Etiquette and 1980’s Self Improvement

“Don't worry too much about making mistakes,” Marja Barrett said in a voice that could soothe a child’s tears. “If you realize that you're using your dinner fork for the salad, don't panic and suddenly drop the fork. You’ll just draw attention to yourself. Believe me, no one probably noticed you were using the wrong fork… they're too busy paying attention to their own food to watch what you're doing.”

Baby boomers were minding their manners

Doug Wright eyes his wife, Gertrude, with a furtive sideways glance. She had just done the unthinkable. Quietly, but decisively, she had cut up her salad. The bite-sized pieces of bibb lettuce, tomato and onion sat in a small mound on the plate in front of her. 

A moment later, speaker Marja Barrett finishes her sentence: “...and remember, always cut up the food a portion at a time." Doug laughs, shrugs his shoulders and grins at his wife. She blushes slightly. “It's easier to eat this way,” she says as she dug into a pile of lettuce using her salad fork tines down, of course.

The setting is a plush restaurant. The topic is table etiquette. Barrett is gently but firmly guiding the roomful of adults through the sloshy dangers of consomme brunoise, the bony pitfalls of grilled duck, and the crumbling perils of dinner rolls. The tables are set with a dazzling array of forks, knives and spoons.

“Don't worry too much about making mistakes,” Barrett says in a voice that could soothe a child’s tears. “If you realize that you're using your dinner fork for the salad, don't panic and suddenly drop the fork. You’ll just draw attention to yourself. Believe me, no one probably noticed you were using the wrong fork… they're too busy paying attention to their own food to watch what you're doing.”

She has spent more than 20 years in what she calls the self-improvement field, including almost eight years as director of the Kathleen Wellman modeling school in Cincinatti. “You can be very intelligent, but if you don't have the social graces, a corporation may be very wary of hiring you,” Barrett says,

Business manners are big business these days. When Barrett was asked to give a roundtable lecture titled “Power Presence” at a recent Women Entrepreneurs’ Conference, the session became so popular that it spilled over into two more.

“More than half the conference attended Barrett's sessions,”says Julia O'Connor, an organizer of the entrepreneurs’ conference. “I think the interest in business manners started at the corporate level and has now filtered down to smaller businesses. It's very important for people with their own businesses, because they have to sell, and to do that they have to know proper manners.”

“Sales people see etiquette and sales as synonymous,” says Ann Marie Sabbath, director of special services at Southern Ohio College. “It’s because so many sales take place over lunch or dinner.” As one of four staffers manning the college’s “At Ease” etiquette hot line, Sabbath has fielded hundreds of etiquette questions from business people. The hotline was established to promote “Mastering Business Etiquette and Protocol,” a seminar the college was sponsoring.

“We've had everyone from secretaries to company presidents to account executives call... anyone who does business over lunch or dinner or who deals with clients in a social situation,” Sabbath says, adding that baby boomers find etiquette particularly attractive. “They are on the corporate climb and are savvy, but they want to refine what they know.”

After the hotline was the subject of a story in The Wall Street Journal, it began receiving telephone queries from around the country.  “We've been getting calls from Washington, D.C., Dallas, New Orleans, Chicago and New York. And we've had local companies calling to ask us if we would customize an etiquette class for them.”

Callers are asking about telephone etiquette, tipping rules, and how to greet and introduce people. But most of the questions zero in on dining. “People want to be comfortable and they want to pay attention to conversations rather than worrying about what fork to use,” Sabbath says

Worrying about which fork to use wasn’t of concern by the time the diners at Barrett’s class had reached the main course of duck, wild rice and vegetables. No one dared touch a fork. All were waiting for everyone at their table to be served. “If there are six people or less at your table, you should wait until everyone is served before you start eating.” Barrett says. “But, if there are more, go ahead and eat; otherwise, your food will be cold.”

As the class attacked the main piece of duck. Barrett offered advice on what to order at a business lunch. “Keep the eating simple,” she said. “Forget spaghetti, ribs and lobster. It's a time to pay attention to business, not the food.” She also recommended dining at a familiar restaurant. “That way, when a guest asks you to recommend a dish, you can, because you know the menu. “And never speak loudly. whether you are ordering dessert or discussing a business deal,” she says. “You never know who is sitting at the next table.”

