Bright Spark in 80’s Etiquette Interest

        

A photo of Judith Martin from her syndicated Miss Manners column. Her column led to a resurgence in learning etiquette, which helped spur on the 1990’s “Etiquette Era.”

She Minds Your Manners

NEW YORK -Call her a response to the Me Decade. “There’s been a tremendous lack of consideration in the name of self assertiveness and honesty,” says Judith Martin. “If I asked you how I looked and you said ‘awful,’ you'd then congratulate yourself for being so honest. A lot of this honesty has simply been an excuse for bad behavior.” She carefully crosses her legs and continues. “People have tried all of that and they don't like it. They thought they could do without kindness, and they were wrong. That’s why they’re rediscovering manners.” And discovering Judith Martin, a gracious, 43-year-old Washington Post drama and film critic who is never without her white gloves and her tart wit. 

The daughter of a diplomat, she realized two key things about herself a few years back. 1) She was tired of being insulted by sales clerks; 2) She was the only person at the Post who knew the correct thing to wear to an afternoon wedding. And so Miss Manners, arbiter of correct behavior, was born. As Miss Manners, Judith Martin pens a wickedly funny Q & A etiquette column that is syndicated thrice weekly to 70 newspapers. Her columns have just been compiled in a handsome, 745-page hardcover volume, “Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior” that has set off a tasteful zoom in her popularity. She is on the verge of becoming a household name – the new Amy Vanderbilt, if you will. But with a decided difference. – Argus-Courier, Petaluma, Calif., 1982

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