This is certainly not limited to Brits!
While over here I don’t really get to see them very much, and I think their kind of cool and unusal. I never really notice anything wrong about people wearing them.
The one that annoys me is people wearing Hockey sweaters (jerseys for the non-hockey knowing). They have to be authentic sized, but the player is a much bigger man plus he has huge muscles and huge pads, and the jersey muct tuck in securely during play.
Most people however can’t even come close to filling out the sweater they buy. I don’t care if you are 6’2’’ , you are still going to long like a dork wearing a sweater twice as wide as you and down to your knees. You look like a 5 year old twit playing grown up wearing daddy’s shirt.
I was just about to post something about the difference between Ulster and Northern Ireland but decided that this would only complicate matters even further.
On replica shirts: it’s not confined to soccer. I was very impressed at the number of people wearing them (myself included!) in the pub in London I went into a few weeks ago to watch a Gaelic football match, the Leinster Senior Football Championship replay between Westmeath and Laois. I was also quite impressed with the young lady I met in Sydney (Australia, that is) in May who was wearing a Westmeath shirt.
Granted replica shirts are OK in a pub while watching a match. What I was talking about is strolling along the sea-front of somewhere like Benidorm and seeing a mass of these shirts everywhere. Can’t they afford proper casual clothes?
Rayne Man, I suspect this has something to do with the peculiar desire many Brits (and Irish) have to meet/spend most of their time with their compatriots when they go abroad… that it’s a way of saying “Hello! I’m from ____ … anyone else?”
Don’t understand it myself, as it seems to me to defeat the whole purpose of going to another country, and besides which I generally try to avoid looking like a tourist in any respect (to me it just screams “Mug Me”). But maybe that’s just me.
American chiming in here - yes, there is such a thing as “American hair”, and has been for decades. Not sure how I’d describe it, but when I went to Europe back in my teens I noticed it right away.
I must not have “American Hair”, though, because while I was over there people kept mistaking me for a European. Latvian and Estonian, usually, until I opened my mouth. Then it was a toss up between being mistaken for German (???!) or outed as an American. Once or twice someone asked if I was Canadian (I did grow up near the border and several of my teachers were Canadians, so yeah, sometimes that influence is in my voice)
The racial thing is different in Europe, but I would agree that the prejudice takes different forms, not that it doesn’t exist.
My brother was stationed in Spain and was appalled at the amount of men wearing–mullets. Yep, mullets. Maybe it’s a Sevilla thing. He said they looked trailer park from the neck up and slightly effemininate and overdressed from the neck down.
He also said the S in Spain stands for smoking. 
Hehe. Maybe all countries have “hair”. Come down here and I can take you to a part of the city where you will find more mullets then you can poke a stick at. Horrid things that they are.
Well, there’s definitely such a thing as European (i.e. continental) hair. I was in the pub today and a couple came in, looking from the neck up like extras in a Scorpions video. A mate of mine started talking to them and, sure enough, Germans. No way would Irish people walk around with 'dos like that.
But did they look like they were gathering information for the Green/vegan/sandal wearing party? Those are the Germans that come here.
There is German hair and American hair (like I said we probably all have “hair”)
I dunno about Kiwi hair but there is Aussie hair… it looks a bit like an abandoned bird’s nest and is usually accompanied by long shorts and jesus sandals.
Jesus sandals? The best Aussies wear thongs. They just have no idea what we think they are wearing when they say they are wearing thongs :D.
GRRRRRRRR! Those people are the lowest of the low. I live in SW London - not too far from Chelsea (the club - which is of course in Fulham), who until they were taken over by that arse-faced gangster never sold out, and yet everytime I would go into the pub when the knuckle-draggers were on the TV the place was packed with people all claiming to be life-long fans.
Ditto for England when they played at Wembley.
Wrong 'uns the lot of 'em.
BTW on the Ireland/Eire thing - I had no idea about this and have always used the words intercangably, thinking I was being polite. No Irishmen ever put me straight - they were probably being polite too.
Use “Éire” either when you are speaking in Irish (seems unlikely) or when referring to what is now the Irish Republic between 1937 and 1949.
Otherwise, use “Ireland”.
Righto – I ‘ve been giving this some thought – it’s either that or doing some work.
National Hair:
American hair:
Men – poncy and “groomed” they look like the blokes on the front of Grecian 2000 boxes, or for those who are old enough – the pictures barbers used to have on the wall (but not the Tony Curtis one). These men use “products” on their hair, which simply will not do. Main characteristic is that the hair is “tall”.
Women: Rich or professional women – very high maintenance hair, lots of hours spent on it – never mind “products” this hair needs “equipment”. Always attached to an over-muscled, too thin ball breaker, who spends too much time in the gym and has shoulders like a middleweight, and no tits… Poor women – Big hair.
German Hair:
Men – Mullets still popular as are moustaches.
Women – just Moustaches
Italian Hair –
Men - products used, but always cut in a way that would please mamma (who they live with until they are 40).
Women – dunno, but they’re doing something right
French hair:
Les Hommes: Could do with a wash.
Les Femmes – whatever looks good with a fag, and they do have that wonderful MILF thing going on. Brit birds take note.
Irish Hair:
Non Gingers: INCREDIBLY thick, usually madly curly. Look like they are wearing furry crash-helmets.
Gingers: Beyond the Pale (geddit?)
As for British hair – I simply have no idea. In fact I simply have no hair.
Without trying to defend it at all, I’ll attempt to accurately and comprehensively describe the Worst Possible American Stereotype as generally perceived in the UK:
Loud-mouthed, materialistic, grossly overweight, demanding, culturally insensitive, aggressively self-centred, thoughtless, xenophobic, stubborn and of sub-standard education, also lazy (i.e. expecting all kinds of convenience and driving everywhere).
Now I have met enough American individuals to know that this stereotype is not by any means universally true, if at all, but it (or subsets of its elements) remains remarkably persistent.
Nice one, Owl! So are you a designer baldie?
Nope - just overly endowed with manly hormones.
Love it! Have a nice lunch.
Owl you forgot pommy blokes.
That “what? I had a shower yesterday” look.
The tousled or “straight out of bed” look.
The “only nancy boys care what their hair looks like” look.
Some Kiwi blokes have geneticaly inherited this look.