Barrett ended the class with a round of dining don'ts. Among the no-nos:

Don't lick your fingers.

Don't put your hands on your hair or face.

Don't smoke until the meal is over.

Never stack the dishes.

Don't put a wet spoon back in the sugar bowl.

Find out the name of your server. Don't call him “buddy,” “hey, you” or “sir.” Never snap your fingers to get his attention.

Don't give a toast that lasts more than a minute.

Don't lift your glass when you are being toasted. (If you do, people will think you are toasting yourself.)

Never put all 10 fingers in the finger bowl at once. Dip in a few at a time, wipe them with your napkin, then continue dipping and wiping the rest of your fingers. — By Sara Pearce, Gannett News Service, 1986

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Kid’s Etiquette in the 1980’s

You don't sleep in tents and cook hotdogs on a grill at these camps; you take dance classes and learn “the right way to do things.”

Courtesy Camps

What comes to mind when you think of summer camp? Daddy Long Leg spiders? The time you short-sheeted your counselor's bed? Whatever you think of, it probably deals with lots of dirt, and lots of fun.

But what would you do if you found out you were spending the summer at a "manners" camp? You don't sleep in tents and cook hotdogs on a grill at these camps; you take dance classes and learn "the right way to do things."

One of these camps, The Emily Post Summer Camp, meets at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida. The session lasts for four days. Kids take dance classes to learn both old-fashioned and modern dancing. They learn telephone manners, how to write thank you notes, and how to behave properly at the table. They even have time left over to swim and play games!

But not all the kids who go there are happy about it. Barbara Smart, who handles public relations for the camp, says "It would be fibbing to say that they're all delighted to be here. None of them are kicking and screaming. but it may be the step just before that." Smart says the kids end up enjoying the camp, though: "They have two hours of class and the rest of the afternoon free they may not have been to a place like the Breakers before. and they make lots of friends here."

Christopher Brett, a thirteen year old from Palm Beach, went to the camp last year. He liked it so much, he's going back this year. "It was really fun, but at the same time you got to learn all this stuff. I think it was funner than other camps, especially at the place it was."

Another camp, the L'Ecole des Ingenues, in Atlanta, Georgia, takes manners even more seriously. The camp director. Anne Oliver, calls it "more than just an etiquette camp." It's more like an old-fashioned finishing school for teenage girls. They learn how to act when they go to the ballet, which fork to use during a meal, the proper way to behave at tea time and other social events.

Oliver says there is an "etiquette epidemic" right now. When the camp started in 1976, fewer people were interested in manners. "When I opened, parents were sending their daughters. Now, almost ten years later, the girls are asking to be sent." – By Julie Langsdorf for Gannett News Service, 1985

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

The 1980’s Reagan Etiquette Era

“During the Reagan years, we found a new interest in the trappings of the gentrified class that went beyond clothing. Charm schools boomed like they did in the '50s and early '60s, and the use of the fish fork was the most popular subject,” said the owner of a charm and modeling school in California.

The End of the Reagan fashion era

The Reagan years were an era of formality, and we dressed for success, as well as for dinner. The tuxedo celebrated its 100th anniversary in the '80s, and black-tie invitations became the norm. Not only did men rush out to rent their tuxedos, but plenty pur- chased them. And instead of basic black or the brighter colors of the Carter years, they suited up in higher-profile styles, richer fabrics and the new designer tuxedos.

Men began pampering themselves, too. Even non-managerial types began trying facials, skin bronzers and tinted moisturizers. They shaved their mustaches, slicked their longish hair back and seriously considered plastic surgery for a more youthful edge on the career market.

The man in the White House may have been the oldest president in history, but he was also among the most stylish. His constituents took notice.

Meanwhile, women embraced the '80s by getting color-charted, made over at posh salons, mani- cured with silk and acrylic fingernails, dressed by personal shoppers and turned into management material by image consultants. They lifted weights, ran and cycled themselves into better bodies and kept healthy with supermarket salad bars, Lean Cuisine and tofu.

