“Let it never be said that love is an Indolent calling .” —Ovid
Bediquette : A Branch of Public Beducation
In an earlier treat – we mean, treatise– we took the great American public right upstairs, and showed them the most universal thing in their lives, which is bed. We gave a few elementary ideas on how to get into it, how to lie in it correctly, and how to get out of it.
The darlings have known violent interest in these instructions.
They have been taught for years how to eat asparagus and green corn, and how to write a formal letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury. They know what to wear when invited to an afternoon wedding at the White House. Such things are merely etiquette. Hundreds of teachers have written millions of words about them, all those words ending at bedtime.
Our book goes higher. It goes straight into the bedroom. It discusses bediquette, the new social science intended for people so clever that they do not just hang up their good manners every night with their clothes. This is the first complete book on how to be knightly, nightly. We commend this subject to every intelligent reader as an important new branch of public beducation.
SUZYGOPHOBIA
This is the oldest disease in the world, though it has never held a name until now. You know it. You probably have it. Don't tell us you don't know what it is. You've heard of Claustrophobia, and Hydrophobia, and even Silurophobia, haven't you? Silurophobia means "car fear." We have christened "Suzygophobia" from the Greek word "suzygos" which means "yoke-fellow" or "mate."
Do you have Mate Fear?
Do you have it worst at night?
Do you approach the conjugal bedroom fearing everything that may happen to you in it? Would you rather plunge into a jungle that may contain a tiger than plunge into a bed that she really does contain your mate?
The cure for this awful disease is to leave this book where your ferocious mate will find and read it. Enclose it with a bunch of American Beauty roses, or folded into a bath towel, as your means may permit.
If the book doesn't teach your mate the rudiments of good and gentle behavior, your last recourse is a club. (The Union and The Colony Club are considered to be the two most refined hide-outs in New York.) — From Dr. Ralph Y. Hopton's and Anne Ballio's 1936 “Better Bed Manners”
The subject of men and women versus etiquette is absolutely fraught with sex, which is as it should be. It is a good thing from other standpoints, too, for the fact greatly simplifies the approach to this chapter.
1. Good etiquette, for a man, is what ever makes a woman feel more like a woman, without making her feel weak minded.
2. Good etiquette, for a woman, is whatever makes a man feel more like a man, without making him feel more harassed and put upon then he normally does anyway.
These are the touchstones, then, against which to test any puzzling point of intersexual etiquette, whether in the elevator* or in the bed. For today, with each sex doing so many of the same things, and push buttons doing most of the rest, both men and women need occasional reminders as to which team they're on.
It has come to my attention that some people have, as a matter fact, forgotten. That is, some men would rather act like women, and some women would rather act like men, which makes for a certain confusion. But several books have already been written about this, so I won't need to go into it. This chapter will concern itself only with the old-fashioned clear-cut kind of people, of whom there are still many around. It will not concern itself, however, with the sex appeal factor (except in so far as it becomes as a happy side effect of observing points 1 and 2.)
Lady writers in particular are always advising other women on how to attract men: 14 ways to up your sex appeal**. And it is a curious fact that these pieces are often read and followed even by women who don't want any more sex appeal – say a woman who has so much already that she is in perpetual hot water, or a woman who privately considers the whole thing a great nuisance and doesn't really want to get to where all that sex appeal would probably lead her. Like a vegetarian going to a great deal of trouble to make friends with the butcher.
At any rate, before upsetting your applecart to do things those articles recommend. It's wise to take a look at the men attracted to the lady writer who is touting her own wiles. Of course, you seldom get a chance to – although, just once, I did. I met a couple of the men this charm expert had attracted, herself, and decided I'd sooner draw flies. So each to his own, and you can never tell.
Actually, and the glorious fact is that everyone – flat-chested or bulbous,silent or talkative, rosy or sallow, tiny or tall – everyone appeals to someone, as a cursory glance at one's married friends will attest.
But who can make the rules? Some men think sultry perfume is sex appealing; others like a fresh soap and water smell, like a little child's clean hair. Some women find a male mustache fetching; some find it scratchy. Many people haven't the slightest idea what they want until they marry it, or till they don't marry it and wish they had.
