Les bobos

Les bobos were the focus of tonight's culturally enhanced French class. Otherwise known as the bourgeois-bohême or bourgeois-bohemian social class of society, they've not only taken over the city of Lyon, but a lot of France as well.

Our substitute teacher gave us a survey of questions with which we were supposed to pretend to answer as a member of this particular social class. Both of the 'b' words bring forth stereotypes, but not many people in the class were entirely confident of this hybrid group's make-up, many of whom were apparently wandering the streets just outside of our classroom.

To shorten a ninety minute class into one long digestible sentence: les bobos are (for the most part)...

Thirty years old, married with kids who go to private school, living in a loft in the suburbs of a city, working at a white collar job or liberal profession, like to get around by either bike or Range Rover, like going to museums, Japanese restaurants, seeing Korean movies, and supporting PSG football matches, generally wear designer clothes, and vote for the green party but are generally moderate right politically.

All of this information comes from French singer, Renaud's song, Les Bobos, which we listened to in class on YouTube. Here are the lyrics in French.

From this description, maybe everyone has a little bit of "bobo" in them, but the sort of person that most comes to mind is "celebrity." Who's got loads of money and certainly spends it, but feels guilty enough to be somewhat ecologically minded?