They wore pink and gray sweats to jog in and wore man-tailored suits with quarterback-sized shoulder pads (known as power pads) to the office. They carried brief-cases, wore Rolex watches (or knock-offs) and had a closetful of navy blue dress-for-success pumps. And they doused themselves with sexy, aggressive new scents such as Giorgio, Obsession and Poison.

Nancy Reagan made fashion fashionable again as she bought and borrowed numerous designer dresses (Adolfo, Bill Blass, James Galanos, Oscar de la Renta, Geoffrey Beene and David Hayes) to show off her dainty size 4 figure. As her reign came to a close, Nancy got a lot of bad press over those gowns, especially when Time magazine reported that she didn't always claim them to the IRS - or return them to the designers when the party was over. Even TV talk-show host Johnny Carson stirred the fire with. "It's 10 p.m., Adolfo. Do you know where your dress is?"

Nasty, below-the-designer-belt blows aside, Nancy set a standard for the ladies-who-lunch with her red Adolfo knits accented with bows at the throat. In turn, the Council of Fashion Designers of America tipped its collective hat to her this year by honoring her with its Lifetime Achievement Award for outstanding contributions to American fashion.

"Women came by the hundreds to Adolfo shows at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills during the Reagan administration," says Saks' fashion director Patricia Fox. "It's not that they said, 'I want a dress like Nancy Reagan," she says, but the first lady's choice gave a subliminal fashion message.

"Let's do lunch" became a favorite phrase used when waving goodbye. When they ate lunch or went to brunch (which became an almost religious ritual during the '80s), men wore elegant country gentleman-styled brown suits favored by Reagan or the new black-and-white tweedy jackets over vegetable-dyed shirts worn sans tie, a look created by Italian designer Giorgio Armani.

And women, if they weren't wearing the Nancy uniform with pearls, opted for bright-colored silk dresses popularized by designer Liz Claiborne or the mens-wear-for-women separates with crests on the breast pocket."

Eager for the new Republican sophistication, women shopped till they dropped, buying into the newly coined phrase, "It's not who you are, but what you wear that matters." In the '80s, image became everything.

"During the Reagan years, we found a new interest in the trappings of the gentrified class that went beyond clothing. Charm schools boomed like they did in the '50s and early '60s, and the use of the fish fork was the most popular subject," said an owner of a charm and modeling school in California.

Enrollment in etiquette classes has tripled in recent years, says Marshall, who adds students often are 30 to 50 years old and include socially prominent husbands, wives of corporate executives and a lot of real estate people who want to look as polished as the property they're selling.

In the middle of the Reagan era we also located and labeled a new generation. It was the era of the yuppies, an acronym for young urban professional people.

Ex-preppies, the yuppies might be loosely defined as those under 40 who make more than $40,000 annually. They were a product of the overall economic success of the '80s, and they indulged themselves with everything a credit card and 24-hour banking could afford. They drove BMWs, Mercedes and Saabs to work and '57 Chevy convertibles and Jeeps on the weekend.

Anything yuppies liked became trendy. Getting married and having children was in again, and the yuppie puppies (children) were dressed in designer fashions just like Mom's and Dad's.

Elegant dining became fashionable. The first lady bought new china, and so did we. But hers was a custom design bordered in red and gold, with a raised gold Presidential seal in the center. Made by Lenox, it caused a brouhaha at $48 a cup. Along with a renewed interest in dinnerware was a return to crystal, especially champagne flutes, which were deemed more elegant than the old bowl-shaped models. 

With our champagne, which was from California instead of France, we ate croissants, caviar and chocolate mousse cake. When not putting on the ritz by dining out at private clubs and elegant restaurants, we grazed at chic eateries, sampling pizza made of goat cheese and broccoli, frozen yogurt topped with candy sprinkles and ice cream bars dipped in high-fat Swiss chocolate.

In a nostalgic mood, we ate meat loaf and mashed potatoes at new '50s diners, wore swing skirts and miniskirts and ended the era with '40s trousers for day and night.

