What Matters Most About Manners?

It appears there's some confusion about manners. Not only do people debate what are or are not "Good Manners," they do so imprecisely. I cannot bear imprecise arguments. When one fails to define one's terms, passionate discussions lead directly into a boggy swamp of opinions. No one advances beyond their own reactions.

Let us then deconstruct "Manners," with an eye towards understanding what, if anything, matters.

I believe that most people want to have good manners. Of course, in the interest of precision, we must acknowledge that not everyone feels this way. Some are too overwhelmed by distress, or lack of resources. All their capacity absorbed by coping. Others actively rebel against manners in the traditional sense, looking for a new mode of interaction.

So let's speak to those who care.

Manners are the term for an aspect of human behavior along the spectrum of Good to Bad. And yes, that means we're in for a diagram.


The left hand side of this spectrum spans cultures. Few societies admire murder. The right hand side, however, is more complex. Right about the point where Nice and Kind enter the picture, Manners rears its well-groomed head. And here's where deconstruction tells.

Manners consist of Protocol and Common Human Courtesy. These are not the same thing.

Common Human Courtesy

• Put the elderly, the pregnant, the handicapped, ahead of you.
• Greet those you meet with warmth, or respect, or both.
• Calibrate your clothing to your context.
• Say please and thank you.

Protocol

• Greeting mechanism (handshake, air kiss).
• Table manners (fork left hand, fork left hand, banana leaves).
• Thank you mechanisms (handwritten notes, elaborately wrapped cheap presents, phone calls).
• What To Wear Beyond Aesthetics (no white after Labor Day, no short skirts after 40, business casual, mother of the bride).
  

I believe that everyone would agree, Common Human Courtesy takes us further along the Bad to Good spectrum than anything else.

The debate about manners usually revolves around Protocol.

Here's the tricky part. Protocol originates as a way to establish and maintain hierarchies, not as a way to be nice to anyone. Protocol ensures we all stick to our roles, that we acknowledge and bow our heads to societal expectations. As a result people often point out Protocol violations in order to maintain a structure that reinforces their own desire for a formal, hierarchical world. These are false accusation of Bad Manners, and should be ignored as such.

Protocol also ranges from incomprehensible ritual to generally accepted cultural actions. It varies from environment to environment. What happens in an embassy stays in an embassy. What happens in Poland doesn't often happen in Chicago. Here Jenna of That Wife details her discomfort with the European 3-kiss, for example.

Does that mean you can forget Protocol on the path to Good? Throw it all out the window as an outmoded artifact of a pre-Freudian, repressed, colonial era? Is life that simple? Unfortunately, no. When understood and agreed to by all participants, Protocol does simplify difficult interactions. There's something to be said for simplifying. Being human is tough.

Even beyond simplification, there are those who feel Protocol ensures their safety, smooths their way, and signifies that all is well in the world. It's their "Fuffy," if you will. And when you ignore Protocol you cause them distress. They may then take the position that you are definitively In The Wrong. You're not, in a moral sense. Protocol is situational. But if you willfully flout Protocol, you may upset someone. Just make sure it's a conscious choice on your part. One that's worth distress in others.

I call it the "Because Grandmama Cares" approach. I have evolved into this late in life. As a young woman I chafed against the strictures of protocol, all the while absorbing the entire How To from my family background. I believed that much protocol was evil, designed only to shame us and deny us our hearts. That may in fact be true. But at the next level, sometimes determined flouting of protocol becomes inconsiderate, failing at Common Human Courtesy. Which is, of course, the most important part of Good Manners.

The Privilege[d] Manifesto on Good Manners

• Common Human Courtesy matters most, but doesn't suffice for Good Manners.
• Blind adherence to Protocol isn't enough either.
  
• Some rules are downright dumb, not to mention vestiges of a society invested in hierarchy and brutal power structures.
• Yet human beings do better under shared behavior codes.
  
• The question is what protocols to follow, and why? Each of us must make our own choices. Each of us should try to respect the choices of others. Even choices we don't like. I personally have trouble with eyebrow piercing. I keep it to myself when in the supermarket checkout line at Whole Foods.
• When you next want to accuse someone of Bad Manners, stop, and consider whether they are violating Protocol or failing Common Human Courtesy.
  

One final thought. Saints are apt to ignore protocol. Think about it. St. Patrick wasn't terribly well-behaved when he sent away all those snakes, now was he? St. Joan certainly didn't speak politely to those in authority.

What part of manners do you pay the most attention to?

What Makes A Lady?

When you hear someone called a "lady," what comes to mind? A dignified woman? A prissy one? Does she wear pearls? Cross her legs? Is she someone you want as a friend? Someone you want to emulate? To avoid?

"Lady" is a charged term. I know.

Do We Care About "Ladies" Any More?

Back when I wrote about wearing pearls, here, one of the Privilege[d] Anonymous wrote to say that I wasn't one. Wasn't a lady that is.

"You are so WRONG! I just keep thinking you must be a fake because of the things your (sic) write about. Pearl studs and a simple strand of pears (sic) is understated, preppy, old money, elegance. Where did you hail from? It took your son's friend to come to the East Coast South to learn to dress like a lady... No offense intended, but you could not be more wrong."

And I haven't forgotten. It bothered me, despite the typographical errors. Even now, children grown, career had, family fortune faded, I hope to be a lady.

Wait. What is a lady, after all? Why do we care? Given the emotional charge, I am going to bet that ladyhood can still matter. However, I do not think we can locate its meaning without some deconstruction. Without some stakes in the ground.

Random Internet sites say ladies can't wear wrinkled clothes, they don't like airport searches, and they don't have dirty hands or feet. Silly and as easily ridiculed as those statements may be, they point to a larger issue.

My thesis is that the term "Lady" has become so colonized by different interests that we need a revolution if we are to continue to use the word.

Definition:

1. arch. A woman in family relationship, either daughter or wife, to a lord. "Lord," defined as a man given a title and land-holding by his king. Lords were the upper class, ladies the women of that class. (The Apocryphal Privilege[d] Dictionary)

In the centuries since the term originated, lordship, the signs of upper class status, and the role of women have all changed beyond recognition. The constants which originally defined "Lady," floated, leaving the term itself vulnerable to misuse.

I hope that there's still reason to aspire to being a lady. I hope social class status brings with it certain standards of behavior and taste, but I also wish that women weren't held to different standards than men. I wish the term gentleperson had prevailed in place of "Lady."

When Social Class Was Rigid, And Lords Were Lords

Centuries ago, it was easy to keep track of who was a lord. Whoever the king said was a lord, that's who. Eventually, it became possible to enter the upper class in other ways, at least in America. ‘All men are created equal’ meant you too could become a lord. Of sorts. George Washington decided against an aristocracy for the United States. Thanks, Mr. Washington.

Centuries ago, it was also easy to keep track of who was a lady. Married to a lord? Done. Have a castle? You're probably a lady. Horses? Optional. Pearls? Depends on the plundering abilities of your father, or husband. But once America did away with lords, the idea of an American 'lady' entered free fall.

What Do You Mean, No Lord?

If being a lady means belonging to the upper class, now, several centuries after the American Revolution, women are ladies independent of their father, or husband. Took a lot longer than freeing men from their fealty to the king, but there you go. It was tough to participate in revolutions before birth control.

So this is where we have to use another charged term. Feminism. We have to say it. Whether one feels feminism is a good thing, or not, one cannot deny that women may now determine their own position in class structure. Women don't have to enter the upper echelons attached to a man. It's 2010. I’m not talking here about feminism and private relationships. That’s your business. I’m talking about social class. The two things are separate.

If You Can't Find Her Title, Look For Her Necklace

So if we aren't ladies because of our men, what's left? Is a lady simple a woman with a lot of money? They say class in American can be bought. But here I wonder, do we even want to tie the concept of a lady to the usual class parameters - income, wealth, education, background? If not, and I vote not, we should look for over-reaching principles.

I vote not to tie the concept of lady directly to the concept of upper class precisely because the concept of upper class in America is still in free fall itself. Can class in America be bought? Is America a meritocracy? Are education, sophistication, good manners required? Or are we all about power? Those are bigger questions than I am qualified to answer. Everything I say here is true. I don’t know if it matters. Let us say that the upper class is privileged, and leave it at that. For now.

Let us say that ladies act as though they have learned what privilege can teach. A privileged upbringing should enable us to live up to some sort of ideal. Because if amassed resources don't move us towards who we believe we should be, then wealth creation and privilege are nothing but greed. I don’t want to live my short life believing that human beings organize their societies all around greed. Even if it's true.

Is ladyhood about the stuff, then? Yes, and no. One of the results of privilege is often a discerning style, a taste and aesthetic. The desire for beauty sits in our human core. As soon as we can eat, we paint. Or sing. Or dance. Sometimes even when food is hard to come by. Aesthetics do matter, and we hope that a privileged experience of all kinds of beauty develops our larger understanding.

Ladies should appreciate the spirit that moves people to art, and should look to broaden, deepen, and refine their love of things beautiful. The ladyhood aesthetic translates to clothing, and house decor. Ladies, in my opinion, should have a sensibility for style. I could be wrong. But let’s say I’m right.

There are two problems with style and ladyhood.

1. Personal taste is just that, personal. Of course, I will always feel that my taste is best. It is a certainly a marker of my upbringing. I apologize in advance. High WASPs like to apologize prophylactically.
   
2. It’s a huge leap from preferring Modigliani to Matisse to the idea that ladies, by definition, must wear matching pearls. Pearls in their beauty I applaud. Pearls as a signal of a certain set of political and gender role beliefs I do not care for quite so much. Lists of ladies’ style often pretend to be about taste, or associated social class, but slip in too many gender expectations.
   

The principles of "ladylike" remain inferred, unstated. To define ladyhood, let's take a risk and say some things out loud.

A lady acts the way someone who has no excuse for bad behavior or bad taste ought to act. And the taste part should run a distant second to behavior. Aesthetics, as the brilliant blogger Anna has said, are not ethics.

How Do Ladies Behave When They Don't Have A Castle Any More?

I suggest that the primary marker of ladyhood ought to be consideration for the human social contract. A deep understanding of the balance between social context and beliefs on which you will not compromise. When interrupting a speaker is a necessary statement of your self, and when it's just rude. Good manners are important, protocol only matters when and where protocol is called for.

1. Consider others' feelings, particularly those less fortunate than you.
2. Respect the mores, values, and protocols of the cultures in which you find yourself. There may be several.
   
3. Try to do the best job you can at any task you undertake. No matter the reward.
4. Develop an aesthetic. Seek out, support, wear, hang on your walls, the best creations of your fellow humans.
   
5. Deserve the resources you amass.
   

What Does Not A Lady Make?

Political affiliations do not a lady make. The concept of ladyhood ought to have weight beyond politics, beyond what have, quite frankly, been conservative definitions of women's roles.

Being a good person does not a lady make. You can be a good person without respect for the social context, or a honed aesthetic. But not, in my opinion, a lady. It’s much more important to be good. But good is a bigger question than lady, and one I’m no more qualified to address than anyone else in this life.

Wealth does not a lady make. But you knew that already.

I applaud the concept of ladyhood, especially when we understand that one can be deeply, achingly good without ever approaching “Lady.” I fear the concept of ladylike. Ladies can take power. No fair using the threat of not being a “lady” back us down from years of progress. No fair co-opting a term, one that could have broad meaning, in order to further sectarian goals. Or we risk implying that women are forever, de facto, lower class citizens.



Image: My maternal grandmother. Was she a lady? As far as aesthetics, yes. As far as the rest of it, she tried her best. We all fail to reach our ideals now and again, or else they aren't ideals.

Flying The Flag

On the coast of Northern California

On 9/11 I think about those who lost someone they loved. And those who had to witness or experience death and chaos. People's bodies falling through the air. Life, short, fragile, and so sweet I feel it on my teeth, says, "I'm yours forever. I am. Believe me." Not quite true. If today the collective focus of so many has an impact, if our hopes, for those who hope, and prayers, for those who pray, have import, I hope most of all that peace has come to anyone with personal experience of 9/11.

A liberal who votes as a Democrat, I haven't had much of a relationship with the American flag. Not since I wore it printed on a cotton t-shirt in 1968. As a pre-teen engaged in standard pre-teen attempts at cool. Our flag has come to mean either god-fearing and conservative, or, when posted in miniature in a bank window, dollars exchanged here. After 9/11 I went to the local nursery and bought 30 seedlings in little green plastic pots. I planted a garden in my front yard. Red, white, and blue flowers. In those days following it seemed for the first time in my adult life that we all belonged to America and America belonged to all of us.

We've since reverted. Political fighting divvies up the country. People shout at each other, on television, in forums that are supposed to be about health or law or even college admissions. I'm not a political person. I hate arguing, and I do not intend now or ever to start stating any of my few opinions here. I understand I don't have enough information to tell anyone else what to do or how to think.

I am, however, clear that we all have the right to be proud of our country. I've been a lot of places, and I've never found anywhere else in the world that does it better for more people than we do. Despite disagreements. Despite ways in which I might want America to do better, and you might want America to do better, and the fact that our ideas of what "better" means might be completely different.

If I can hope one more thing? That the concept of patriotism be left large, not small. I'd like for everyone to be able to fly a flag, because I hope there are more of us who love America than not. I hope that America, if we are to honor the good we can all agree on, remains a large idea. Not to abuse cheap sentiment or anything, but I've got kids out there.

Image: Jim Frazier's Photostream on Flickr

Saturday Morning at 7:54am

I heard raccoons howling in the night. Thumping on my roof. They must be climbing up my elm. I haven't even looked to see if they went after my pond plants again. Like I said, this will be a long battle. Sometimes victory is simply continuing the fight. Hearing night howls as no more than a sign that, in the morning, you may have to get wet. Knowing that as long as you keep up the fight, you will have pond plants.

You will also be wet. And muddy. Again. Only you know if pond plants are worth it. Me, I'm doing it for the papyrus.

Image:
Fir0002/Flagstaffotos
GFDL License

Monograms and Doc Martens

Writing about monograms (and continuing to find beautiful pictures) I have found myself thinking about identity. One might with good reason tell me I have too much time on my hands. That I need to get a job. Yes. I know. However.

Monograms have an immediate implication for identity. Monograms mean something before you even begin to decipher the initials. We assume someone wearing any sort of monogram at all is fairly conservative. (Or making a very ironic comment, if they wear a monogram with, say, Goth outfits. I know, wouldn’t that be funny?) However.

My own personal, non-universal, case is a little complicated. I am a more left-than-right-of-center person living in a liberal area with a liberal professor father and a liberal New England mother. Our ilk isn’t really prone to monograms. However. I also come from a High WASP family with initialed bowls and mirrors and spoons and pins. My family name is due to make its exit with this generation, unless my brother has a late-in life-marriage with children. I have a sheepish pride in my heritage.

So I wonder, do I, do we all, have to choose? I hope not. Can we belong to Group Blue AND Group Orange? To Group Up AND Group Down? I hope yes. How expansive is identity in this day and age? I hope very.

Freud has something to say.

“A good part of the struggles of mankind center round the single task of finding an expedient accommodation – one, that is, that will bring happiness – between this claim of the individual and the cultural claims of the group; and one of the problems that touches the fate of humanity is whether such an accommodation can be reached by means of some particular form of civilization or whether this conflict is irreconcilable.” Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

So does Jim Collins, author of one of the best books on business to be published in the last 20 years.

…”highly visionary companies…do not oppress themselves with what we call the “Tyranny of the OR” – the rational view that cannot easily accept paradox, that cannot live with two seemingly contradictory forces or ideas at the same time….highly visionary companies liberate themselves with the “Genius of the AND” – the ability to embrace both extremes of a number of dimensions at the same time. Instead of choosing between A OR B, they figure out a way to have both A AND B.” Jim Collins, Built to Last

I have no delusion that I can solve Freud’s question for all time. If I solve it, I solve it in a small way, at 7:13 in the morning, California time. This was my car for all the years of childrearing. It now belongs to my son. I take no responsibility for how it looks.

These are the shoes I bought at the same time we got the minivan. So I could keep that sense of self above and beyond the role I was playing at the time. So I could be a mother AND someone who once lived in Manhattan and went to CBGB's. I take full responsibility for how these look. Years of disuse.


This is another bowl. From my mother's side. Happy Birth Day Matilda.


I don't like confrontation but even so would fight as best I could for the right of every person to define themselves as they want. To belong where they want to belong, and to be different where and how they want to be different. I don’t think I’m special in this. I would guess that there are many people in the world who think to themselves, "Yes. I choose this group AND that group. Neither is my full identity. Not altogether. I am this. And that. Maybe several thats."

However.

Images
Blue "M" by Johnny Por Taing via mint
All others by me

Shiny Purple Things

Money is a funny thing. Complicated.

I have to admit. I didn’t really buy that purse so that people would know my family had money. That would have been silly. Vuitton does not use pictures of my father’s old family estate as logos, now do they? I just started writing and got carried away with the concept. Made me laugh. And I do so appreciate your comments and compliments.

Still, my confession holds true in that I bought the purse in part so people would think I was a person with resources. That wasn’t an exaggeration. Above and beyond the sheer prettiness of objects I have a desire to signal that I am someone with resources, despite my tendency to wear my son’s old khakis and white Jockey t-shirt with flip flops.

Why? Why do that? Why on earth do I care? Shouldn’t anything I have achieved be enough? And if not, shouldn’t I focus my attention instead on a plan to achieve more? How about my innate value as a person, as an incarnation of the shocking beauty of life? Yes. Ideally, yes. But I also ask, am I harming anyone. I hope not. Were I to build an exclusive club, join it, wear its logo, bar others from joining, and walk the streets in search of someone to humiliate, that would be something else entirely. But this is just a sparkly, dark, purple/brown, purse.

You know, we are who we are. Oh, never, ever give up the endeavor to do better. That’s important. But at a certain point you do more damage through your distress over your feelings than through the feelings themselves. So. This is me. This is me and money. Might as well put it out there in case someone younger than I can benefit. Complicated. Lots of family and personal history. Possibly this is a useful fact. A woman with a shiny purple purse may have some doubts, somewhere, about something. The next time you are confronted with someone who has something shiny, even shiny people themselves, consider this. They probably have their doubts.

Everything I am saying is true. It may or may not matter.

Fierce At 50, Or, The Risk/Return Curve

In two years of business school, I learned 10 things that were worth the effort. Approximately. Almost all of these fell into the general category of: find a problem people have, make or do something that solves that problem, do it better than anyone else, find a good way to explain why your way is better, and then find the people who care and tell them over and over and over again. Or that accounting is a terrible, terrible invention. Or that good team chemistry can make almost any assignment bearable.

Never mind that. In the interest of how to have a career that keeps you fierce at 50, introducing, for those who are lucky enough not to have gone to business school, the Risk/Return curve. It was developed by exceedingly smart economists (whose names I can't remember) to understand financial investing. Why use a concept from the impenetrable world of finance and investments? Think about it. Every job you take is an investment of your time. I sound like one of those mellifluous voices on public television speaking to rapt audiences of middle-aged women but I can’t help it. From the vantage point of my 50's, this is true. Your time is what you really have in life, and you choose where to invest it.


You can interpret the risk/return curve as follows. ON AVERAGE, those investments with the highest probability of a big return are also the riskiest. They are the ones who also have the highest probability of little or no return. They are volatile. Those investments which have ON AVERAGE the lowest return are the safest. Low risk, very predictable, equals probable low return. High risk, higher volatility, equals possible higher return. You invest on what they call the Efficient Frontier. Where you are taking the right amount of risk for the possible return. No more, no less.

How does this idea work to model your career? It doesn't mean that risky jobs earn big returns. It means that risky careers earn big returns. The careers where you go after jobs and opportunities where success is not guaranteed, or where success requires a big investment in time. To earn a lot of money and fame, the returns on investment for your career, you have to take risks. You can incur the risk of going to school for a long time, like law school, or the debt risk of starting your own business, or the statistical risk of trying for a career that millions of people want in athletics or entertainment or at the top of the corporate pyramid, or the sheer win-loss risk of pure financial investing. But risks have to be taken to be successful in the ways of recognition and fortune. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to make money from your gullible self. The fear you have of going after your heart's dream? It's logical. To be expected. You are supposed to be afraid. Risk/return.

However, careers differ from financial markets in several ways. Most importantly, one assumes that the financial Efficient Frontier is pretty much knowable. That the information is out there for you to locate yourself right on the black line. This is the concept of a perfect market (which of course is always being broken by greed and manipulation and regulation and deregulation but never mind all that terrible stuff that forced me to watch hours of Saturday Night Live when I was in business school in order to recover from the sheer horror). Morningstar and Motley Fool and people who are good with quantitative analysis put enormous amounts of data into enormous computers and get numberish things back. Betas. Standard deviations. Makes me say eek. That’s how risk/return is understood in finance.

Life, that little sucker, is not a perfect market. We do not have perfect information. No trading pits for jobs which generate huge amounts of data to be analyzed by huge computers. The information is much more qualitative. Harder to find. And this is the task. Increasing our access to information to balance our risk with our returns. To stay on our own efficient frontier.

I am not done yet. However, to make sure I mislead no one, let me say I would never claim to have universal answers. Living until 52 and then misplacing your job and spending an inordinate amount of time sitting on the sofa and staring out the window doesn’t provide answers. No matter how lovely the roses. Driving on the freeway and suffering from raptures of the open horizon and California summer doesn’t provide answers. Even solving the problems of notecards and envelopes doesn’t provide answers. Just a glimpse of framework. A mode of thinking that can pare away emotion from a problem and leave space to consider.

High = Aesthetics

If money is the dark god of the High WASP, good taste is the priestess performing temple rites. High WASPs love to talk about good taste. What is in good taste, what is not. If we had rosary beads each bead would be some instance of the correct aesthetic. (And the scary thing is, out of all this High WASP stuff, the taste piece is the one thing that I can’t give up no matter how strictly I speak to myself. I can understand that other people have the right to their ideas about aesthetics, but I can’t give up the idea that they are wrong. Just wrong.)

I also realize that the attitude towards aesthetics is going to be hard to explain. Maybe because it’s subtle and sophisticated. Or maybe because it’s really a matter of personal taste gussied up in words like classic, or robust, or authentic, or anti-sentimental, or ironic.

Let’s start with a simple case, one where’s there’s no question. Let’s say, art, for the time being. What is in good taste, in our opinion? (Here I'm guessing we are not alone...) Unequivocally, medieval Italian triptychs, Brueghel the Young and Elder, and David Hockney.





What’s not in good taste? What’s not in fact art, but masquerades as such? Unequivocally?


Why? Are the paintings of roses and the statue of the loving husband and wife ugly? Do they represent a society that we resent? Is that why they are not art? Is it because you can buy them without hiring a world class thief or attending an invitation-only Sotheby's auction? No. It’s a question of emotion. High WASPs think art should represent, not assume. And by represent, I don’t mean the art itself has to represent a thing. Only a vision. The artist paints or prints or carves or casts or installs what they want us to see; it’s up to each of us seeing to have our own set of feelings. We don’t want to be told via the colors and affects of sentiment what we feel about roses. Or even what we feel about lovers. High WASPs are unsure that we want to have feelings at all.

The feeling of shock and awe in the face of beauty, or an absolute audacious concept, however, that we are willing to feel.

Juicy. No Couture. (Homage to Mouse on the formatting)

I am 52. It doesn't seem possible some days. But when I look in the mirror closely (which of course at this point has to be a magnifying mirror but one can wax nostalgic even so), I see my blood coming to the surface. All over my body I see my veins coming to the surface. My face, my feet, my hands. This is what happens in Northern California where I live when you plant swamp trees like liquidambars in our semi-arid climate. The roots rise to the surface looking for water that they cannot find below, breaking through lawn after lawn.

In many ways. I would not go back to being 20. Or even 30. 40, yes, well maybe before anything started to ache. But I would sometimes wish for some of the juiciness of the young.

Being my age, and being a mother, and probably for other reasons not clear to me (maybe it happens to all of us stepping down the path to old age), I want to tell young women what I didn't know. You are juicy. Believe me, I know what it's like to scour your body for imperfections. I've had all those conversations, with myself, with my friends. And I can tell you with full certainty that when you are 52 you will look back with affection on your 20 and 30-year old selves and you will, no matter what your relationship was or is to physical beauty, you will remember you were juicy and you will just shake your head. And maybe sigh.

Even Persephone knew the god of the underworld craved the crack of a pomegranate seed between his darkened teeth.

5 Things To Watch Out For In High WASPism

1. Colonialism. Exploiting other creatures, i.e. using their capacity without fair recompense, is never good behavior.

2. Disdain and contempt. Except for shoes. I am OK with contempt for others' shoes. And maybe purses. Oh and some kinds of wallpaper. And since this is High WASPism we don't have to worry about any pointing.

3. Eating disorders. Yeah, pretty much invented anorexia and bulemia.

4. Hysteria. Of the Victorian kind.

5. Inability to sob if it looks undignified.

One could also argue that Wall Street is another thing that of late has been bad about High WASPism. I would posit that the people behaving badly in the Financial District - no matter what their background or socioeconomic category - were just plain greedy and every living person should watch out for that. Greed is not one of the Seven Deadly Sins for nothing.

High WASP x People's Republic of Berkeley

Had a conversation with my sister today. She said she thought that there were sub-groups of WASPs. Yes, I said, exactly what I was thinking! She said, our family isn't Southern golf-playing WASPs or even New England thrifty WASPs. Actually, I said, you are sort of High WASP meets People's Republic of Berkeley. Yes, she said, I am a hippie intellectual WASP. But, I said, the WASPs in Palo Alto (another Bay Area suburb in case you aren't familiar with our area) are also sort of hippie intellectual, but different. Yes, she said, they have more money. They have good cars. They care more about the environment, we care more about poverty.

My sister said, it's almost a diaspora of WASPs. She pronounced the word correctly. Yes, I said, exactly what I was thinking! Except I didn't know how to pronounce the word. However, she said, diaspora is largely used in another context. So the word needs to be used carefully. My sister meant that when you come from a background of privilege, you really don't get to coopt certain terms. She's right. That's part of post-modern High WASPism. Of liberal North California High WASPism. You know your ancestors exploited all kinds of people. You applaud the flood of ethnic and economic and class diversity across America. You are very careful not to speak openly (except in the privacy of the entire Internet of course) about the privilege you have experienced. But even so you do feel wistful about your childhood, because, after all, as a child you only knew that it was your mom and your dad and your brother and your sisters and your house.

Even if everyone was blond. And the house was, well, big.

So we will just say that sub-species have developed. Originally, high WASPs came from Boston, New York, or Philadelphia. And the distinction between the three cities mattered. Now the WASP archetype seems to have devolved into relative - although fun - trivia. Where to buy cute pink and green picture frames? Should a man wear a faded red sports jacket and call it chambray? Is that the end of the discussion? Does it matter if it is? And what are high WASPs like in Chicago? In St. Louis? In Charleston? In Cleveland?

What I am saying is true. I just can't tell if it matters.