I’m Bringing Bougie Back
You Other Haters Don’t Know How to Act
Last week Connor’s school sent him home with a packet of his end-of-year work. Worksheets, drawings, little writing exercises—your standard “please cry softly over your child growing up” bundle.
One assignment asked him to write three sentences about his Christmas tree.
He wrote:
“It is bougie.”
Reader, I died.
Not metaphorically. Not spiritually. I mean full systems shutdown. Six years old. Correct spelling. Perfect usage. No notes.
I immediately did what any emotionally mature adult would do: I posted it on Facebook and Instagram. Because when your child accidentally nails cultural commentary, you don’t gatekeep that. You share it with the group chat of civilization.
The comments were exactly what you’d expect. A mix of delight, shock, and people gently implying this was my fault.
“Of course he’s bougie—he’s your son.”
“I remember when he preferred truffle aioli to ketchup.”
“This tracks.”
For the record—and I’d like this entered into the official record—Connor is currently in a deeply boring phase. Burgers. Steak. Chicken nuggets. The culinary curiosity has vanished. The boy has become Midwestern in his tastes. So let’s not get carried away.
Still. Bougie.
What killed me wasn’t just that he used the word. It was that he used it neutrally. Not as an insult. Not as a flex. Just… observationally. Like describing the weather. Like, this tree has vibes.
And that’s when it hit me: somewhere along the way, being “showy” became a sin. That is why Connor’s comment elicited such a deep response with me and with our friends on social media.
Not immoral in the big, obvious ways. No one’s going to jail. But socially suspect. Cringe. Try-hard. Embarrassing. We entered an era where the highest compliment wasn’t “that’s amazing,” but “you’d never even notice.”
Quiet luxury. Beige wealth. The $900 sweater that looks like it came from Target but whispers to the right people. Succession-core. Billions-core. Rich, but make it emotionally repressed.
And to be clear: I get it. Subtlety can be elegant. Taste matters. But somewhere along the line, we crossed from taste into guilt. From preference into performance.
Enjoy your nice things—but please, for the love of God, don’t look like you’re enjoying them.
Which is why Connor calling something bougie felt so… taboo. Joy without apology. Observation without shame. No moral essay attached.
I didn’t sit him down and teach him this word. I modeled it. Through jokes. Through tone. Through a lifetime of narrating the world like someone who finds pleasure where he can because adulthood mostly feels like a long list of obligations with a good PR team.
So yes. This is on me.
And also? Maybe that’s not a problem.
Maybe the weird thing isn’t that a six-year-old knows the word bougie. Maybe the weird thing is that so many adults feel the need to pretend they don’t.
Quiet Luxury Is Anxiety in a Beige Coat
Somewhere along the way, being “showy” stopped being tacky and started being immoral.
Not wrong in a legal sense. Wrong in a vibes court sense. The kind where no one accuses you directly, but everyone silently agrees you’re doing something… unfortunate.
You didn’t just buy the nice thing.
You wanted the nice thing.
And worse—you enjoyed it.
That’s the part you’re not supposed to show.
So we learned the rules. If you’re going to have money—or access, or taste, or experiences—you’re supposed to launder it. Neutralize it. Make it invisible unless decoded by the right people. Quiet luxury. Understated. Effortless. “Oh this? I’ve had it forever.” Quiet luxury is money trying to cosplay as not-money.
Which, if we’re being honest, is just emotional CrossFit. A performance of restraint designed to prove you’re not one of those people.
The irony is that this didn’t come from the truly wealthy. Old money has never cared what you think. They wear sweaters with holes in them because they’ve already won.
This came from the rest of us. Millennials. People who clawed, optimized, spreadsheeted, hustled, and therapized our way into some version of comfort—and then immediately felt guilty about it.
We were raised on a weird cocktail of messages:
Capitalism is bad.
Wanting things is shallow.
Enjoyment should be earned, justified, or disguised as irony.
