I don’t know enough about gardening to have a reasonable opinion on that, but here are some possibilities:
It takes resources in the form of studying fashion, or hiring someone else to do it for you, in order to know which flowers are in, and they’re not the ones you expect. Compare to fashion in clothing; I’m probably unfashionable, and this correctly signals that I don’t have enough time to keep up with trends or enough hip friends to advise me on them.
The high-status flowers are harder/more expensive to grow than the low status flowers. Compare to his discussion on gravel driveways being higher-status than concrete because they require more maintenance.
The high-status flowers are considered ugly to most untrained people, so they’re a net loss unless you know you’re associating with people who have been trained in taste. Compare to modern academic music, which will sound unpleasant to an untrained ear; therefore if you like it it signals not only that you yourself are trained, but that you expect the people who judge you based on your musical tastes to be trained. Hence the “any flower too vividly red is prole” comment.
The high-status flowers would look pretentious to low-status people (I realize this is partly an explanatory regress). For example, anyone can give their kid a name that sounds upper-class, but if the kid is poor they risk looking stupid.
I don’t know where Fussell got this gardening thing. Coming from a family of WASPy upper-middle class gardeners, I’ve never heard any mention of flowers being “tacky” (which would have been code for “lower-class”). And none of the flowers he names as upper-class are especially high maintenance except for roses, which could also be lower-class depending on color. Things I would consider upper-class are Japanese maples ($400 for a sapling and they take ages to grow), espaliered fruit trees, arbors and gazebos, hedges or topiaries that need a lot of clipping, and any layout that looks artistic enough to have come from a landscape designer. One thing that makes a garden look arriviste to me is a sea of mulch with annuals plopped in them at regimented intervals.
I tried to find pictures of gardens that could be considered upper class—does the Jaqueline Kennedy garden at the White House seem good enough? Because it’s full of topiary but also geraniums, salvia, chrysanthemums, and something I think are begonias (all identified as lower class by the article).
Compare to modern academic music, which will sound unpleasant to an untrained ear
Sturgeon’s law applies to modern academic music, and, depending how you define ‘academic’, may be an underestimation. Much of that 90% is the ‘academic’ part of academic music, and for it, this is not a matter of training on the part of the listener. You can have a superbly trained ear, able to accurately play music by Harry Partch, whose music often involves more than 12 steps per octave, and not ‘get’ it. You can write highly technical music of your own with layers so subtle that the performers don’t notice them for months, and not ‘get’ it. The target ‘academic’ music is aimed at has nothing to do with sounding pleasant.
But yes, there are definitely classes here, and though ignorance of music is hardly a signal at all, knowledge of it is a pretty strong one.
Note that “more likely or less costly” is a disjunction.
Which means it may be, on this article’s account, that high-status flowers are not costlier than low-status flowers, merely that they are reliably less common among high-status flower-displayers.
Of course, this also raises the possibility that this account is exactly backwards, and the only thing that makes the flowers “high-status” is the fact that high-status people display them; if high-status people started displaying bright red flowers in rotting wheelbarrows, that would shortly thereafter become a status signal. On that account, the flowers aren’t a status signal at all.
This is an empirical dispute; we can look at what happens when high-status people display low-status flowers. On the first account, we would expect the status of the people to go down (that is, third-party observers would think less well of them, keeping all other factors fixed). On the second account, we would expect the status of the flowers to go up.
(My own expectation is that we would actually find it depends on several other factors, because both accounts are woefully oversimplified, but that something like what Yvain describes is in fact going on.)
This is an empirical dispute; we can look at what happens when high-status people display low-status flowers. On the first account, we would expect the status of the people to go down (that is, third-party observers would think less well of them, keeping all other factors fixed). On the second account, we would expect the status of the flowers to go up.
It can be even more complicated than that (previously mentioned on Lesswrong here).
Possibly the the time spent in figuring out which ones are classy as opposed to ‘wannabe’ or ‘cheesy’ or ‘trying too hard’ or ‘lower class’. Probably difficult to figure out for any given group to which you are signalling you belong, unless you actually do belong to that group.
