It is my theory that British people cannot talk about their supposed favorite subject (transgender activism vs. gender-critical feminism) for more than five seconds before reverting to their true love: class. Who’s posh? Who’s common? Who pretends to be one but is actually the other? Brits can’t get enough!
How else to explain the July 30 2022 (emphasis intentional) newsletter by Julie Bindel, bemoaning the existence of farmer’s markets? Bindel, for the uninitiated, is a radical feminist journalist, known for being Team Lesbian as versus Team Queer, but also (how do I know this?) from a working-class background. I know this because periodically British Twitter (where I spent a lot of time before sleep-training both daughters, what with the time difference) decides to call someone out for their poshitude, at which point the record will be corrected. (Yes like “Four Yorkshiremen,” this sketch is quoted at the beginning of my book for a reason.)
There is also someone named Owen Jones. He’s the head of the rival team on gender stuff, and is, or is reputed to be, A Posh. But as with privilege call-outs in their North American form, the British ones reveal that many contentious issues don’t actually break down on class lines. There are poshes and regulars alike on both sides of these debates. The essential is to call out the other side for class crimes.
All of this prelude is because without this background it is entirely unclear why in the year 2022 someone would write an essay about how farmer’s markets are “the place that the urban, monied middle classes go to cruise other urban, monied middle classes.” They are. “There is a sense from some farmer’s market devotees that they are somehow doing the environment, and poor people, the world of good by spending obscene amounts of easily earned cash on a bag of posh tomatoes.” There is. All of this was equally true in 2012, 2005, maybe earlier. Why now?
I wanted to give a benefit of the doubt on this. Maybe Brits only started doing farm-to-table posh-people farmer’s markets more recently? Not so! Pete Williamson, a Twitter mutual often helpful in such matters, links to a (very funny) parody song about them from, it would appear, 2010.
The text, then, is ugh-farmer’s-markets. The subtext: I am a non-posh, but I mingle enough with poshes to know what a farmer’s market is about. It’s a tale of upward mobility.
Why do I care? A further quote:
“The double buggies abound, and there are plenty of spoilt, badly behaved children running around amongst the Lebanese pastries.”
I’m in this picture and I’m… actually fine with it. Not the “spoilt” bit but the thing where you bring a 3-year-old to the farmer’s market and so does everybody else and the 3-year-olds run around together, in what I thought team contrarian liked aka free-range parenting style, in the relative safety of a crowd filled with many acquaintances.
To me, at this point, the farmer’s market represents Toronto putting a tentative pinky toe back into postpandemic life. When we moved to the area we’re now in, the market was on pause. That they’re back, and this summer without requiring (yes, outdoors) a mask and hand sanitizer like they did last year, feels slightly miraculous.
Is it expensive? It is. So is the supermarket at this point, what with inflation. So are the fruit stands. Normal groceries have caught up. Will I spend five Canadian dollars on a bunch of kale as part of a rustic LARP or will I shell that out to Loblaws? (Truly depends where I am at the time.)
Do I like the farmer’s market? Hard to say. Some weeks it feels like an obligation, but it makes for a change from the playground, the wading pool, the public library.
Is the food itself different? A 2006 scholarly book I believe reveals that in Frahnce, the markets sell exactly the same food as the supermarket but people like the farm-theme atmosphere and just go with it. The New York Greenmarkets are super strict about local, which means the food is different, but also far more limited. The pretense that you’d do your shopping for the week at a place that only sells microgreens and turnips never quite added up, which is why they went and put a Whole Foods on Union Square South.
In Toronto the main objection would have to be that local (or, at least, Ontario) produce is also readily available in supermarkets and fruit stands. Does it matter to eat local food? I know but am not especially interested in enumerating the pros and cons. (Which way is actually better for the environment, etc.) Maybe in Canada you feel slightly safer buying Canadian-grown onions because the US ones are periodically recalled for the sorts of bacteria you’d think only come from meat but actually also onions?
For most, grocery-shopping at 4pm on a Monday doesn’t make sense. If you’re wrangling a toddler and a baby it very well might. So maybe what this is is a post against anti-stroller feminism. Because small children need to be carted around somehow.
I visit farmers markets, stroll my kids about, encourage them to run about, and even have Lebanese pastries from time to time. I also go to discount markets, try to minimize my kids' brattiness, and eat a lot of cheap pasta with them. I thought the post was hilarious and captured something real. I also wouldn't take it either as the definitive ethnography of contemporary farmers markets or as an ethical guide to anything. Laugh and stroll away!
I am bored as hell with every human activity having a moral valence especially since it requires a level of mathematical calculation as yet unknown to mxnkind.