Nobody, Snobody

One afternoon, I attended an intimate soirée, courtesy of a luxury brand. Now, let’s be clear. I’m not one of those tai tais who hops from one glitzy function to another in head-to-toe labels sponsored by the bottomless bank accounts of hubby or daddy.

Illustration By Staven Andersen
The whole reason I had been invited is because my industry insider friends needed me, not to secure a big-ticket purchase, but to serve as a familiar friendly face, standing calmly holding my wineglass, ready to offer a comforting word or hug whenever their big-ticket clientele, those aforementioned ladies of leisure, behaved just a tad more diva-ish than usual and treated my friends as their personal butler.

In that soirée, I was seated at the top table, where I was the only non-regular from the society pages. To their credit, the perfectly coiffed society swans were cordial enough; one even chatted to me at length after learning that my blue-gray, striped, full-skirted, satin-bowed jersey dress wasn’t a Kate Spade as she had thought, but a no-label vintage kind.

Toward the end, a glamorous-looking girl arrived and was immediately ushered to our table. After a few seconds, I realized that she was no socialite, but my friend’s former colleague who now works for another label. With one hand firmly gripping her PDA, she air-kissed everyone, plopped between two Birkin-toting ladies and, while simultaneously thumbing her PDA, regaled us with the tale of her late arrival.

This annoying man, she started, came to the boutique as she was just about to step out. According to her, the customer hinted about purchasing an expensive item, but after one hour eventually left without buying. Such a waste of time, she exclaimed, for a guy who was only carrying a beat-up Nokia anyway. She rolled her eyes and let out a derisive laugh.

I smiled politely and glanced at my own Nokia. It’s a personal choice not owning a PDA just yet, mostly because I lived among Crackberrys long before new-money Indonesians even knew what a PDA was. I took no offense at her remarks because I’d never known her very well.

Yet I remembered her early days in the industry with my friend; two sweet, smart girls, who persevered through long hours, lofty targets, low pay, bitchy customers who got bitchier as they went to work for more premium brands, and the demand to look “the part” despite little time to hit the gym or the money to afford high fashion.
 
She and my friend often lamented, complained and sometimes cursed at the arrogance and snobbery they had to endure daily – and sometimes consoled themselves by laughing at those antics, musing at how money and the “branded” look often did not equal class nor style. I observed her now gym-sculpted physique and flawlessly made-up face, a departure from the fresh-faced prettiness she once was envied for, and the smug expression that accompanied her dishing tale, made worse by her Blackberry-battered social manners. It was disheartening to see that, in a few short years, she had morphed to resemble the very people who used to ruin her life.

Sometime after the soirée, I went on a weekend getaway with a group of Jakartans who couldn’t have been more different than the snobby fashionista. They’re all about Indonesia – wearing Indonesian clothes, eating Indonesian food, using Indonesian products, seeing Indonesian places. The trip started with such good-time promises I was excited to get involved.

Yet as the weekend wore on, something started to puzzle me. When I joined in complimenting the local architecture along the way, I was a rookie design buff. When I wanted to take pictures of local fare, while they photographed every single odd-looking article we stumbled upon, I was the urban girl.

When I tried to concur in what I’d initially thought was a solidarity chat over the fast commercialization of Ubud, I couldn’t have known the town as well or as long. What proof did they want for me to earn my place in the conversation? That I’d known Ubud since the busy central market was just three filthy rows of one-story kiosks, and everything beyond Monkey Forest was only rice fields? Or that I was on a first-name basis with the monkeys themselves?  

They were seemingly hell-bent in proving that when it came to Indonesia, nobody, not even an Indonesian by blood like 240 million others of us, could’ve possibly known better than them. Then the last string was plucked.

Someone mentioned an event back in Jakarta. It’s an interesting mix of promotion for young local designers and bazaar of branded fashion. I’d been to their earlier events and this time actually donated some pre-loved fashion stuff as well. The mighty souls exchanged looks and derisively mocked “those charity bazaars by those socialites”.

I gasped. For all the social insensitivities that socialites have been accused of, for them to willingly part with their precious fashion possessions for zero pay is already one leap toward social consciousness. I’d say let them throw as many charity bazaars as they want. Why the cynicism?

I think that was my defining moment when it comes to the meaning of snobbery

Snobs are people who not only firmly believe that they are better than everyone else, they brazenly propagate that belief around and beyond, and are so dogmatic in that belief system that no truth or logic presented by others can thwart it, since, going back to their basic mindset, nobody else can possibly offer anything better to challenge their superiority.

You can be snobbish cosmopolitan city slickers, dismissing people with beat-up gadgets as lesser beings. You can be snobbish uber-Indonesians, regarding people who don’t know the muddy roads between Tegal and Purwokerto as beneath you. The derisive demeanor of those ultra Indonesianists was no different whatsoever than that of the nouveau riche fashionista.

What snobs don’t realize is that by building the impenetrable wall, they end up alone in their own hoity-toity little world. The world where, they incorrectly assume, a mere “nobody” can’t exist. Yet precisely because only they alone can occupy it, that world cannot validly exist and thus, a snob ends up pretty much as the “nobody” they so derisively dismiss.

Snobody, nobody. Not my buddy!

+ Lynda Ibrahim

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