If you have something nice, you’d better signal awareness of everyone who doesn’t.
So instead of asking, “Do I like this?” we learned to ask, “Will this make me look like an asshole?”
That’s not taste. That’s fear.
And it shows up everywhere. In the way we talk about travel (“It was fine.”)
In the way we post (“Grateful 🙏”).
In the way we pre-apologize for joy before anyone’s even objected.
This is why the current cultural whiplash feels so intense. Whether you love it or hate it, unapologetic energy has re-entered the chat. And it’s making beige people sweat.
Again—this is not a political argument. It’s an aesthetic one.
On one side, you have a decade-plus of beige minimalism, moral seriousness, and carefully muted pleasure. On the other, you have a brand of excess that doesn’t ask permission, doesn’t explain itself, and doesn’t care if you think it’s tasteful.
And regardless of how you feel about the people involved, the energy shift is unmistakable.
One worldview says: Hide it. Be careful. Don’t provoke.
The other says: Life is short. This is fun. Relax.
And here’s the part people don’t like admitting out loud:
A lot of us are tired of apologizing for having a good time.
Not because we want to be cruel or dismissive. But because shame is an exhausting organizing principle. Because joy that needs a footnote isn’t joy—it’s a press release.
Quiet luxury told us that the highest form of taste was invisibility.
But invisibility isn’t humility. It’s self-surveillance.
And maybe—just maybe—that’s why something loud, tacky, excessive, and undeniably fun suddenly feels so refreshing.
Not because it’s better.
But because it’s honest.
Bougie, Bourgeois, and the People Everyone Loves to Hate
The word bougie didn’t start as a joke. It started as an insult.
It comes from bourgeois—the French middle class. Not peasants. Not nobility. The in-between. People who weren’t born into titles or land, but who had enough money to start acting like they mattered.
And everyone hated them for it.
The aristocracy despised them because they didn’t have lineage. No inherited taste. No quiet dignity. Just money and enthusiasm. They bought things. They displayed things. They tried too hard.
The lower classes hated them because they represented aspiration—and aspiration is threatening when the system isn’t built to reward it fairly.
So the bourgeois became the perfect villain: upwardly mobile, visibly enjoying themselves, and insufficiently apologetic about it.
Sound familiar?
For a long time, the term stayed mostly academic. Then it went dormant. Then, in the mid–20th century, it re-emerged in African American Vernacular English—this time as a way to call out Black people who had crossed an invisible line. Too comfortable. Too assimilated. Too close to whiteness.
But something interesting happened as hip-hop exploded into a cultural and economic force in the late ’90s and 2000s.
The insult flipped.
Artists who had come from nothing—and who were suddenly making real money—stopped treating wealth like something to hide or justify. They leaned into it. Loudly. Cars. Jewelry. Fashion. Excess.
Not because they were shallow—but because visibility itself was the point.
When the system tells you your joy should be muted, expressing it becomes an act of defiance.
So bougie evolved again. It stopped being about betrayal and started being about arrival. About pleasure. About power. About enjoying the fruits without pretending they fell from the sky.
And that’s why the word still carries heat.
Because bougie isn’t just about taste—it’s about who’s allowed to want more.
This tension has always been baked into the American project. We don’t talk about class the way Europe does, but we feel it just as intensely. The country was built by people who rejected aristocracy and then immediately started inventing new hierarchies.
Which is why the Gilded Age felt so electric.
For the first time, money—not land, not bloodlines—was the thing. New money didn’t just challenge the old order; it mocked it. Big houses. Big parties. Big personalities. No apologies.
That world was messy. Unequal. Ethically compromised. And undeniably alive.
It’s why The Great Gatsby still hits people in the chest. Not because it’s a love story or a tragedy—but because it captures the feeling of wanting your life to be bigger than the rules you inherited.
Old money has always hated that impulse. They call it vulgar. Tacky. Soulless.