So let's get down to where the work is – right into the etiquette of going out together and being out together – before we go on to the matter of living together, around the house and in the bedroom. (Most etiquette books never get into the bedroom, but this one will, because, after all, a great deal of etiquette takes place there, or ought to.)
Before getting mired in some minor details (what woman actually cares much whether a man is on the outside or the inside of an ordinary suburban sidewalk?), we 'll look at some basics: for one thing, the etiquette of the invitation proffered female by the male.
To hear your apt to get some real sparklers: "Want to go anywhere tonight, hon? " Or, "Nothing special you want to do, is there? " these approaches don't make a woman feel womanly, they make her feel either apathetic or domineering. (Now she'll have to think of something.)
What she would vastly prefer is the approach of a high school boy I know. He phones a girl and says, "I'm going to go see that Western at the Paramount tonight. Want to come? "If she doesn't, fine. He'll call somebody else. This lad will go far.
Some men would counter my thesis here with "yes, but she never wants to do what I want to do. "But this probably isn't so. If he clearly and enthusiastically wants to do it enough, she usually will – that is, if they like each other, and if they don't, what are we talking about?
Anyway, many women like men to fight harder for their rights. There's too much male docility around, these days, and it's taking a lot of fizz out of the battle between the sexes. Take the matter of who was supposed to go first.
Well, he is. Nearly every time. Common sense says so, and so does present-day etiquette, although many men have Ladies First so firmly wedged into their heads they often hang back when they shouldn't.
Women like men to go first. After all, the farmer walking six feet ahead of his wife across the cow pasture showed native gallantry, even when she was carrying the cow. He was blazing the trail around ditches and other unpleasant things she might have stepped in. A woman doesn't mind doing a little toting, so long as he will pioneer.
(If ever saw a well-meaning man trying to get a woman through a revolving door headed him without knocking her hat off and her teeth in , you saw good example of misguided manners. He should have gone through first. Then she'd have followed, on his push.)
Look at some other instances: he goes up a ladder first, for reasons of delicacy and so you can give her an assist at the top. He gets into a cab first, so she need'nt scoot across the wide backseat to make room for him. Scooting is easier for someone and trousers. He goes first down a train corridor because it's going to take biceps to open those stubborn doors between the cars. If he has no biceps, this will develop them. He goes first down the theater if there's no Usher. (If there is, she goes first, close to the wandering pool of light from the ushers torch.) He goes first into a dark nightclub. This could be a nasty bistro, and he'd better lead the way. He goes first into a restaurant, it's no maître d' is there to greet them. Masterfully he finds a table. He climbs into a bus or streetcar first, to help her up. He gets off first, to help her down – unless it's crowded and she's nearest the door, in which case she'll just have to keep her eyes open and her wits about her and move.
An exception is escalators. Here she should go first – and she usually does, automatically, because she's on a high lope for the Dress Sale on Three. But he's supposed to be behind, anyway, to catch her if she slips.
Finally, he gets off a crowded elevator first if he's nearest the door. Women prefer this to being squashed by his gallantly hanging back. He should just get out.
It's all quite simple, you see. He goes first when ever that's easier or safer for her.
Sometimes a man finds it hard to play his proper role with aplomb or even with good will. I asked a worldly man I know what annoys him most in the area of women and etiquette. After considerable thought, he said, "the woman who takes me for a salaried doorman when I hold the door for her in a public building." He thought some more. "And, "he added, "the forty women right behind her who know a good thing when they see it. "
Then, too, when a woman slams full tilt into a man and waits for him to apologize, or hogs the middle of the escalator step so no one can get around her, or forgets that her umbrella points on the average male's eye level, or that her free swinging 10 pound pocketbook is a first-class battering ram – Well, she does her cause no good, for men find it hard to be gallant to a Sherman tank. But many men would enjoy being more courtly, it women would make it easier.
