How to Tell If You're a WASP

By Nick McMaster,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 21, 2009 4:16 PM CDT
How to Tell If You're a WASP
In this book cover image released by Little, Brown & Company, "Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of WASP Splendor" by Tad Friend, is shown.   (AP Photo/Little, Brown & Company)

Being a WASP is a lot more than being just white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant. Author Tad Friend expounds at length on the criteria for true WASP-hood in his upcoming book Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of WASP Splendor. Vogue offers the highlights:

  • Your refrigerator "contains only marmalade, wilted scallions, out-of-season grapes, seltzer, expired dairy products, and vodka."
  • You have a long and unwieldy full name but go by a nickname like "Bootsy" or "Scrote".

  • As a kid, "you wore Lacoste shirts in a vibrant effusion of pinks, yellows, and greens"; now you favor "dull, molting colors of khaki and battleship gray, and tweeds."
  • Your chosen sport "typically requires a large or intricately carpentered space unusable for any other purpose, expensive equipment, and a willingness to endure cold and/or discomfort."
  • "You own a sporting-breed dog, named after a strong liquor."
(More White Anglo-Saxon Protestant stories.)

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