leverets caught in car headlights.
But what’s most offensive about this wealth flex is what it really says. It declares shamelessly: ‘We know we’re the ones Labour’s VAT rhetoric was directed at – but it doesn’t affect us and we really don’t give a hoot.’ Meanwhile, small faith schools and independent preps where sensitive children and those with special educational needs can be nurtured go to the wall, and 11,000 pupils whose parents have been priced out of the private sector are vomited into a state system that can’t accommodate them.
And yet… as Mr Bennet from Pride and Prejudice didn’t say: ‘For what do we Instagram but to flex for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?’ I’m flexing ‘We got into the best state schools around’. And I’m flexing a black laundry marker pen and 100 per cent acrylic uniforms that cost less than a single Eton tailcoat. Hashtag blessed – and a row of ROFL emojis.
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