"... Pleasant as they have been, my years in the United States whatever more agreeable if American women had allowed me to kiss their hands... Despite my frustration, I still regard the kissing of a woman's hand as one of those small courtesies necessary for the preservation of the essential margin between men and women, which makes them both, in different ways, superior to each other and, therefore, again in different ways, and on a higher level, truly equal." -Romain Gary
Which isn't to say that she should be an entirely fragile blossom. Take modern car doors. Automotive companies pay high-priced talent to design latches that open at the touch of a pinky, and so Antoinnette might as well use hers. Or, if that is just more than she can bring herself to do, a man can correctly reach across her to open it for her.
A great deal of trivia has crept into intersexual etiquette, and that's a fact. For instance a man – saith the etiquette book – mustn't walk between two women, except when the Trio crosses a street. But if he's the only man they've got why mustn't he? The book says it's because he'd have to turn his face away from one of them in speaking to the other. But this isn't so terrible. Maybe each of the ladies enjoys having a man beside her, and if he weren't, she'd feel like Orphan Annie. Did they ever look at it that way?
Also, a man isn't supposed to take a woman's arm, and except when crossing the street. But if she is wearing spike heels, or if it is spring (as or summer, autumn, or winter) and they are in love, he certainly may. That's what this book says.
"A now famous Hollywood actor reveals his lower white-collar origins every time he sits down. He pulls up his trousers to preserve the crease." – Vance Packard
Consider Men's Hatiquette. It's simple, but many words have been wasted on it. Actually, all that matters is that he make sure his hat* is off whenever there's a roof or ceiling overhead – except for long covered thoroughfares like public halls and terminals, and in the Jewish Temple, and on special ceremonial or costumed occasions.
Elevators are a moot point. Taking off his hat is a gracious gesture. But in a closed-packed elevator it can create more distress then joy you must elbow people and knock their hats off in the process.
He never has to take his hat off in the street, unless the flag goes by or stops. Not when a lady goes by or stops. The merest flick of the brim will suffice. And if it's a raw day, practical intersexual etiquette demands that he keep it securely on. Should he catch cold in his sinuses, some woman will probably have to nurse him or put up with him, and thus he has'nt proved to be so gallant in the long run. – From Peg Bracken’s, “I Try to Behave Myself”
The darlings have known violent interest in these instructions.
They have been taught for years how to eat asparagus and green corn, and how to write a formal letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury. They know what to wear when invited to an afternoon wedding at the White House. Such things are merely etiquette. Hundreds of teachers have written millions of words about them, all those words ending at bedtime.
Our book goes higher. It goes straight into the bedroom. It discusses bediquette, the new social science intended for people so clever that they do not just hang up their good manners every night with their clothes. This is the first complete book on how to be knightly, nightly. We commend this subject to every intelligent reader as an important new branch of public beducation.
You can sleep just like Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, and on Easy Terms!
SUZYGOPHOBIA
This is the oldest disease in the world, though it has never held a name until now. You know it. You probably have it. Don't tell us you don't know what it is. You've heard of Claustrophobia, and Hydrophobia, and even Silurophobia, haven't you? Silurophobia means "car fear." We have christened "Suzygophobia" from the Greek word "suzygos" which means "yoke-fellow" or "mate."
Do you have Mate Fear?
Do you have it worst at night?
Do you approach the conjugal bedroom fearing everything that may happen to you in it? Would you rather plunge into a jungle that may contain a tiger than plunge into a bed that she really does contain your mate?
The cure for this awful disease is to leave this book where your ferocious mate will find and read it. Enclose it with a bunch of American Beauty roses, or folded into a bath towel, as your means may permit.
If the book doesn't teach your mate the rudiments of good and gentle behavior, your last recourse is a club. (The Union and The Colony Club are considered to be the two most refined hide-outs in New York.) — From Dr. Ralph Y. Hopton's and Anne Ballio's 1936 “Better Bed Manners”
(1.) Good etiquette, for a man, is what ever makes a woman feel more like a woman, without making her feel weak minded. (2.) Good etiquette, for a woman, is whatever makes a man feel more like a man, without making him feel more harassed and put upon then he normally does anyway.
Lady Chatterly's Mistress: Men and Women and What to Do About It
The subject of men and women versus etiquette is absolutely fraught with sex, which is as it should be. It is a good thing from other standpoints, too, for the fact greatly simplifies the approach to this chapter.
1. Good etiquette, for a man, is what ever makes a woman feel more like a woman, without making her feel weak minded.
2. Good etiquette, for a woman, is whatever makes a man feel more like a man, without making him feel more harassed and put upon then he normally does anyway.
These are the touchstones, then, against which to test any puzzling point of intersexual etiquette, whether in the elevator* or in the bed. For today, with each sex doing so many of the same things, and push buttons doing most of the rest, both men and women need occasional reminders as to which team they're on.
It has come to my attention that some people have, as a matter fact, forgotten. That is, some men would rather act like women, and some women would rather act like men, which makes for a certain confusion. But several books have already been written about this, so I won't need to go into it. This chapter will concern itself only with the old-fashioned clear-cut kind of people, of whom there are still many around. It will not concern itself, however, with the sex appeal factor (except in so far as it becomes as a happy side effect of observing points 1 and 2.)
Lady writers in particular are always advising other women on how to attract men: 14 ways to up your sex appeal**. And it is a curious fact that these pieces are often read and followed even by women who don't want any more sex appeal – say a woman who has so much already that she is in perpetual hot water, or a woman who privately considers the whole thing a great nuisance and doesn't really want to get to where all that sex appeal would probably lead her. Like a vegetarian going to a great deal of trouble to make friends with the butcher.
At any rate, before upsetting your applecart to do things those articles recommend. It's wise to take a look at the men attracted to the lady writer who is touting her own wiles. Of course, you seldom get a chance to – although, just once, I did. I met a couple of the men this charm expert had attracted, herself, and decided I'd sooner draw flies. So each to his own, and you can never tell.
Actually, and the glorious fact is that everyone – flat-chested or bulbous,silent or talkative, rosy or sallow, tiny or tall – everyone appeals to someone, as a cursory glance at one's married friends will attest.
But who can make the rules? Some men think sultry perfume is sex appealing; others like a fresh soap and water smell, like a little child's clean hair. Some women find a male mustache fetching; some find it scratchy. Many people haven't the slightest idea what they want until they marry it, or till they don't marry it and wish they had.
So let's get down to where the work is – right into the etiquette of going out together and being out together – before we go on to the matter of living together, around the house and in the bedroom. (Most etiquette books never get into the bedroom, but this one will, because, after all, a great deal of etiquette takes place there, or ought to.)
Before getting mired in some minor details (what woman actually cares much whether a man is on the outside or the inside of an ordinary suburban sidewalk?), we 'll look at some basics: for one thing, the etiquette of the invitation proffered female by the male.
To hear your apt to get some real sparklers: "Want to go anywhere tonight, hon? " Or, "Nothing special you want to do, is there? " these approaches don't make a woman feel womanly, they make her feel either apathetic or domineering. (Now she'll have to think of something.)
What she would vastly prefer is the approach of a high school boy I know. He phones a girl and says, "I'm going to go see that Western at the Paramount tonight. Want to come? "If she doesn't, fine. He'll call somebody else. This lad will go far.
Some men would counter my thesis here with "yes, but she never wants to do what I want to do. "But this probably isn't so. If he clearly and enthusiastically wants to do it enough, she usually will – that is, if they like each other, and if they don't, what are we talking about?
Anyway, many women like men to fight harder for their rights. There's too much male docility around, these days, and it's taking a lot of fizz out of the battle between the sexes. Take the matter of who was supposed to go first.
Well, he is. Nearly every time. Common sense says so, and so does present-day etiquette, although many men have Ladies First so firmly wedged into their heads they often hang back when they shouldn't.
Women like men to go first. After all, the farmer walking six feet ahead of his wife across the cow pasture showed native gallantry, even when she was carrying the cow. He was blazing the trail around ditches and other unpleasant things she might have stepped in. A woman doesn't mind doing a little toting, so long as he will pioneer.
(If ever saw a well-meaning man trying to get a woman through a revolving door headed him without knocking her hat off and her teeth in , you saw good example of misguided manners. He should have gone through first. Then she'd have followed, on his push.)
Look at some other instances: he goes up a ladder first, for reasons of delicacy and so you can give her an assist at the top. He gets into a cab first, so she need'nt scoot across the wide backseat to make room for him. Scooting is easier for someone and trousers. He goes first down a train corridor because it's going to take biceps to open those stubborn doors between the cars. If he has no biceps, this will develop them. He goes first down the theater if there's no Usher. (If there is, she goes first, close to the wandering pool of light from the ushers torch.) He goes first into a dark nightclub. This could be a nasty bistro, and he'd better lead the way. He goes first into a restaurant, it's no maître d' is there to greet them. Masterfully he finds a table. He climbs into a bus or streetcar first, to help her up. He gets off first, to help her down – unless it's crowded and she's nearest the door, in which case she'll just have to keep her eyes open and her wits about her and move.
An exception is escalators. Here she should go first – and she usually does, automatically, because she's on a high lope for the Dress Sale on Three. But he's supposed to be behind, anyway, to catch her if she slips.
Finally, he gets off a crowded elevator first if he's nearest the door. Women prefer this to being squashed by his gallantly hanging back. He should just get out.
It's all quite simple, you see. He goes first when ever that's easier or safer for her.
Sometimes a man finds it hard to play his proper role with aplomb or even with good will. I asked a worldly man I know what annoys him most in the area of women and etiquette. After considerable thought, he said, "the woman who takes me for a salaried doorman when I hold the door for her in a public building." He thought some more. "And, "he added, "the forty women right behind her who know a good thing when they see it. "
Then, too, when a woman slams full tilt into a man and waits for him to apologize, or hogs the middle of the escalator step so no one can get around her, or forgets that her umbrella points on the average male's eye level, or that her free swinging 10 pound pocketbook is a first-class battering ram – Well, she does her cause no good, for men find it hard to be gallant to a Sherman tank. But many men would enjoy being more courtly, it women would make it easier.
"... Pleasant as they have been, my years in the United States whatever more agreeable if American women had allowed me to kiss their hands... Despite my frustration, I still regard the kissing of a woman's hand as one of those small courtesies necessary for the preservation of the essential margin between men and women, which makes them both, in different ways, superior to each other and, therefore, again in different ways, and on a higher level, truly equal." -Romain Gary
Which isn't to say that she should be an entirely fragile blossom. Take modern car doors. Automotive companies pay high-priced talent to design latches that open at the touch of a pinky, and so Antoinnette might as well use hers. Or, if that is just more than she can bring herself to do, a man can correctly reach across her to open it for her.
A great deal of trivia has crept into intersexual etiquette, and that's a fact. For instance a man – saith the etiquette book – mustn't walk between two women, except when the Trio crosses a street. But if he's the only man they've got why mustn't he? The book says it's because he'd have to turn his face away from one of them in speaking to the other. But this isn't so terrible. Maybe each of the ladies enjoys having a man beside her, and if he weren't, she'd feel like Orphan Annie. Did they ever look at it that way?
Also, a man isn't supposed to take a woman's arm, and except when crossing the street. But if she is wearing spike heels, or if it is spring (as or summer, autumn, or winter) and they are in love, he certainly may. That's what this book says.
"A now famous Hollywood actor reveals his lower white-collar origins every time he sits down. He pulls up his trousers to preserve the crease." – Vance Packard
Consider Men's Hatiquette. It's simple, but many words have been wasted on it. Actually, all that matters is that he make sure his hat* is off whenever there's a roof or ceiling overhead – except for long covered thoroughfares like public halls and terminals, and in the Jewish Temple, and on special ceremonial or costumed occasions.
Elevators are a moot point. Taking off his hat is a gracious gesture. But in a closed-packed elevator it can create more distress then joy you must elbow people and knock their hats off in the process.
He never has to take his hat off in the street, unless the flag goes by or stops. Not when a lady goes by or stops. The merest flick of the brim will suffice. And if it's a raw day, practical intersexual etiquette demands that he keep it securely on. Should he catch cold in his sinuses, some woman will probably have to nurse him or put up with him, and thus he has'nt proved to be so gallant in the long run. – From Peg Bracken’s, “I Try to Behave Myself”
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| Compiled and submitted by the late-Demita Usher of Social Graces and Savoir Faire |
Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia
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