What Does Keeping Up With The Joneses

Keeping up with the Joneses is an idiom in many parts of the English-speaking earth referring to the comparison to one's neighbor as a benchmark for social class or the accumulation of material appurtenances. To fail to "keep upwards with the Joneses" is perceived as demonstrating socio-economic or cultural inferiority. The phrase originated in a comic strip of the same name.^[1] ^[2]

Origins [edit]

Comic strip by Pop Momand, 1921.

The phrase originates with the comic strip Keeping Up with the Joneses, created by Arthur R. "Pop" Momand in 1913. The strip ran until 1940 in The New York World and diverse other newspapers. The strip depicts the social climbing McGinis family, who struggle to "keep upwards" with their neighbors, the Joneses of the title. The Joneses were unseen characters throughout the strip's run, frequently spoken of merely never shown. The idiom keeping up with the Joneses has remained popular long after the strip's finish.^[1] ^[ii] ^[three] ^[4] ^[v]

Use of the name Jones for neighbors involved in social comparison predates Momand's comic strip. In 1879, English language writer E. J. Simmons wrote in Memoirs of a Station Principal of the railroad station every bit a place for social exchange: "The Joneses, who don't associate with the Robinsons, see there."^[ane] American humorist Mark Twain made an innuendo to Smith and Jones families with regard to social custom in the essay "Corn Pone Opinions", written in 1901 but first published in 1923. "The outside influences are always pouring in upon united states, and we are always obeying their orders and accepting their verdicts. The Smiths like the new play; the Joneses go to see it, and they copy the Smith verdict."^[6] Starting in 1908, D.West. Griffith directed a series of comedy shorts starring The Biograph Girl, Florence Lawrence, featuring the people next door, The Joneses.

An culling explanation is that the Joneses of the maxim refer to the wealthy family unit of Edith Wharton's father, the Joneses.^[7] The Joneses were a prominent New York family with substantial interests in Chemic Banking company as a result of marrying the daughters of the bank's founder, John Stonemason.^[8] The Joneses and other rich New Yorkers began to build country villas in the Hudson Valley around Rhinecliff and Rhinebeck, which had belonged to the Livingstons, some other prominent New York family to whom the Joneses were related. The houses became grander and grander. In 1853, Elizabeth Schermerhorn Jones built a 24-room gothic villa called Wyndcliffe described by Henry Winthrop Sargent in 1859 as being very fine in the style of a Scottish castle, but by Edith Wharton, Elizabeth's niece, equally a gloomy monstrosity.^[9] The villa reportedly spurred more building, including a house by William B. Astor (married to a Jones cousin), a phenomenon later on described every bit "keeping up with the Joneses". The phrase is too associated with some other of Edith Wharton's aunts, Mary Bricklayer Jones, who built a large mansion at 5th Avenue and 57th Street, so undeveloped. Wharton portrays her affectionately in The Age of Innocence equally Mrs. Manson Mingott, "calmly waiting for fashion to flow north".

A slightly different version is that the phrase refers to the grand lifestyle of the Joneses who by the mid-century were numerous and wealthy, thanks to the Chemic Banking concern and Mason connexion. It was their relation Mrs William Backhouse Astor, Jr who began the "patriarchs balls", the origin of "The Four Hundred", the list of the society elite who were invited. By then the Joneses were existence eclipsed by the massive wealth of the Astors, Vanderbilts and others but the four hundred list published in 1892 contained many of the Joneses and their relations—old coin still mattered.

[edit]

The philosophy of "keeping upwardly with the Joneses" has widespread effects on some societies. According to this philosophy, conspicuous consumption occurs when people care about their standard of living and its appearance in relation to their peers.^[10]

According to Roger Stonemason,^{[ who? ]} "the demand for status goods, fueled by conspicuous consumption, has diverted many resources away from investment in the manufacture of more material goods and services in order to satisfy consumer preoccupations with their relative social standing and prestige".^[11]

Social status once depended on one's family name; however, social mobility in the The states and the ascent of consumerism in that location both gave rise to change. With the increasing availability of appurtenances, people became more inclined to define themselves by what they possessed and the quest for higher status accelerated. Conspicuous consumption and materialism accept been an clamorous juggernaut ever since.^[12]

Inability to "keep upwardly with the Joneses" might result in dissatisfaction, even for people whose condition is loftier.^[13]

Economic science and pursuing social status overlap for some where "keeping up with the Joneses" results in "living above one's means". One ostensible indicator of this is credit card debt - though that is a gross measure and does not take into business relationship such factors as increasing individual incomes, declining involvement rates, changes in laws and or credit policies, and attractive investment opportunities that may capture an private'south greenbacks, who then relies on credit cards more than heavily for basic living expenses.