But what they really mean is: You didn’t wait your turn.
And every time the culture swings toward restraint, minimalism, and moral seriousness, that tension resurfaces. Because there’s always a group of people who feel like they’ve been told—explicitly or not—that enjoying things openly is a character flaw.
So when bougie reappears, it’s never just a trend.
It’s a reminder that pleasure has always been political—and that some people are deeply uncomfortable when joy isn’t quiet.
Greed Is Good (Or at Least, Fun Is Not a Crime)
Let me be very clear before someone screenshots this out of context:
I am not here to defend greed.
Greed—the kind that hoards, exploits, dehumanizes, and rationalizes suffering—is ugly. Always has been. Always will be.
What I am here to defend is something much less dramatic and weirdly controversial:
Fun.
Somewhere along the way, we started treating pleasure like a moral liability. Something that had to be justified by productivity, philanthropy, or exhaustion. If you enjoyed something too much, too openly, you were expected to immediately contextualize it.
Yes, this was nice, but—
Yes, I loved it, however—
Yes, it was amazing, and I recognize my privilege—
It’s not that those statements are wrong. It’s that they became compulsory. Joy turned into something you had to file paperwork for.
And this is where the Gatsby thing matters—not as a literary flex, but as a feeling.
The Gilded Age wasn’t compelling because it was ethical. It wasn’t. It was corrupt, unequal, and absurd. What made it intoxicating was that it felt like a jailbreak. A moment where the old rules—about who got to matter, who got to enjoy themselves, who had to stay small—briefly loosened their grip.
New money didn’t just buy things.
It bought permission.
Permission to be loud. To be excessive. To enjoy life without pretending you didn’t care.
That energy has always terrified people who benefit from restraint as a social norm. Because restraint keeps hierarchies stable. Restraint keeps everyone guessing their place.
Which is why every cultural swing toward pleasure gets reframed as decadence. As decline. As proof we’ve lost our way.
But here’s the thing no one likes admitting: a lot of people don’t actually want austerity. They want meaning. And when meaning feels inaccessible, joy becomes the next best thing.
Sometimes people aren’t chasing excess. They’re chasing aliveness.
This is where I have to talk about myself—and I’m already worried about being seen as bougie… cause yeah that’s the society we’re in.
Through points and miles—not money, not generational wealth, not some secret VC Slack—I’ve stumbled into experiences that look extravagant on paper. Showers and caviar at 35,000 feet. Hotel suites where the party accidentally goes all night. Cities that seem engineered around opulence.
And here’s the part that surprised me: the luxury wasn’t the point.
What stuck with me was how unserious it all felt.
No one was pretending this made them better. No one was moralizing it. It wasn’t about deserving or earning or signaling virtue. It was just… fun. Temporary. Playful. Slightly ridiculous.
Like adulthood briefly stopped acting like a performance review.
And maybe that’s what so many of us are reacting to right now. Not a hunger for more stuff—but exhaustion with pretending joy needs to be hidden, muted, or translated into something respectable.
You don’t have to worship excess to notice this shift. You just have to be honest about how tightly wound the last decade made us.
So no—greed isn’t good.
But joy without apology?
That might be.
Comfort, Craft, and the Places That Actually Feel Like Home
Here’s where the story turns—because if this were really about excess, it would be boring. And dishonest.
A few weeks ago, a friend told me about a weekend they’d just spent in Madison, Wisconsin. Walkable. Great bars. Excellent food. Lively but not frantic. Their exact words were:
“It wasn’t bougie at all. It was just… comfortable. And really fun.”
And I knew exactly what they meant.
Because I feel that way every time I visit Grand Rapids. Two of my dearest friends live there, and it’s a city with absolutely no interest in impressing you. No posturing. No performance. Just people who care deeply about what they’re doing.