What are the costs associated with flowers?
I don’t know enough about gardening to have a reasonable opinion on that, but here are some possibilities:
It takes resources in the form of studying fashion, or hiring someone else to do it for you, in order to know which flowers are in, and they’re not the ones you expect. Compare to fashion in clothing; I’m probably unfashionable, and this correctly signals that I don’t have enough time to keep up with trends or enough hip friends to advise me on them.
The high-status flowers are harder/more expensive to grow than the low status flowers. Compare to his discussion on gravel driveways being higher-status than concrete because they require more maintenance.
The high-status flowers are considered ugly to most untrained people, so they’re a net loss unless you know you’re associating with people who have been trained in taste. Compare to modern academic music, which will sound unpleasant to an untrained ear; therefore if you like it it signals not only that you yourself are trained, but that you expect the people who judge you based on your musical tastes to be trained. Hence the “any flower too vividly red is prole” comment.
The high-status flowers would look pretentious to low-status people (I realize this is partly an explanatory regress). For example, anyone can give their kid a name that sounds upper-class, but if the kid is poor they risk looking stupid.
I don’t know where Fussell got this gardening thing. Coming from a family of WASPy upper-middle class gardeners, I’ve never heard any mention of flowers being “tacky” (which would have been code for “lower-class”). And none of the flowers he names as upper-class are especially high maintenance except for roses, which could also be lower-class depending on color. Things I would consider upper-class are Japanese maples ($400 for a sapling and they take ages to grow), espaliered fruit trees, arbors and gazebos, hedges or topiaries that need a lot of clipping, and any layout that looks artistic enough to have come from a landscape designer. One thing that makes a garden look arriviste to me is a sea of mulch with annuals plopped in them at regimented intervals.
I tried to find pictures of gardens that could be considered upper class—does the Jaqueline Kennedy garden at the White House seem good enough? Because it’s full of topiary but also geraniums, salvia, chrysanthemums, and something I think are begonias (all identified as lower class by the article).
It is controversial that one must signal high status from the White House.
USA Presidents routinely try to signal lower class than they have.
Sturgeon’s law applies to modern academic music, and, depending how you define ‘academic’, may be an underestimation. Much of that 90% is the ‘academic’ part of academic music, and for it, this is not a matter of training on the part of the listener. You can have a superbly trained ear, able to accurately play music by Harry Partch, whose music often involves more than 12 steps per octave, and not ‘get’ it. You can write highly technical music of your own with layers so subtle that the performers don’t notice them for months, and not ‘get’ it. The target ‘academic’ music is aimed at has nothing to do with sounding pleasant.
But yes, there are definitely classes here, and though ignorance of music is hardly a signal at all, knowledge of it is a pretty strong one.
They’re expensive and easy to misuse.
Note that “more likely or less costly” is a disjunction.
Which means it may be, on this article’s account, that high-status flowers are not costlier than low-status flowers, merely that they are reliably less common among high-status flower-displayers.
Of course, this also raises the possibility that this account is exactly backwards, and the only thing that makes the flowers “high-status” is the fact that high-status people display them; if high-status people started displaying bright red flowers in rotting wheelbarrows, that would shortly thereafter become a status signal. On that account, the flowers aren’t a status signal at all.
This is an empirical dispute; we can look at what happens when high-status people display low-status flowers. On the first account, we would expect the status of the people to go down (that is, third-party observers would think less well of them, keeping all other factors fixed). On the second account, we would expect the status of the flowers to go up.
(My own expectation is that we would actually find it depends on several other factors, because both accounts are woefully oversimplified, but that something like what Yvain describes is in fact going on.)
It can be even more complicated than that (previously mentioned on Lesswrong here).
Yup. As I said, my own expectation is that it depends on several other factors.
Possibly the the time spent in figuring out which ones are classy as opposed to ‘wannabe’ or ‘cheesy’ or ‘trying too hard’ or ‘lower class’. Probably difficult to figure out for any given group to which you are signalling you belong, unless you actually do belong to that group.
You have to spend time taking care of them.