But the Reagan years were also an era of health-consciousness. We stopped smoking and, to borrow Nancy's phrase, just said no to about every vice. We got our first mammograms and drug-screening tests, started drinking expensive bottled water and became aware of those nasty sulfites in wine.

In the name of beauty, we baked in tanning booths (until it became chic to be a paleface), suffered painful collagen injections and fat liposuctioning, then covered our faces with the magic creams that contained collagen, live proteins and Retin-A.

The baby-boomers turned 40 during the Reagan years and started writing about it, as if it had never happened to anyone else. It became an era of telling and - writing all, especially by aging movie stars such as Shirley MacLaine, Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Reynolds, David Niven and Bette Davis.

Aerobics, jogging and walking were in, and each had their own ensemble. Reebok high-tops were the sports shoe of the decade, and we pedaled on exercise cycles that gave computer printouts of our mileage and minutes.

Staying home, called cocooning, became a way to escape the freeway madness and office politics, and we rushed out to neighborhood video stores and 24-hour-vending machines to rent movies for our VCRs.

Trying to relive the good old days of Ozzie and Harriet, a la Ronnie and Nancy, we snuggled in our Lanz flannel nighties, ate popcorn and Mrs. Field's chocolate chip cookies and did our banking on a home computer.

In retrospect, the Reagan years were all about class distinction and formality. We learned how to dress thin and rich and how to give a gala. In an era of self-enlightenment, we learned a new appreciation for art deco, Russia and Coco Chanel.

The downside during this administration was an emphasis on things superficial. We often judged people by their trendy trappings. not their personal worth. We practiced pretense and thumbed our nose at Midwestern values. We loved sushi, even if we hated it, and discussed designer labels like they really mattered.

And that's the way it was.– From Copley News Service

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

Most Mannered Cities of 1989

Stewart, author of "Can My Bridesmaids Wear Black?" and 14 other books on etiquette, released her list of the 10 best mannered cities in America on Nov. 15. Council Bluffs, which Stewart called the "courtesy capital of the world," ranked second behind.

Etiquette expert says Portland is most mannered city in U.S.

Etiquette authority Marjabelle Young Stewart has selected Portland, Ore., as the most mannered city in the country. Council Bluffs and the Quad Cities in Iowa and Illinois are in the top ten. It was followed by San Diego; Chicago; Washington D.C.; Charleston, S.C.; Seattle, Wash.; the Twin Cities in Minnesota; the Quad Cities; and Los Angeles.

Stewart, author of "Can My Bridesmaids Wear Black?" and 14 other books on etiquette, released her list of the 10 best mannered cities in America on Nov. 15. Council Bluffs, which Stewart called the "courtesy capital of the world," ranked second behind.

Stewart said nominations for the most-mannered cities come from graduates of classes she teaches for business executives. She said she delivers etiquette seminars for major corporations that realize "polish will bring profit."

“Manners will take you anywhere," said Stewart, who now lives in Kewanee, Ill, – Des Moines, Iowa (AP) - 1989

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

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

Manners Nudging a 1980’s Comeback

The 1980’s was a decade of contradictions in etiquette and manners... Most saw etiquette and manners in the United Staes to still in be in a free fall of decline, following the pattens set in the 1960s and 1970s. That did not stop people, however, from writing and buying books in large numbers on etiquette and manners. This phenomenon became a lead up to “the 1990’s Etiquette Era.”

–––––––––––––––––––––– 

“Although Clare Boothe Luce has no plans to write an etiquette book, she has observed social mores from the time when, she says, life was ‘much more ceremonial.’ Manners today except for official life in Washington have, she believes, ‘virtually disappeared,’ and she sees ‘no signs of a renaissance.’ For Luce, ‘good manners is treating others with a certain distance and formality until a friendship is formed.’ As for the current American interest in manners and etiquette, ‘I do hope,’ Luce says, ‘they buy all the books they can.’ – Helping a young lady into her chair at the table, from Marjabelle Stewart’s book, “Stand Up, Shake Hands, Say ‘How Do You Do’”

NEW YORK - America, if the social soothsayers are accurate in their predictions, is about to become a land of kindness and courtesy. This is not merely because “Tiffany's Table Manners for Teen-Agers,” the paperback by Walter Hoving first published 21 years ago, is, according to Tiffany, “suddenly selling like croissants.” Rather, it is largely because of the burst of books on manners and etiquette – subjects that in the past inspired works from such concerned citizens as George Washington and Eleanor Roosevelt – which have recently been, or are about to be published. There are courses and lectures on the same subject for which people are lining up as if they were waiting to see “Conan the Barbarian.” Americans, these authors and teachers are saying, are currently craving tradition and hungering for the rules of proper behavior in social situations. 

