I Read a 500 Page Emily Post Biography So You Don’t Have To

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Emily Post: Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners by Laura Claridge is a fascinating in-depth biography of our favorite etiquette expert, Emily Post. Very in-depth and looong. So I have compiled twenty of the most interesting facts about this woman who was so much more than just an etiquette expert.

1. Her father participated in the building of the Statue of Liberty base and she played inside as a girl. She also attended the opening of the Statue.

2. Her father was a famous architect who basically built Tuxedo Park, NY.

3. Was called the best banjoist in fashionable society when she was young. Banjos were trendy in the 1890s.

4. Motto was “toujours la politesse, jamais la verite” meaning “always courtesy, never the bare truth.”

5. She had a terrible loveless marriage and was divorced. As a dissatisfied wife, she took up writing and was a successful novelist.

6. She was a guest at Mark Twain’s 70th bday party.

7. After her divorce, she helped with interior design for her father’s architect friends and was somewhat of an amateur architect herself. She even wrote a famous book on architecture.

8. She started writing non fiction as an advice columnist but she was originally discouraged from writing about etiquette publishers thought it would be tedious for her.

9. She took a road trip across the US in 1915 with her sons and wrote about it. This was before there were good roads and they were constantly getting stuck in the mud.

10. Her son received the first award conferred on an American pilot during WWI.

11. Emily liked to claim that everyone had begged her to write etiquette, it was more something that was offered to her and she took on bc she found the existing books so bad.

12. She wrote the first edition Etiquette longhand in a year and a half. Published in July 1922, Etiquette originally cost $4 (abt $45 today).

13. Emily was listed as one of Life magazine’s 100 most influential people of the 20th century.

14. Statistics say that Etiquette was the second most stolen book from public libraries, after the bible through the end of the 20th century.

15. She was an activist against prohibition.

16. She hosted an etiquette radio show during the 1930s and loved being on the radio.

17. Was not above some snobbishness: when the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were touring the US, she said he should be addressed as royal highness and she should be addressed as “you.”

18. As an older woman, she had a closet full of red shoes.

19. After WWII she worked to bring Jewish orphans to the United States.

20. Didn’t care about elbows on the table and would regularly put hers on the table at fancy parties.

How To Politely Reveal Your Fetish (Yup, We’re Going There)

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Everyone has a thing. I want to get that out there before we go any further. Everyone, in bed our out, has a thing they like to do that maybe isn’t a thing a whole bunch of other people like to do. Or maybe a bunch of people like to do it but it isn’t “normal” or something like that. But at some point you will need to reveal this thing to another person. I mean, you don’t need to; you could hide it forever and become overwhelmed by anxiety and then start expressing yourself in dangerous and destructive ways. But that’s not very nice, is it? No, let’s tell someone.

As with most practices of etiquette (and this is one!), it’s all about making other people feel comfortable while at the same time not sacrificing your own needs. Just as there’s a way to ensure a guest will RSVP or a way to properly thank someone for a gift, there’s a way to reveal your innermost desires in a way that makes your partner feel safe and trusted.

When to Bring It Up

The trick of when to reveal a fetish is weighing the “normalcy” (I really hate that term but can we just go with it? And you can all know that I don’t want to shame anyone? Ok.) of what you want to do against how necessary it is for you to indulge in it. It looks something like this.

Generally, the closer to blue, the earlier you want to mention it, and the closer to orange, the later you can wait. Let’s go through four hypothetical scenarios to illustrate this a bit more.

Common and Unnecessary: This is where your fetish is something that’s known to the general “vanilla” (ugh, that term) world, and is not something you need to indulge in all the time. For instance, if you enjoy getting blindfolded, but you don’t need it to enjoy yourself, this is your category. This can really be brought up as early or as late in the sexual relationship as you want, depending on the others involved and your comfort with them.

Common and Necessary: This is where you have a similar fetish as above, but you need it to happen often or every time. If you need to use a vibrator every time you have sex, this should be talked about earlier, ideally before you have sex but after it’s been established that you’re both interested. This could be any time from dinner that night to while you’re already in bed, but it should be mentioned explicitly, so your partner doesn’t start getting confused about why you’re pulling out this toy every time you’re together.