The coffee is excellent—not because it’s rare or imported or precious, but because someone obsessed over getting it right. The cocktails are thoughtful without being smug. The pub food is elevated in the most Midwestern way possible: not flashy, just perfectly executed.
It feels warm. It feels lived in. It feels like home.
And that’s the thing that matters: bougie was never the point.
The throughline here isn’t money. It’s care.
Care is what makes a meal memorable. Care is what makes a space feel alive. Care is what makes a city—any city—feel like somewhere you want to linger instead of extract content from.
Dubai and Singapore are fun because they lean unapologetically into pleasure and excellence. Madison and Grand Rapids are fun because they prioritize comfort, community, and craft. These are not opposing values. They’re expressions of the same impulse.
Which is why the quiet luxury discourse always felt off to me.
It wasn’t asking us to value restraint. It was asking us to suppress enthusiasm. To flatten joy into something respectable and muted. To pretend that wanting things—whether that’s beauty, quality, or delight—was something to outgrow.
But the places that actually work don’t do that.
They don’t shame you for liking things. They don’t demand that pleasure be rarefied or hidden. They just invite you in and say, “We cared about this. We hope you enjoy it.”
That’s not greed. That’s hospitality.
And once you see it that way, the whole moral panic around bougie starts to dissolve. Because whether it’s a wild skyline or a perfectly poured drink in a low-lit bar, the appeal is the same: someone thought about this. Someone wanted it to feel good.
Maybe that’s what we’ve been missing.
Not austerity. Not excess. Not moralizing taste into submission.
Just spaces—physical, emotional, cultural—where enjoyment isn’t treated like a character flaw.
I’m Bringing Bougie Back
So yes—Connor called the Christmas tree bougie. And yes, that says something about me.
It says I’m the kind of parent who jokes too much. Who narrates life instead of just living it sometimes. Who probably says “vibes” more than a 45-year-old man should. Fair.
But it also says something else.
It says my kid hasn’t yet learned that liking things is supposed to make you feel weird.
He hasn’t learned to pre-apologize for joy. He hasn’t learned to downplay delight or flatten enthusiasm into something more acceptable. He saw something sparkly and excessive and warm—with an app that can make the lights any color known to man—and he just named it. No footnotes. No shame. No performance.
And honestly? Good.
Because somewhere between childhood and adulthood, a lot of us absorbed the idea that enjoyment had to be quiet to be respectable. That wanting nice things—or fun experiences, or beauty, or pleasure—meant you were shallow, unserious, or morally suspect.
We learned to hide our excitement. To say “it was fine” when it wasn’t. It fucking rocked. To hedge every moment of joy with context and caveats. To act like comfort was embarrassing and delight needed an explanation.
That did something to us.
It didn’t make us more ethical. It made us more anxious. More performative. More concerned with how things looked than how they felt.
So no—this isn’t a call to excess. It’s not an argument for greed. And it’s definitely not a manifesto about money.
It’s a small rebellion against the idea that joy needs to be muted to be valid.
Bougie, at its best, isn’t about status. It’s about enthusiasm. It’s about refusing to pretend you don’t care. It’s about letting yourself enjoy the life you’re actually living—not the one you think you’re supposed to justify.
Sometimes that looks like a skyline engineered for pleasure.
Sometimes it looks like a perfect cocktail in a city that doesn’t care if you ever post about it.
Sometimes it looks like a Christmas tree that’s a little too much.
And sometimes it looks like a six-year-old who hasn’t yet learned to apologize for liking what he likes.
I don’t know how long that lasts. Probably not forever. Culture has a way of sanding those edges down.
But if there’s one thing I’m willing to reclaim—quietly or loudly—it’s this:
Joy doesn’t need permission.
Fun is not a moral failure.
And liking nice things doesn’t make you a bad person.
So yeah.
I’m bringing bougie back.
You other haters don’t know how to act.
—David
Yes, YesYesYes, Yes. LOUDER FOR THOSE IN THE BACK.