Miss Manners' Guide for the Turn-Of-The-Millennium - Hardcover

Martin, Judith

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 088687551X ISBN 13: 9780886875510

Publisher: Pharos Books, 1989

Synopsis

The noted pundit offers advice on new technologies, including faxes and answering and cash machines, as well as her customarily sage sayings on home and business etiquette

About this title

About the Author:

Miss Manners, also known as Judith Martin, writes a thrice-weekly newspaper column which is internationally syndicated by United Feature Syndicate. In addition to Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior and Miss Manners' Guide to Rearing Perfect Children, Miss Manners is the author of two novels: Style and Substance and Gilbert, a comedy of manners.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Modern Ladies and Gentlemen

So many traditional opportunities for smutty giggles have disappeared from society. Young people today cannot imagine what fun was once had by the simple exercise of calculating the number of months between a first baby's birth and the date of the parents' wedding.

Miss Manners is therefore reluctant to subtract other such opportunities from modern life, which is grim enough. Nevertheless, it is high time that the traces of dirty humor be removed from friendships and business associations between ladies and gentlemen.

For some decades, we have been operating under a system naively assuming that the only possible relationship between ladies and gentlemen was you-know-what. Therefore, the only set of manners they knew how to use with each other was, shall we say, social gallantry. Businessmen kept trying to pick up the checks for business meals with female colleagues or even female superiors, because the only form of meal they knew how to have with ladies was the date, in which the gentleman traditionally paid. The only pleasant language they knew how to employ was the exaggerated personal compliment appropriate to courtship but jarring in professional situations. Spouses protested working arrangements that teamed their husbands or wives with partners of the other gender, because they could only think of one activity these people might do together.

Friendships were supposed to be segregated by gender, and opposite-gender people could see each other socially only if all spouses were present. Married couples did not accept dinner invitations unless both could attend. If someone you liked married someone you didn't, or your spouse didn't like the friend or the friend's spouse -- and the statistical chance of finding four people who are crazy about one another is small -- the tie was broken. The twentieth-century wedding is designed for the bride to have her close friends as bridesmaids, and the bridegroom to have his as groomsmen, with no role for her male or his female friends. The very term "just good friends" was popularly understood to refer to a clandestine romance.

Miss Manners hates to be the one to break the news that there is just not that much sex in the world. The fact is that such innovations as coeducational dormitories and equal employment opportunity have surprised society by leading to affable companionship as much as or more often than to unbridled lust. Nor is this strictly a modern phenomenon. Sophisticated society in past centuries not only assumed that respectable married people were capable of individual socializing without falling into sin but looked suspiciously at couples who were always seen in each other's company. There must be a reason, society figured, that they displayed so little trust.

As disappointing as it may be for salacious onlookers, we shall have to relearn the social forms of trust. It can no longer be safely assumed that ladies and gentlemen who are seen lunching or dining together are doing anything more exciting than talking or that people who take business trips in mixed groups are having a wonderful time. Gracious, you can't even be sure that people who are living together are -- well, living together. These days they could simply be splitting the rent or pooling their Social Security payments. For such innocent circumstances, dignified but nonromantic manners are appropriate. The factor of gender is removed from such questions as who initiates meetings and who pays bills. In business, precedence is given to rank, and in comradeship, deference is paid to age.

Society must do its part by refraining from making smarmy assumptions: not teasing small children who play together about their "boyfriends" or "girlfriends" and not asking adults how they "feel" about a spouse's opposite-gender colleagues or friends. The truth is that such remarks were always in dreadful taste; they are also likely to be in error.

How, then, society wants to know, do we find out if something really racy is going on? If mere proximity and opportunity are no longer to constitute proof of sin, how on earth are we to be sure that people are not taking advantage of this license to disguise behavior that we are all dying to know about? Modern customs have taken care of this contingency. The answer is: They'll tell you.

Platonic Possibilities

Dear Miss Manners:

How does a comfortably married person go about making friends (I mean what I say: friends) with an attractive member of the opposite sex? Is the answer simply "Very carefully," or are there rules? There must be rules, no doubt of the sort that are lost and recovered, only to be lost again. Let us say that one considers one's life to be enriched by the acquaintance and would be pleased to improve upon it. Adultery is out of the question. How can such a message be politely and convincingly delivered?