Uncommon and Unnecessary: This would be a situation where your fetish is something a little off the beaten path, or maybe isn’t even a fetish at all, but just something you’d like to try. Maybe you want someone to learn a really elaborate knot system and tie you up. Maybe you’ve, on occassion, enjoyed being in a latex body bag . Maybe you like sitting naked in pies. I’ve seen Real Sex, I know what’s up. Anyway, if it’s something you’re casually into, it might be best to test this out later on. Wait until you’re already sexually comfortable with your partner and test it out

Uncommon and Necessary: If you need to have someone cover you in chocolate pudding and then run a knife over your stomach every time you have sex, I’m gonna guess your dating needs are best served within a specific community and not on OK Cupid. Use the internet, find that community, and go nuts. But if you do happen to meet someone in a bar you absolutely need to have sex with, then it’s best to bring this up before you get to the bedroom.

How To Bring It Up

Ideally, you will just totally own whatever fetish you have like the badass you are. I actually love Dan Savage’s idea that it’s best to share your kinks as if they were “added bonuses,” but here are a few tips on how to mention it.

1. Make sure that’s actually part of the conversation. It shouldn’t be “Hey, how do you like your spaghetti?” “It’s great, and I also need to eat it during sex.” If need be, make it part of the conversation. Once you’ve established you’re attracted to each other and interested in sex, ask your date what they’re into, and then you can bring yourself up.

2. Don’t be ashamed! There was this part in one of Helen Gurley Brown’s books about how to reveal to your date that you’re wearing a wig (and hey, maybe wearing a wig all the time turns you on, whatever!). You’re just supposed to flat out say “hey, you may be surprised to hear this, but I’m wearing a wig!” and then you take off your wig and if your date runs away then it’s their loss. Don’t let anyone shame you.

3. If you’re in Quadrants 2 and 4, bring “suggestions” of your fetish into your normal sex routine. I found this advice on lots of fetish blogs. If you have a foot fetish, touch your partner’s feet during sex before launching into full-on foot play. If you enjoy bondage, test the waters with blindfolding. That way, if your true fetish lies in the more “uncommon” territory, it won’t come as such a shock later.

So now, go forth and do your thing! And if you have any other tips, let’s talk about them!

Etiquette Urban Legends

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There are no alligators in the NYC sewers, so don’t believe these etiquette urban legends either. By Ludovic Bertron from New York City, Usa (Urban Legend? Uploaded by russavia) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s amazing to us how many etiquette “rules” there are out there that have no basis in any etiquette book nor which are particularly logical. Here are some:

  • You have a year to send a thank you note after the wedding. Though guests have up to a year after the wedding to send a gift, a year for thank you notes is not true. So get that out of your head! Thank you notes should be sent promptly after receiving any gift, though with a wedding you have a bit more leeway because of the volume of gifts. Make it easy on yourself and send thank you notes for gifts received prior to the wedding as they come in.

  • At a fancy dinner or restaurant you will be given ten different forks and won’t know how to use any of them. This legend is a holdover from Victorian times when people did indeed use tons of silverware. Nowadays you will only have a couple of pieces, or the waiter might bring you something new for each course. When presented with multiple forks, start from the outside and work in.

  • You need to buy a gift/give money that is equal to the cost of your dinner at a wedding reception. AKA cover your plate. This is ridiculous. How are you supposed to know how much the dinner cost? And why should someone’s choice to have a lavish wedding result in a more expensive present than someone with a more modest affair? Buy within your budget and according to your closeness with the couple.

  • You should never talk about money in polite company. This is true to a degree, maybe don’t talk about it at a dinner party with strangers. But certainly discuss money and finance with your children- how else will they learn? And we should all be discussing salaries and rent with close friends so everyone will know if they are getting ripped off. Secrets help the man keep us down.

  • At a dinner party, you must try some of everything, lest you come off as rude to the host. Trying everything is good eating advice in general (you might like new things!) but “rude” might be pushing it. If you are allergic to endive, or know for sure you don’t like it, don’t eat it! And if someone asks you can say you just don’t like endive. That’s not a comment on the host.

  • RSVPs: some people think you only need to respond if you are coming, some people think you only need to respond if you are not coming. You must RSVP yes or no to any invitation, how is the host supposed to know which method you are following otherwise? And unless it’s a super informal get together that you’ve been invited to through Facebook or something similar, do not RSVP “maybe.”

