Sometimes, those people are confused or taken aback (or, let’s admit, genuine assholes). Once in a while, my hand gets left hanging there, in the air, alone. Cold, exposed, ashamed. This, this is not fun. And parties, they should be fun. Otherwise I’d stay home.
At other people’s parties, sometimes the host or hostess forgets to offer me whatever it is everyone else has, or doesn’t tell me where I can put my coat. So there I am, standing awkwardly in the middle of a room, coat still on, or bundled in my arms like a bulky, down-filled baby, trying to shake hands with other people whose left hands are filled with canapés, whose right hands grip cocktails, clinging to whoever had the misfortune to bring me.
But at my own parties, I know almost everyone. I have a place for my coat, I know where the drinks are, and I can make more food if I run out. If I get bored, I can always busy myself with hostess duties – doing rounds of introductions, pouring drinks, forcing cookies on people or fiddling with the music. I do my best to introduce new people, and try really, really hard to include everyone in the conversation. If someone looks bored or lonely or left out, I bring out the exuberant face, try to figure out what will make them feel comfortable and included, and then give them that – whether it’s a shot of tequila, a kind word or a topic, whatever it takes.
It’s a little-known fact that I have a tiny obsession with etiquette, and I think my generation could do well with a good hard lesson in the same. My obsession started young, when my grandmother and mother taught me the rigid rules of introduction – which are sort of like the rules of “usted” and “tu” in Spanish: you present the younger or less prestigious person to the older and more prestigious person. I also know the order in which to place and then use silverware, which way the blade of the butter knife should face, and the rules of who pours at a tea. I own a definitive anthology of Emily Post, updated by her grand-whoever, of which I am enamored.I have been challenged multiple times by various constituents about my love of etiquette – “But Sarah, you are a nonconformist! Etiquette and rules are all about conformity! Why do you love rules so much?” To which I say, no, etiquette is not about conformity. Etiquette is, at its base, about creating a comfortable, safe space for everyone around you. Some of the rules are stupid and trivial, sure, but they function like the AP style guide for journalists. They enforce consistency.
My encyclopedic knowledge of table settings has never really come in handy. In fact, most of the rules of etiquette I learned as a child – how to sit like a lady, how to pronounce the word “foyer” – are complete and utter shit. But my basic grasp of etiquette’s one, inviolable rule – what forms the foundation of all social graces – I use every day, and that is this: Your job as a host/ess, and a good human being, is to reach out to other people. Help them feel at home. Make them feel wanted, loved, and cared for. This isn't conformity, it's basic human decency.
I agree that party etiquette has been ignored by a great deal of our generation. A good host/hostess makes the gathering much more enjoyable!
ReplyDeleteEtiquette is, at its base, about creating a comfortable, safe space for everyone around you.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. I haven't read Proust but an old friend told me of an incident in Le Côté de Guermantes in which the young narrator has been invited to a very aristocratic residence for dinner; shown by a servant into a gallery, he becomes fascinated by the collection of paintings, realizing only with a shock that he's now two hours late for dinner. He rushes to the dining room where his host greets him warmly; the host and the other guests, who haven't touched their food, go on chatting for another fifteen minutes, in order to maintain the polite fiction that they weren't waiting for him. This is indeed a fiction (though politeness depends on fictions), and it overlooks the fact that the servants are likewise waiting, on their feet, and not likely to get any extra pay for these wasted hours. But the idea that the aim of politeness is to make the guest feel at ease, rather than awkward or ignorant, is nice.
Rootlesscosmo: It is a nice idea, one which I wish were practiced more universally. Sometimes, when I see the way people behave in social situations -- often carefully crafting their words to showcase some aspect of their superiority over their conversation partner, whether in intellectual ability, taste, income, whatever -- I wonder if this golden rule of etiquette (which, now that I think of it, could even be simplified into just plain "The Golden Rule") has ever been applied universally.
ReplyDeleteI haven't made it through much Proust yet, but from reading Tolstoy I suspect that "polite" battles of social position have been waged for ages.
