@alh – Do you get the sense that the men you are describing are resentful of the women? Hannah Rosin in her book “The End of Men” describes that dynamic in rural America, but the book specifically focuses on blue-collar workers who, in prior generations, would likely have had well-paying manufacturing jobs. She describes men who are furious at the women for usurping their roles. (I’ve only read excerpts of the book.)
Not resentful at all! They brag on their wives all the time. Young men out here who barely graduated from high school and manage to marry women with college degrees feel like they have done very well for themselves. Their wives earn good salaries for out here. The men still have their own farming or businesses. They hope to be successful at those pursuits some day. The farms that are profitable usually have a wife in charge. To be honest, that just occurred to me. I have to give that a whole lot more thought.
One local girl came back to the family farm after being away. She married a local boy. She had an idea that makes money. Her father and husband are implementing her idea. She had help with the idea from an older woman who is a transplant, but married now to a local man. The older woman found her a market for her idea.
nottelling: you have me rethinking some of this! I think I may need to do a chart to think about what is going on with women through the last three generations. It was really important to some of the local farmers of my parents’ generation to send all their children (my generation) to college. Not all those college educated kids stuck around to farm. Some of them have come back here in retirement.
Super interesting!
Someone upthread mentioned “red headed stepchild.” My ex used that expression as in “if you don’t hurry up and finish your chores, I’m gonna whip you like a red headed stepchild.” (There was no actual whipping;)).
My grandfather used to say “too big for your britches.” Also, looks like she has “ants in her pants” referring to someone being fidgety. I haven’t heard those in a long time.
A former, and southern, boss used to say ‘that idea’s about as popular as a redheaded stepchild.’
My sister has a redheaded stepchild she doesn’t like.
Speaking of colloquialisms. I was struck by alh’s sentence above:“They brag on their wives all the time.” I would have said “brag about,” not “brag on.”
@Silpat I’ve seen those videos, and they’re spot on. Not being culturally southern, but having lived here for 25 years, I can appreciate the social complexity of southern women, even if I find it completely exhausting.
Most of my female friends are not southern, because those women are continually affronted by my yankee+nerd directness, but too southern to tell me that I’m annoying them. My closest friend was born in brazil, and my next closest friend was born in columbia, so I guess I tend to gravitate towards the saucy, take no prisoners but be very warm and affectionate south american culture more than the southern “bless your heart” one. Or that may be egregiously overgeneralizing.
I’ll have to ask them what their favorite colloquialisms are -I wonder if they’re different from american ones?
Silpat: Thank you!
I’ve been watching those southern women videos. To be honest, they just sound like regular conversation to me. It wouldn’t really have occurred to me to post most of them. I will say, if someone asks you: “you’re not from around here, are ya?” - you’ve probably really offended them, though likely it was unintentional. You just don’t understand local custom.
Re #254 - I live about 4 hours from Pittsburgh and people leave out “to be” all the time, and it makes me crazy!
I located the specific Yale linguistic link on “needs washed”: http://microsyntax.sites.yale.edu/needs-washed
At the top, it suggests that “Its origin needs traced.” 
Even if you are not interested in reading the whole thing, it is worthwhile to scroll down to the Minion meme.
(It could go on The Great Seal of CC.)
"My closest friend was born in brazil, and my next closest friend was born in columbia, so I guess I tend to gravitate towards the saucy, take no prisoners but be very warm and affectionate south american culture more than the southern “bless your heart” one. "
I loved my Brazilian women clients. They were warm and friendly, and it didn’t feel fake or superficial, but genuine. I have to say, sometimes small-town friendliness feels insincere to me.
@Overtheedge I still say “she is too big for her britches”. I have heard the “I am going to beat you like a red-headed stepchild” my whole life but I do not say that one as I just do not like it. As for “good ol boys” it is not good when I say it because I am usually talking about the “good 'ol boy” system of which I am not a part. I am a rule follower who does not like back door sneaky deals. I have heard it used in a good context when you are talking about…“that’s Donny’s son, Nate, he is a good 'ol boy who works over in the next county”. This just means he is a nice stand-up guy.
One of my UK business associates referred to an older executive as “past his sell-by date.” I thought that was hilarious and I adopted it!
"My closest friend was born in brazil, and my next closest friend was born in columbia, so I guess I tend to gravitate towards the saucy, take no prisoners but be very warm and affectionate south american culture more than the southern “bless your heart” one. Or that may be egregiously overgeneralizing.
I’ll have to ask them what their favorite colloquialisms are -I wonder if they’re different from american ones?"
