After the tenth time you want to say, “Well, not anymore!”
I still remember the grade-school drama involving my oldest friend, Doug Harbison, and my new friend, Craig Smith. I felt confident enough about Doug’s friendship that I could assure Craig that he was my best friend because I thought nothing would alienate Doug. I was wrong. It really hurt Doug’s feelings, and I felt terrible.
Bad manners often come from a place of deep unhappiness. It’s almost a declaration of bad citizenship, a way of challenging the world: “Why should I be a good citizen? You haven’t been good to me!”
Frankly, in my experience, people who try to put you on the spot about your feelings are just angry with you, and they’re projecting negative feelings onto you. They want to start a fight so they have an excuse to be so upset. Often the anger is based on your aloofness. They’re thinking, Where does he get off not liking me? I’m very likable!
You know, this book started out as an etiquette book, but at times I’ve thought, Maybe it’s too tough to behave well under all the crazy circumstances modern life throws at you.
Do you know how Amy Vanderbilt, the etiquette maven, died? In 1974, she fell or jumped out of the second-story window of her East Eighty-seventh Street town house. It was mysterious. I wonder sometimes if the number of things that could go wrong between people just overwhelmed her and she lost all interest in avoiding pitfalls like open windows.
In fact, when you start thinking about how cruel people can be to one another, you wonder whether you should become an advocate not for manners but for living in a cave with a boulder rolled in front of it. Life is full of many shocking surprises and upsetting interactions. Maybe we should all opt out.
Especially because becoming a hermit brings up some great design opportunities. We can bring back the fifties bomb shelter.
My mother was very into that idea back in the day. She was looking at plans right and left and stocking up for it. I think I was in my twenties when she finally got rid of all the boxes with the gallon plastic containers of distilled water and the by-then-exploded canned food.
I didn’t care about preparing for the apocalypse, but I did love the architecture. The shelter was basically a submarine with a big periscope. The thought of a nuclear war terrified me, and I didn’t enjoy the nuclear drills we had to do at my school. I used to think, I don’t think hiding under our desks is a useful exercise. Will it really protect us if bombs fall and the whole building caves in?I was a critic even then.
Ultimately, though, I think leaving your subbasement is well worth the trouble. And what else can we do? We’re human beings. Try as we might to avoid it, and as hard as it might sometimes be to act civil, the truth is this: We need one another.
Physical Comfort Is Overrated
WHENEVER I MEET NEW people, almost without fail they say, “I was so afraid of what you’d say about my clothes!” The truth is: I really don’t take note of what other people wear unless their outfit blows my mind for good or for ill, and even in that case I will rarely say anything unless I’m asked.
When I was taping Extra!the other day, the camera guy said, “Oh God, I just know you’re going to be disappointed in what I’m wearing.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “You’re hoisting a camera and down on your knees and moving around. You need to be agile. It wouldn’t be right for you to be in a tailored suit! You’re dressed appropriately!”
I get a little shrill when I talk about it, because it seems like people are either too worried about what they have on or not worried enough. People are really intimidated by fashion, and as an educator and a fashion lover I think that’s such a shame.
Meryl Streep said in a 2009 Vanity Fairarticle that she was over trying to appeal to men. “I can’t remember the last time I really worried about being appealing,” she said.
I don’t totally believe that she doesn’t care. It is true that she’s really eschewed fashion. I think it’s smart, intellectual Meryl speaking, saying she’s too smart for style. But no one’s too smart for it. Providing we leave our cave, it matters to all of us.
When we look good, we feel better. That’s true for everyone. You feel better able to tackle the world. It’s not a good feeling going into an exam without having prepared, and it’s not a good feeling leaving the house without having dressed to be around people. Just the way it never rains when you have an umbrella, you’ll never run into people if you look fantastic. But go outside in pajamas, and you’ll run into every ex you have.
The key is not being dressy. The key is being appropriate.
Someone at my neighborhood grocery store once said to me, “Wow, you really do wear jeans and a T-shirt!”
“Yes,” I said, “at the grocery store.”
It’s all about context. I wear a suit to work, to weddings, to funerals, to the theater, and to church. When shopping at the grocery store or running errands, I have been known to wear jeans, because it’s totally appropriate. The jeans fit me and are clean, and I usually pair them with a jacket, but yes, jeans!
Some people think of dressing up or being polite as a burden. They think having to wear a tie or use the right fork or send a thank-you card is a kind of shackle. To these people I say: Getting out of bed is a shackle. If you feel that way, stay in it! Invest in a hospital gurney and wheel yourself around on it when you need to go out.
I get very impatient with this whole “comfort issue” with clothing. Yes, you don’t feel as comfortable in clothes that fit you as you do in your pajamas and robe. That’s a goodthing. You’re navigating a world where you need to have your wits about you. If you’re in a lackadaisical comfort haze, you can’t be engaged in the world the way you need to be.
Would I be more comfortable in a business meeting wearing my pajamas?
No! It would feel, honestly, very weird. I would think, Where’s my IV? When do I take my next meds?
Wanting to look good in public has to do with the respect that I have for myself and the respect that I have for the people around me. One of the things I love about New York City is how much people dress up for one another. Walking down the street is such a pleasure, because people are really turned out. Yes, it probably took them more than five minutes to get ready, but it was so worth it. They make the city a prettier place.
In her wonderful memoir D.V.,Diana Vreeland (who was born exactly fifty years to the day before me—lucky me!) talks about how she prepared nightly for the arrival of her husband. She dressed up for him every single night:
Isn’t it curious that even after more than forty years of marriage, I was always slightly
shy
of him? I can remember his coming home in the evening—the way the door would close and the sound of his step … If I was in my bath or in my bedroom making up, I can remember always pulling myself up, thinking, “I must be at my very best.” There was never a time when I didn’t have that reaction
—ever.
That’s kind of lovely, I think. It’s always better to err on the side of beauty over comfort. It might get tiresome in practice, but it’s a sweet idea. And it’s certainly better than being the dowdy, depressing, slatternly housewife played by Shirley Booth in Come Back, Little Sheba.