  • You should stick your pinky out when drinking tea. You may think this looks fancy and proper, but it’s not! While it’s one thing if your pinky naturally juts out a bit when you hold a cup, sticking it straight out is considered an affectation (damn that New Money) and honestly, just looks ridiculous.

  • Etiquette is all about following rules and if you forget something you are an awful person. Etiquette is more about helping other people feel comfortable, and one of the most important etiquette rules is that it is more rude to point out someone’s rudeness than to break whatever rule in the first place.

Thank Goodness We Don’t Have to Do That Anymore: Bundling

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Bundling is another fun and folksy tradition that seems pretty strange today.

Bundling: because people have different mating practices than pigeons.
By Aomorikuma (あおもりくま) (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

The basic idea is: a boy and a girl like each other and want to get to know each other better. However everyone lives in tiny houses with tons of people so there is no privacy. Also it’s winter and the house is cold. So what do you do? You throw those two crazy kids into bed with a board between them for propriety’s sake and let them chat all night. (It also helped to conserve candles and firewood- practical!)

An alternate version was tying each person up in a sack to their necks so that no hanky panky could happen.

How well the practice actually worked at upholding good American morals is anyone’s guess- Washington Irving noted “that wherever the practice of bundling prevailed, there was an amazing number of sturdy brats born” so maybe it didn’t work so well after all.

There were even popular songs about it:

Nature’s request is, give me rest,

Our bodies seek repose;

Night is the time, and ’tis no crime

To bundle in our cloths.

Since in a bed, a man and maid

May bundle and be chaste;

It doth no good to burn up wood

It is a needless waste.

Let coat and shift be turned adrift,

And breeches take their flight,

An honest man and virgin can

Lie quiet all the night.

It seems to have been most common in colonial America and had pretty much died out everywhere by the 20th century, after being practiced by the Amish for some time beyond everyone else.

It seems like a kind of warm and cozy first date- maybe I will add it to my OkCupid profile. What do you think, would you like to bundle up with someone this winter?

 

You can read a LENGTHY 1930’s treatise on the practice here if you are interested.

 

Yes, You Can Turn Down A Job Interview

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Work for more than bananas [Via philcampbell]

Work for more than bananas [Via philcampbell]

I know what you’re thinking. We’re still in a recession or something, right? Why on earth would you turn down a job interview? But the truth is, people are liars, and sometimes jobs are not what they seem. Maybe you thought you were applying for one type of position, and after a phone interview discovered it was something completely different. Maybe it’s something you like but too far away/crappy benefits/something else legitimate. Whatever the reason, sometimes you need to take yourself out of the running.

Firstly, you need to figure out whether you actually want to cancel, and there are different schools of thought. Ask A Manager says if you’re 100% sure you don’t want the job (and let’s assume this is after a phone interview or something where you know they’re interested and you’ve gotten more information than whatever the initial job posting says), you shouldn’t take the interview, as you’re taking an interview slot away from someone who may really want it, and wasting both your and the interviewer’s time. However, Forbes says you should still go, because it may be an opportunity for networking or just practicing your interview skills, or the job may surprise you. We can’t make that decision for you.

If you do decide to cancel, first, be prompt. As soon as you know it’s not right for you, say something. It’s just a lot nicer than calling an hour before your interview and saying “you know what? Sorry.” And if possible, do this over the phone, though honestly most correspondence is done over email these days. Finally, be honest about your reasons, though you don’t have to go into a lot of detail. Sometimes the reasons are concrete (you’re moving far away), and sometimes they’re not (you just don’t think it’s a good fit).

You can say so about either of these things. If it’s more on the side of “it’s just not what I’m looking for,” use your email/phone call as an opportunity to educate them as to why. Once, I interviewed for a job that would pay a lot, but it was “freelance” pay so I would have had to pay all the taxes, and there was no health insurance or paid vacation/sick time. I tried to negotiate on this to no avail. Once I decided that I wanted to cancel our schedule in-person interview, I emailed them, thanking them for the opportunity, but that “upon further review of the position and compensation” it wasn’t the right fit for me. Hopefully they were able to pick up on the fact that you’d need to pay someone a hell of a lot more than what they were offering if there was no health insurance.

Have you ever turned down an interview? Did you ever go to an interview only to find the office/person/job to be absolutely ridiculous? Tell us!