My wife is from Brazil and, oh boy, I could respond directly to the above inquiry. But I dare not because many of their aphorisms are scatological in nature or reference male genitalia. Sometimes, she’ll say something in English that is commonly used in Portuguese, and my reaction will be “Whaattt? how did you guys come up with THAT expression!” Ha.
From my mom - Loose lips sink ships - You never know who is going to hear what you say. Make sure you don’t say anything you wouldn’t want repeated.
^^I had a section of art history that was about that phrase-it was widely used in WW2, with accompanying graphics of sailors talking to ladies of the evening, who turned out to be spies.
Interestingly, the American/French/British versions always had the prostitute staring beguilingly, yet evilly, at the viewer or at the sailor.
The Russian version had a grandma in a babushka with a finger held sternly to her lips-same message, entirely different delivery-they used a village authority figure to command tight lips.
I also like the UK putdown of a scattered presentation: “a dog’s breakfast.”
Or an underfunded project: “funded by the whiff of an oily rag.”
Some 20 plus years ago, I was in London on a work assignment, had finished for the day, and said to two female colleagues that I was taking a taxi to my hotel and offered them a ride. The next morning, I got to work and was met by a stern HR representative, who accused me of propositioning them. I learned that “a ride” very specifically referred to, well, you can imagine. I kept to purely professional conversation with those two, and only as little as necessary!
To me, “good ol’ boy” connotes down-home Southernness, and particularly rural white (and obviously male) Southernness. I’m pretty sure it’s a term of Southern origin, used to refer to a man who exhibits a kind of easygoing male camaraderie, unpretentious, approachable, and down-to-earth. It’s a term I never heard growing up in the rural North except on television and in the movies, and then only in reference to Southerners. The character traits it connotes were probably viewed mostly in a positive light, though it might also suggest a certain lack of sophistication, which could be either positive or negative depending on the speaker and the context. And it implies membership in a loose male social network that by its very nature excludes women—Southern women were never good ol’ boys, nor did they aspire to be, and as far as I know there’s no female equivalent. It probably also excludes non-whites. It’s possible that Southern society has now evolved to the point where black, Latino, or Asian males may also be considered “good ol’ boys,” but my impression is that wasn’t originally the case. In Chicago I would frequently hear African-Americans describe a fellow African-American newly arrived from the rural South as “country” (as in, “He’s country” or “She’s very country”), a mostly pejorative term connoting simpleness, naivete, and lack of sophistication, though it could sometimes suggest positive attributes like innocence, warmth, generosity, trustworthiness and a trusting nature. But never “good ol’ boy.”
That’s very different from the “old boys club” or “old boys network.” To me, those terms conjure up images of older, WASP-y, well-connected men of inherited wealth who “prepped together” at exclusive Northeastern boarding schools and attended Harvard, Yale, or Princeton back in the day when the most important admissions criteria were social pedigree and a favorable nod from the headmaster of a respected prep school. Men who advanced together in business, law, and politics through mutual backscratching based on old school ties, class loyalty, and an intergenerational leg up—though just broadminded enough to recognize that a Harvard man might reasonably be expected to help out a Yale man and vice versa. In short, these were the sorts of men who were brought up to believe it was their birthright to quietly run the world from the corporate boardrooms, the bench and bar, the power positions of politics, and the back rooms of their exclusive, all-male, WASP-only social clubs, and who advanced to those positions through social connections and reciprocity norms (or patronage, if you like) within their exclusive social milieu. Again, clearly exclusionary of women, and for many years explicitly exclusionary of Jews, racial minorities, and “ethnic” types of any stripe, which tended also to exclude Catholics (though sometimes the exclusion of Catholics was also explicit)… Those formal barriers have fallen, but remnants of the old power dynamics persist. By extension, “old boys network” can also be used to refer to other tracks of male-dominated power, prestige, and patronage, e.g., in certain academic fields (especially the sciences and engineering, but also more broadly), in law firms, in the i-banking and consulting worlds, and in the medical profession.
@QuantMech - That makes a lot of sense - my sentence translates more directly to “it must be fixed,” since that’s the structure which is taught first in my HS’s curriculum.
I bet “must fixed” is not a phrase in Pittsburgh/the Midwest the way “needs fixed” is.
I used to have a job where I traveled a lot, and a guy once told me that he’d rather deal with people from the NE than Southerners. He said Northerners were more brusque and gruff, but one knew where one stood with them. Southerners were just as nice and polite as they could be, but one never knew how sincere they were. I’ve found this to be true myself.