Bougie

Yes I’m bougie. Aren't you trying to be?

Water goblets.

Those were regular drinking glasses in my house growing up. You know the kind that would be apart of the table setting at Eddie V's. My mother hated plastic anything. We would have guests over and they would think that she was pulling out the “good dishes” for them until they saw her double door china cabinet.

I remember the first time I had a high school friend over and she went and told everyone at school how bougie we were. The word stuck with me starting around the 10th grade.

You see my mother had a certain level of class that carried with her anywhere she went. It didn't matter how many cans of Vienna sausages were in our pantry she did raise us differently. I constantly had to defend myself for it. I had good hair that was only accredited to the fact that I was West Indian. My mother had a love affair with Macys and my sister would take me school shopping at Express and NY & Co. Can you imagine going to high school in a tailored boot cut trouser in the early 2000's? Not to add I was always top of my class and made the National Honor Society. I went home every night an drank Ocean Spray cranberry juice out of water goblets.

Bougie became a positive and negative word attached to me depending on who was saying it and how they used it in a sentence. LOL. People just didn’t know how to perceive me. And I couldn’t understand why my personal preference was being misunderstood as bourgeois. Until one day I witnessed a girl friend of mine partaking in the same bougie behaviors she had accused me of years ago. You see she was finally at a place in her life where she would enjoy what she would call the “finer things.” An in all my delightful pettiness I called her bougie. Her response put so much into perspective for me. She said “You’ve been bougie all your life. I'm just getting here. It's not the same.”

I realized everyone is on the road to their own bougieness. Lets face it we all want to be at a place in life that we can acquire all our desires. San Tropez. A black Benz. Cartier wristware. Shit a Michael Khors handbag. But the reality is some people may reach their bouginess before you. I've been bougie since birth. My mother squeezed fresh orange juice and baked homemade bread throughout my childhood. If I grew up underprivileged I didn’t know it. So now as an adult I have embraced the same practices Agnes taught me. I have personal preferences that I won't apologize for. I prefer Target over Walmart. I lay on a certain thread count. I enjoy expensive cheese. And I prefer my Mango Simply Lemonade in a water goblet. It just tastes better.

Author: Alicia