In pop culture [edit]

In the 1936 book The Next 100 Years, Clifford C. Furnas writes that the phenomenon of "'Keeping up with the Joneses' ... is descended from the spreading of the peacock'south tail."^[14]

In the Great britain, when Princess Margaret married the fashionable photographer Anthony Armstrong-Jones in 1960, Wallis Simpson allegedly said: "At to the lowest degree we're keeping up with the Armstrong-Joneses".^[15]

Jones in the Fast Lane is a life simulation videogame developed and published past Sierra Entertainment in 1990. The game'south name and goals are a play on the concept of keeping upward with the Joneses.

The Temptations recorded the vocal "Don't Let The Joneses Get You Down" on their 1969 anthology Puzzle People. The phrase is also referenced in the 1977 song "Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)" past Waylon Jennings. The Canadian band Spirit of the West referenced the phrase in a song about disability in lodge with the championship "(Putting Up With) The Joneses" on the 1990 album Save This House. The phrase is a line of the lyrics of the song "Life At The Acme" past the band Bad English language, included in their 1991 album Backfire. The phrase appears in the song "I Wanna Get Back" past Christian singer David Dunn on his 2022 album "Yellow Balloons".

The phrase is used as the championship of a 2022–2014 Barbadian comedy-serial^[16] and also a 2022 American picture show Keeping Upwards with the Joneses. The reality tv show Keeping Upward with the Kardashians takes it name from this phrase, replacing "Joneses" with "Kardashians".

Encounter also [edit]

Affluenza
Anthropological theories of value
Conspicuous consumption
Generation Jones
Herd behavior
The Joneses
Keeping Up with the Joneses
Keeping up with the Kardashians
Relative deprivation
Condition Anxiety
Symbolic majuscule
Transformative asset
Veblen practiced
Diderot Upshot

References [edit]

^ ^a ^b ^c Safire, William (November xv, 1998). "On Language; Up the Downward Ladder". The New York Times. Retrieved June 23, 2022.
^ ^a ^b Markstein, Don (2010). "Keeping Up with the Joneses". www.toonpedia.com. Don Markstein'south Toonopedia. Retrieved June 23, 2022.
^ "Stripper'due south Guide". Retrieved 12 September 2022.
^ Robert Hendrickson, The Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins.
^ "Why are We Keeping Upwardly with the Joneses?". Human of 300. Retrieved twenty May 2022.
^ Mark Twain, "Corn Pone Opinions"
^ Lee, Hermione (2013). Edith Wharton. Random House. p. 22. ISBN978-1-84595-201-iii.
^ de Troubiand Mail service, Marie Caroline (1913). The descendants of John Jones and John Bricklayer.
^ Wharton, Edith (1934). A Backward Glance. D. Appleton-Century Company Incorporated.
^ Galí, Jordi (1994). "Keeping up with the Joneses: Consumption Externalities, Portfolio Choice, and Asset Prices". Journal of Coin, Credit and Cyberbanking. 26 (1): 1–eight. JSTOR 2078030.
^ Mason, Roger (2000). "Conspicuous Consumption and the Positional Economy: Policy and Prescription since 1970". Managerial and Conclusion Economics. 21 (three/four): 123–132. doi:x.1002/mde.977.
^ "Possessions 2" Archived 2008-03-07 at the Wayback Machine, Notre Dame mag
^ "Money Only Makes You Happy If It Makes Y'all Richer Than Your Neighbors", Science Daily, March 2010
^ Furnas, C. C., The Side by side 100 Years. Reynal and Hitchcock. Book. 1936
^ Hitchens, Christopher (five June 1997). "The Problem with HRH". London Review of Books.
^ Keeping Up with the Joneses at IMDb