Gentle Reader:

Of course, there are proper ways for ladies and gentlemen to have innocent and rewarding friendships. Such relationships went on quite naturally in the eighteenth century (along with other interesting relationships) before the days when attempting a harmless friendship became simply not worth the scandal.

Only in the most rigid social systems is it possible to get ladies and gentlemen so aquiver from deprivation that anything at all from the opposite gender looks good to them. We are now, Miss Manners dearly hopes, emerging from such a period.

You must make it clear that although you and your spouse have individual activities and individual friendships, you are a permanent couple. Your friend should know that your spouse is aware of the friendship and that your life, as you will naturally speak of it in the course of the friendship, is happily shared. Your friend should also know that you do not keep secrets from your spouse, who trusts and approves of you. It is even understood that the confidences of the friendship -- the promise-you-won't-tell-anyone confessions -- do not restrict you from telling your spouse.

Occasionally, some effort should be made to include spouses. A two-person friendship between married people is usually pursued at lunchtime, which is the time of day when social engagements are not made in couples, but you might throw in an occasional dinner just to have people you care about get to know each other.

In spite of all these precautions, Miss Manners must warn you that some people will talk. Let them. If you lead a blameless life, it is ridiculous to curtail it simply for the purpose of avoiding the censure of nasty-minded people.

A Third-Party View

Dear Miss Manners:

Is it proper for an unmarried man to call upon (about once a week), and occasionally take to dinner, the estranged wife of his nephew? The man is about sixty-five and the woman is about thirty. They both say that the relationship is platonic. I have been dating this man for several years, and while I realize that my complaints may sound like (and be) "sour grapes," I am also truly concerned about what friends and neighbors might think of the situation, not to mention what this woman's husband would think if he found out.

Gentle Reader:

There is hardly a social action on earth that is guaranteed to be gossip-proof, but Miss Manners does not consider it scandalous of a lady and gentleman, of whatever ages, simply to dine together. She herself has just invited to luncheon a gentleman considerably younger than herself -- in fact, nine years old.

Your real question is: How should you deal politely with the fact that you feel left out? Not by attempting to squelch the gentleman's freedom through the threat of public disapproval. Even if you managed to do so, you would be establishing yourself as a social coward at best and probably a killjoy as well. The charming thing to do is to show interest, enthusiasm, and sympathy for the young woman. As your friend is fond of her, it should be easy to get him to talk about her, after which it is a natural step for you to tell him how much you would like to be friends with her, too, and perhaps you could join them at the next dinner.

Ladies' Rights

In the glorious names of etiquette and of feminism, a great deal of disreputable advice is being given out these days to people of Miss Manners' own gender. Ladies are being taught ruses and tricks to perform when they are in public places so as to create the impression that they are respectable. They are advised in detail of ways of dressing and behaving in restaurants, hotels, airplanes, trains, and business establishments so as to discourage unsolicited attention. There seems to be no end of answers to the presumed question: How can I prove that I am honest while I am out pursuing my normal business?

Miss Manners is deeply outraged at the premise of the question. She wants it clearly stated that a lady is presumed to be respectable unless proven otherwise. The burden of proof is not on the lady. If there are some who are eager to devote special attention to protecting womanhood from the transgressions of men who are not gentlemen, let them do it by restricting the men, and not their victims.

We have sadly regressed on this point in the last century or so. Back when all men felt that they had the right to oppress women, individual gentlemen did not permit the less well behaved of their gender to insult individual ladies in public. Ladies themselves were quick to take offense at the hint of such unpardonable behavior and to make their objections loud and clear.

Here, then, are Miss Manners' answers to modern questions of etiquette that ought never to be asked:

How does a lady by herself check into a hotel? By stating her name and the fact of her reservation to the room clerk. If she is expecting her husband (anyone of the opposite gender occupying a hotel room with the person registering is, by definition, a spouse), she signs her own name and informs the clerk that she is registering for a double. It is not necessary to give the name of anyone other than the person responsible for the bill.

How do...

About this edition

• Publisher: Pharos Books
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 088687551X
• ISBN 13: 9780886875510
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 742
• Illustrator: Kamen Gloria