But then, just when I am feeling cynical and misanthropic and about to despair of all humanity, I find myself in the company of genuinely guileless people. So I suppose the trick may lie in sorting one's guests by pretension.
Jenyoseph - Definitely! As I get older, I find that parties take waaay more work. Sometimes I long for the days when I could just sort of announce "party at my house tonight!" and the party would just sort of drunkenly steer itself. Our biggest worry was always the cops showing up. Oh, for those carefree college days!
you're a good writer.
ReplyDelete-tarah
Etiquette is, at its base, about creating a comfortable, safe space for everyone around you. Some of the rules are stupid and trivial, sure, but they function like the AP style guide for journalists. They enforce consistency.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure about this. I get what you're saying; The underlying philosophy of etiquette is about welcoming people. I would say that sounds like being polite. This would be semantics if it weren't for the way that etiquette manifests itself: The rules. Consistency is problematic to me here, because it implies what the rules enforce, namely the idea that there is a universal way to make people comfortable, or at the very least, a singular way they should be and feel welcomed. The underlying idea of a comfortable, safe space for everyone is a sound, admirable idea. But etiquette seems determined to achieve this through self-defeating assimilation.
Rigid adherence to any set of rules can be self-defeating, especially in a world where "polite" in one culture can mean "horribly rude" in another. I still think that the main objective of etiquette is a good one.
ReplyDeleteWhat's needed is a new etiquette paradigm, one that stresses that one's main duty is to make one's guests feel welcome, and that any rules may be disregarded depending on one's comfort level with them, cultural customs, etc. I worry that might be too nuanced for people looking for hard and fast rules, though -- one must first learn the rules in order to break them and so forth -- and disregarding one rule while observing another requires a certain social and cultural fluency that not everyone possesses.
Additionally, I worry that people might purposely disregard the rules for one set of people -- those they feel are their social inferiors, for example -- while observing them for others. (In my case, I suspect that at parties where I feel awkward and unwelcome, I am viewed as an unimportant person by my host and therefore disregarded. As my grandmother would say, this shows a lack of "good breeding" on the part of my host, as they should make everyone feel equally welcome regardless of status. She was really into noblesse oblige, although she did not always practice what she preached.)
For an example of the usefulness of silly rules, one of my colleagues who emigrated to the US from another country read books of etiquette before moving here so she would be well-versed in the nuances of social gatherings once she arrived. Then again, she also thinks that you can't say "nice shoes" to someone because it implies the rest of the slang term, which is: "Nice shoes, wanna f***?" So reading books of etiquette isn't really the best way to learn about a culture, since they're quickly outdated and often inaccurate. But neither is reading travel books a good substitute for actually traveling (or so I hear from my more well-traveled acquaintances,) so lacking a better method or the funding required to spend months visiting other countries, it's a good start.
Thank you, Tarah! That means a lot coming from a much better writer than myself! ^_^
ReplyDeleteMy favorite way to entertain is to have no more than four other people over and do my best cooking for them. I did that the other night, and food and conversation were just right.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I have a potluck and invite people and let them work it out.
This is an island though, and everyone knows everyone else or has at least mutual acquaintances and interests. No one feels left out.
Wine in the kitchen, beer in the cooler, plenty of comfortable seating: I have heard no objections to this way of entertaining.
Sounds quite civilized to me. The comfortable seating part is important, too, and often overlooked it seems. I always try to put out extra chairs and cushions before people come over, so they won't have to ask and feel like they are putting me out.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how, haha, comfortable I am with that whole tu-usted/tu-vous/Du-Sie/younger-older thing I am, culture of domination, and all that.
ReplyDeleteI'm not comfortable with the idea behind tu/usted, but at least in languages that have different pronouns for different levels of formality/respect, the power differentials inherent in society are acknowledged by the broader culture, which is more than I can say for the U.S. culture, which pretends to be "equal" but is in fact far from it. This makes it so that any conversation about inequality here must first justify its existence, and only if it moves past that initial "proof" conversation can it move on to substantive topics.
ReplyDelete