Mary Susan Miller, who is working with Elizabeth L. Post, the granddaughter of Emily Post, on updating “The New Emily Post’s Etiquette,” said, “People have become so horrified, hurt and disgusted by rudeness” that a resurgence of manners was inevitable. Manners, says Miller, “are not a set of rules that someone out there arbitrarily says follow. Manners are to make other people, as well as yourself, comfortable.” She is currently teaching corporate executives, among others, to be comfortable. 

When Marjabelle Stewart was at the Waldorf Astoria recently to conduct a class on dining for children from the United Nations International School, it was yet one more stop in her constant etiquette campaign. Stewart, who has made manners her cottage industry, has written several books on the subject (“Marjabelle Stewart's, Book of Modern Table Manners,” the most recent, was published last year). Her children's etiquette classes (seven weeks, $65, graduation ceremony and tea party included) are franchised in 476 cities throughout the country. “Everyone wants to be upper crust today,” says Stewart, who also conducts courses (“Eating Your Way to the Top”) for both executives and college students. 

Ann Buchwald, a Washingtonian who is married to Art Buchwald and was Stewart’s co-author on such books as “White Gloves and Party Manners” and “Stand Up, Shake Hands, Say ‘How Do You Do,’” finds further evidence that manners are staging a comeback. “Women are wearing gloves for the first time in years, and there's a return to dresses,” she said. “How people look has a lot to do with the way they behave.” It was President and Mrs. Reagan, Buchwald adds, who “put the cap on the bottle.” Many of the parents who are most concerned about teaching their children good manners, Buchwald has found, were students who demonstrated in the 60's and 70's. “When they locked up the dean, they didn't much care about where glasses go on the dinner table,” she said, “but they now want their children to care.” 

For those who, like him, grew up in the 60s and 70s, P. J. O'Rourke is writing “Modern Manners: Etiquette for Extremely Rude People.” “We never learned how to dress properly or give cocktail parties,” O'Rourke says. “It was an era, when people erased the tapes on how to behave.” It is the family that is or should be the unit that teaches manners to youngsters, according to Letitia Baldrige, who revised and expanded the most recent edition of “The Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette.” “The many young people who grew up having dinner in front of the television set instead of the dining, table never did learn table manners,” Baldrige says. “Besides that, their parents were divorced and were never home to advise them.”

Another title, scheduled for publication later this year, is George Mazzei's “The New Office Etiquette,” which he says he wrote because “there's been a breakdown in business manners, and people are realizing they can no longer deal with the constant rudeness which became a part of the business world when crude young people became superstars.” Mazzei's book deals with “the new etiquette toward women in business" and sets guidelines for such business behavior as who should go through a revolving door first (the woman still does) and the correct way to deal with your boss's in-office lover (smile, nod, and don't talk about the affair). The book is scheduled for publication later this year. 

One can learn “How to Eat an Artichoke and Other Trying, Troublesome, Hard-to-Get-At Foods” in Rochelle Udell's just-published book. Udell wrote it, she says, “because food is so often a barrier to socializing across the dinner table.” She got the idea for her book, she says, while observing “someone's cherry tomato squirt across a dining room.” Although Clare Boothe Luce has no plans to write an etiquette book, she has observed social mores from the time when, she says, life was “much more ceremonial.” Manners today except for official life in Washington have, she believes, “virtually disappeared,” and she sees “no signs of a renaissance.” For Luce, “good manners is treating others with a certain distance and formality until a friendship is formed.” As for the current American interest in manners and etiquette, “I do hope,” Luce says, “they buy all the books they can.” – NYT News Service, 1982

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