As Channel 4 has decided to run the 2nd season of its inflammatory ‘documentary’ about Irish Travellers (yes, Big Fat Gypsy Weddings doesn’t actually have any Gypsies in it), just months after the eviction of Traveller site Dale Farm, I feel the need to balance some of Channel 4’s lies with the much less glamorous truth.
My Big Fat Gypsy Weddings is supposed to be a documentary, although the spokesperson they have chosen to represent Travellers for the show is neither a Traveller or a Gypsy. Rather, Thelma Madine is a dressmaker chosen by a select small group of Irish Travellers from Rathkeale for many of their wedding dresses. The ‘documentary’ focuses almost entirely on some of the Traveller community in Rathkeale, mostly consisting of Travellers that have been succesful in their businesses and so have lavish weddings. This is far from a fair representation of Travellers, who, like ROMANY Gypsies, mostly live in poverty, have a life expectancy of around 50 and often poor literacy, not because of how they choose to live, but because of the discrimination they face from settled people. Think you got bullied at school? Imagine what it’s like being part of an ethnic group that even politicians and journalists are allowed to be openly hostile towards, that business owners are allowed to refuse business to simply based on ethnicity.
The view of Traveller life shown in MBFGW is probably as alien to actual Gyspies and Travellers, as it is to settled people. But I don’t want to speak for a community I’m not part of, so here’s a response to the show by a Romany Gypsy, from the blog Pipopotamus:
