“Prinking” in Public is Bad Habit

Some women might like to have revived that custom of 200 years ago when beaux used to attend their women friends at their toilet table, but there is no charm or coquetry about seeing a woman wield a powder puff or lipstick in public. There was some artifice about the ladies of 200 years ago. For they had taken an hour at their dressing table to make ready for their dressing. Their maids had thoroughly made them, up and the hair had been labored with to produce the desired effect of charming disarray. Then, too, the men of those days left a renewed interest —and so, too, would the men of today if the custom were revived— in the fact that they were seeing something that all the world might not see—there was something a little risqué about chatting to a lady in her boudoir, even though it was sanctioned by conventional etiquette. 

“There is a time for some things and a time for all things; a time for great things, and a time for small things.”—Cervantes

Grandmother used to think its shockingly bad manners for a woman to put on her gloves after she had left her own front door. They should, not only be on, but all buttoned up by the time she started forth. What would the gentle old soul think if she could see the girls of this day who not only put on their gloves after they have left their homes, but adjust their veils by the nearest penny-in-the-slot chewing gum vendor, tuck up their stray locks with “invisible” hairpins taken from their handbags, and, anywhere or at any time that their little mirror in the top of their bags prompts them to do so, powder their noses and chins regardless of spectators? 

Of course, the young woman with what we call the finer instinct does not do these things, but the practice of “prinking” in public is by no means confined to the class of women who are usually not regarded as lacking in manners. I have seen many a woman, when the lights were partly down at the theater or the opera, surreptitiously pull a powder puff from her opera bag and, with a skilled stroke, efface any effect that the warmth may have had on her perfect makeup. One thing is certain and that is that no man ever enjoys seeing women of his acquaintance perform these little rites of the toilet table in public. 

Some women might like to have revived that custom of 200 years ago when beaux used to attend their women friends at their toilet table, but there is no charm or coquetry about seeing a woman wield a powder puff or lipstick in public. There was some artifice about the ladies of 200 years ago. For they had taken an hour at their dressing table to make ready for their dressing. Their maids had thoroughly made them, up and the hair had been labored with to produce the desired effect of charming disarray. Then, too, the men of those days left a renewed interest —and so, too, would the men of today if the custom were revived— in the fact that they were seeing something that all the world might not see—there was something a little risqué about chatting to a lady in her boudoir, even though it was sanctioned by conventional etiquette. 

But with all the world and his wife looking on when your lady fair powders her nose or publicly acknowledges her own poor, health or lack of vitality by applying rouge to cheeks or carmine to lips, what can you—mere man—do but pray that some kind fate might give her the gift to see herself as others see her? – By Mary Marshall Duffee, 1917

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia