How To Deliver A Difficult Ethical Message

Figure 1. The dead elephant.

A reader, T., wrote in to explain that she had recently suffered through a situation which resulted in her leaving the practice of a health professional. As in, "Thank you very much, your services will no longer be required." She asked,

"To make a long story short, would you consider a post on the topic of 'how to deliver an unpleasant ethical message?'"

Unethical behavior, if not confronted, behaves like a dead elephant. Some of us line up in front smiling, others cross their arms, uncomfortable, in distress. How to speak up about the elephant? How do High WASPs do it? It's not our strong point, frankly. Crimes against humanity, the behemoths of bad ethics, we approach like any other culture. Sometimes courageous, sometimes fearful, sometimes guilty as charged. We try to do good. We sometimes fail. Smaller ethical mistakes, made unknowingly, we try to forgive. We sometimes fail. It's the middle ground where the High WASP culture lets us down. We are far more easily shamed than most. So overturned, in fact, by social gaffes that I cannot offer advice in this situation, cannot deconstruct as usual, without matrices. Diagrams, we hope, can fight off shame. Feel free to snort with laughter.

Figure 2. Impact of Emotional State On Conveying An Unpleasant Ethical Message, Mapped Against Severity of Ethical Misconduct.

If you've finished laughing, we can discuss. Not finished? I'll wait. Right then. 3 of the quadrants in the matrix pose no 'How To' dilemmas.

1. Heroic Resistance. When we need to be heroes, whether we are up to the task or not, we know what it would take.
2. Sociopath. Those who feel nothing at horrors of humanity must be sociopaths. I don't think sociopaths think about 'how to.'
3. Zen. When other people's small mistakes annoy us a just little bit, we have learned to breathe deeply and move on.

But when we have strong feelings about what we believe is unethical but non-criminal behavior, that's tougher. It's difficult to balance the discomfort of embarrassment against the righteous pleasure of calling out mid-level bad behavior. At least for us. If you are freer I salute you. So. You notice that you are angry and concerned about someone's unethical behavior. What now? The [Reformed] High WASP Guide To Difficult Conversations

1. Examine the offending behavior. Make sure you have the facts. No point using up righteousness points over inaccuracies.
2. Stand still. Take a breath. Examine your own feelings. Are you purely righteous? Or is your distress motivated more by your own emotional needs?
3. Realize that you're human. Nobody, except perhaps the Dalai Lama, Mother Theresa, or Thich Nhat Hanh, feels distress over pure right and wrong alone. Our internal landscape engages. Welcome to humanity.
4. Review your feelings. Even after you understand your own emotional engagement, do you still feel the person's behavior is unethical? That wrong has in fact been done? You are ready to speak. You will feel quite strong and calm.
5. Put your feelings aside. They will be there when you come back.
6. Do not send an email, text, or Twitter message. The usual rules of courtesy apply. Call the offender, or even better, make an appointment to see them in person.
7. Preview your message. "So-and-so, I need to speak with you about a difficult subject." Your politeness here prevents the kinds of thrashing common when people feel blindsided.
8. Deliver your message. Carefully, simply, articulately, and as briefly as possible.
9. Wait. Listen. Repeat. You are not here to argue.
10. If you hear new facts that indicate you were wrong, apologize sincerely. You haven't done anything that can't be repaired. You had bad information. It happens.
11. If you hear no new facts, listen, tell the offender you have heard what they say, and repeat your message. At a certain point you will know if they are going to admit their wrongdoing or not.
12. Before you are done, you will need to decide what reparations will satisfy you. Those who have done wrong must make it right, one way or another. Do you require only that they acknowledge? Apologize? Offer compensation? Submit to punishment? In this too, clarity is your friend. Your good friend.
13. Go home. The world is probably now a little bit better place.

This is all more easily said than done, you might reply. You would be right. One has to be willing to step back and look at oneself. This is not easy. Hence the entire cadre of therapists. But it's not impossible, especially as one ages. Sometimes you notice unethical behavior in a person who has power over you, an employer, an official, a parent. The problem of power imbalance is more tenacious. Backing down from fear is much different than backing down from embarrassment. Far easier to forgive. 

 The photo above is from T.'s family archives. She grew up in British Colonial Africa. The picture was taken in Kenya. Colonialism is the epitome of ethical issues, complete with a terrible power imbalance. I can only imagine how I would have felt as a child in that environment, although I would not want to assume anything about T. The elephant as metaphor. I'm talking to myself here. Diagramming for myself what I haven't always done well. Using abstract constructs to repair felt flaws. While mild shame has probably improved my taste in clothing, its more bitter cousin has left other, longer, traces. High WASPs have historically believed that what remains unsaid means more than what gets said. This should have changed, in 2010. I don't know if all the talking that goes on night and day now, across the electronic universe, is helping with shame, and the resultant ignoring of bad guys. I hope so.

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.

My (Blank) Bag Snagged My (Blank) Jacket

Home. With a story. From the last leg of my travels.

I was wearing my old Chanel jacket, a pair of dark wash Seven jeans, black Aerosole flats, and a generic black v-neck cashmere sweater my mother gave me. Carrying my Louis Vuitton Monogram Vernis bag. In Amarante. Confession. I did have Manolo quilted ballet flats on earlier but after walking all over Princeton they hurt my feet. I changed. I did not want to slog my way through Newark Airport with a blister. Even a glamorous blister.


Now, as I carried my lovely bag, the buckle of the lovely belting leather straps kept catching the underside of my Chanel jacket sleeve. The jacket is tweed, nubbly, loosely woven. This means strands of black and white wool were torn free. Repeatedly. No matter what I did, how I held the bag, how I pulled the suitcase. See?


But wait. Did you hear what I just said? "My Vuitton bag is snagging my Chanel jacket." I can't even say that with a straight face. Those words could maybe come out of someone else's mouth, but not mine. Let me try again. My Vuitton bag is...nope. Can't do it. Sorry guys. For all I love style and I love sparkly purple things the whole thing struck me as really funny.

I mean, we're talking luxury. Donned precisely so that I could feel invincible, impeccable, unassailable in the airport and on the airplane. So that I would be wholly free from envy or style anxiety. And we have tweed snaggage. I called my best friend in Belgium and told her. These moments cry out for sharing.

Luckily I am almost as fond of irony as I am of Amarante. And really glad to be home.

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.

The Story Of Our Dinner In Northern New Jersey

On the Wednesday after my daughter’s graduation we drove to stay with my 82-year old 2^nd cousin once-removed-in-law whom I had not seen in 31 years. She put together a dinner party for us. She invited her son, his girlfriend, her daughter, her daughter’s husband, and a few other people from my father’s youth.

I had visited her and her husband fairly often while an undergraduate at Princeton. Unfortunately I spent much of my time uncomfortably watching the glamorous side of my High WASP family wear clothes I didn’t own and have conversations I couldn’t grasp. Her son and his friends lived in New York, they were the Gossip Girl cast grown up, they were Bright Lights, Big City, they were the late 20^th century version of This Side of Paradise. In those days I was not far removed from the girl who showed up at Princeton with a bandana on her head. Sure, I was High WASP, but as the daughter of a slightly left-wing professor from Northern California, at that point I had the High WASP horror of being inappropriate without the specific expertise in how to avoid it.

But last Wednesday I had fun. I had fun as we all gathered in the garden room where someone in a white jacket poured us drinks. I had fun on the patio where someone in a white jacket brought us cheese and crackers. I had fun at the dinner table, set with what appeared to be family china, and ornate silver candelabras with hanging crystals, and what appeared to be Louis Comfort silver centerpiece holders. Where several people with white jackets served us dinner. To my surprise, my discomfort is gone. It’s gone. It turns out that, after 30 years of life rubbing down your raw edges, you can go home again.

A fashion deconstruction of Wednesday night might make this all clearer. I didn’t have the right clothes to wear. And I knew it. All I had was a green patterned silk jersey shirt dress from Banana Republic. Which I had thought to wear for my daughter’s graduation but left in my suitcase in the face of an early thunderstorm.

The other women came, almost all of them, in sherbet colored dupioni silk pants and jackets with striking Kenneth Jay Lane type jewelry. I’d show you pictures but these kind of clothes do not appear to exist on the web in 2009. The only other woman who forgot to board the dupioni train wore a Tory Burch tunic and jeweled sandals. She was from New York. That explains it.

My cousin even asked me, in that indirect way, what had I worn for dinners during graduation? As in, why are you wearing that dress, surely you must have had to dress appropriately on other recent occasions? I didn’t mind. Do you hear that? I wore the wrong clothes and I didn’t mind. Quite remarkable. I felt in that moment that if you are in a group of people for whom you feel nothing but affection, and you give your affection freely, and you look them in the eyes and shake their hands as I was taught when I was little, all can be well. All manner of things can be well.

The next day I told my cousin that the table setting had been so beautiful and she told me it was all inherited, except the china, they had bought the china. Sometimes things are terribly profound and sometimes they are not and you do not usually get to choose.

My Son's Graduation, Part II. What I Wore.

I must reiterate. I know and knew that my feelings about my son’s graduation were unecessary. I knew that I shouldn’t care that these women had more money than I do, that they looked fancier, that they participated in a world I couldn’t join. I should have been able to hold my chin high, and march into that environment without a qualm. For whatever reason,(and I do have my theories), I couldn’t.

For now just grant me that I was determined to attend my son’s graduation free from social anxieties. What to do? I couldn’t exactly walk around with a copy of the Declaration of Independence hanging from my neck, ancestors’ names marked with yellow highlighter. I suppose I could have gone and purchased myself a whole new set of clothes. I could have sold some stock – the market was still high. Or I could have worn my gold cuff bracelet ornamented with an old mine diamond brooch from the family. But then I would have been openly competing. And worse than losing in trophy mom polo is letting on that you are in fact trying to win. In the end, this is what I wore.

My Son's High School Graduation by High WASP featuring Dorothy Perkins

Why? I am not surprised that you ask. It’s all about the social signaling. Now I could lie, and say it’s because the clothes were comfortable and appropriate, but you would all know it was untrue. I wore these clothes because I felt that they said, and I quote, “I have money too, and what’s more I am still in good shape despite my age. I am cool enough to wear jeans and sensible enough to wear flat shoes so that I will not sink into the grass.”

I confess my motivation. High WASP or no High WASP, Fashion is still a game of identities. And as a High WASP I was honor bound to look like I wasn’t trying. Like I meant to be wearing an older Chanel jacket rather than a new one. No one had to know I had no other. To win my secret battle, without betraying the High WASP code of conduct, I could say, “Look how au courant I am. My tunic is longer than my jacket.” But I had to say it in such a way that I could deny the statement even as I made it.

I am not proud. But humans signal each other. It is one of our most salient characteristics. Better I should make an effort to comprehend the need than to suppress the activity. Or so I tell myself.

When High WASPs Have Social Anxiety

Silicon Valley is full of very rich people. As in having a Gulfstream IV doesn’t mean you have the right toys. It’s got to be a Gulfstream V. Twenty Four At Heart calls a similar area of her hometown “Moneytown.” Well we’ve got Moneytown too. You mix private jets with Ph.D.s and people who think all software should be a free platform for rebellion and old hippies from the days of Ken Kesey living up in the redwoods, leavened with a cup or two of accountants who got moved here from Kansas to run the local office and venture capitalists with ADD and a lot of testosterone, and that’s our version of Moneytown.

All these people send their kids to school. As did I.

My son and daughter went to private schools here in the Valley. Their grammar school allowed kids to run around barefoot and throw wet clay onto a rapidly spinning wheel in an attempt to turn it into pots. I have the adorable relics on my shelves in the front bathroom. The other mothers, even if their husbands were named partners in billion dollar law firms, dressed down for the school’s culture. I did not find the environment terribly fashion-challenging.

High school was another matter. I could tell from the moment we showed up that no one was putting their hands into wet clay anywhere in the vicinity. The mothers of the other kids? They scared the bejesus out of me. What, afraid? High WASP? Whither impunity? What about the deep confidence of generations of privilege, the knowledge that my ancestors participated in the creation of this country? That had George Washington been less of a populist and done as the Society of the Cincinnati wanted, I would be titled? Countess High WASP. Or some such thing. Doesn’t all that nullify the usual social anxieties?

I wish. In the face of trophy mothers I quail. Their hair is so shimmery. Their voices are so pitched. Their toes so pink or coral. Or pink or coral. Or pink or coral. Their cars so large. Their wedding and engagement rings so even larger. The visible signs of wealth so, well, visible. And audible. They jingle when they walk. They scare me.

What Trophy Moms Wear To Graduation by High WASP featuring Burberry

The worst of it is that I couldn’t revert to the usual last resort of High WASPs in danger. I couldn’t feel disdain. These women had style. Oh, sure, one or two went over the top. But they didn’t scare me. The ones who scared me were the ones even I had to admit looked great. They looked like they were at the top of the social pyramid. I didn’t. And they were, and I wasn’t. At least not at the top of their pyramid. I hate to confess my shallow heart but this is all true.

Most days I could avoid the anxiety this caused me. I usually showed up directly from my office. No one does sparkly in an office. It’s not good practice to jingle when you walk. So I kept myself company with an inner litany of my accomplishments, a false chant of Yes I Can, a silent recitation of every presentation I had ever made to audiences of over 200 people and every person who had ever worked for me. I talked myself down from enough of the anxiety to attend things like soccer championships and senior fashion shows.

But then my son graduated from high school. And I swore to myself that I would find something to wear that made me feel like I had won. Won the battle that of course no one but me even knew was being fought.

Where Did You Go To School? Part 2

I was still 17 when I went to college. I was not a prodigy. My birthday is just in late September. I flew across the country by myself. Parents were less intent in 1974.

I stayed with my elderly cousins. They drove me to campus in an old station wagon with wood paneled sides. We parked outside the dormitory I would live in. It was built of gray stone; with mullioned windows of old glass. The stairway was dark. The room was small. I remember the bunk beds and the placement of our furniture and the size of the windows. And a dogged sense of having to pretend that I wasn’t on the edge of having to sit on the floor and admit I had no idea what I was doing.

Source

All the freshmen in those days ate at Commons. Ceilings close to 3 stories high. More dark, more stone. We stood in line to enter. One of the very first nights I was standing there in line by myself on the sidewalk. A boy stood in front of me. He turned. I was wearing jeans I had patched with pride, an Outward Bound logo squarely on my seat. In my "alternative" high school we had done survival training as part of the curriculum. I had a bandana on my head, probably navy blue but still, really? a bandana, pirate-style. The boy was wearing pants the color of faded strawberries. A button down shirt. A needlepoint belt with some small figures, could have been whales, could have been lacrosse sticks. I was not familiar with the secret life of belts in those days.

The boy asked me why I wore the bandana on my head. I was very nervous. I said in what I thought was a joke but actually was a manifestation of my discomfort, “Because my hair is dirty.” The boy was silent, unable to find a response. He turned away. Later it turned out that the boy was the son of someone everybody said was a member of La Cosa Nostra. Probably his belt was protective coloring, a disguise. But who can know at 17?

That’s just one piece. Here’s the other. I wrote my senior thesis, on Metaphor and Metonymy - List and Catalogues in Epic Poetry (the young are entitled to some hubris after all), in a study carrel, a small metal locker for people, combination lock and everything. I would go sit, read, write. Eat peanut M&Ms from a yellow 1-lb bag. Sit, read, write some more. And I would feel drunk. High. Stoned. Drunk on the workings of my own raw brain. I don’t mean to sound arrogant. That’s what it felt like at 21.

This is my own particular version of Princeton. It is embarassing to discuss here, in public, because it is so much the emblem of privilege and yet so important to me in my personal identity. What I say is true. I do not know if it is important.