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Bring Back Charm School
It’s time for a weekend break from politics. So today in “A Weekend Break from Politics,” I propose to lobby for the return of Charm School.
I’m not sure when the idea of charm school, or finishing school, went out of fashion. I’m not sure why, either: Perhaps had something to do with the idea that teaching women to be charming was sexist, or that “charm” was an oppressive, patriarchal social construct; or perhaps, as sometimes things do, it just went out of fashion.
But the consequence, I think, is that we’ve come to view charm as something like beauty: Either you’re born with it or you’re not, and if not, too bad for you.
And that’s absolutely untrue. Charm can be learned, and should be learned, because those in possession of it have easier lives. Charmed lives, in fact.
By “charm,” I mean something a bit more than good manners (although the systematic teaching of good manners, too, has sadly fallen out of favor). I mean precisely the things that once were taught in so-called charm schools: posture, voice, elocution, and physical grace.
I think “elocution lessons” disappeared when “charm school” did, and perhaps for similar reasons. This, too, is a shame, because of course elocution can be taught, and usually, it must be taught: It’s rare for it to come naturally. Most people need to be shown, explicitly, how to speak clearly and charmingly, how to control their inflection, pace, pitch, voice resonance, and facial expressions.
And of course people with good elocution have an advantage over those who don’t. If, as I suspect, elocution lessons fell into disfavor because they suggested the existence of a class structure in American society — a truth about our society that we didn’t like — we certainly didn’t rectify this problem by getting rid of elocution lessons. We just ensured that people who weren’t born at the top of the hierarchy would be deprived of the tools they needed to navigate it.
By charm, I stress, I don’t mean beauty, fashion, or grooming. These are separate things. (How many times have you seen an interview with a spectacularly beautiful fashion model who, the moment she opens her mouth, makes you reach for the mute button?)
Charm is charm, but it isn’t magic. It’s not, as some believe — because they haven’t been taught otherwise — mysterious or ineffable.
Or yes, perhaps some aspects of it are, but others aren’t. The elements of charm can be broken down, studied, learned, and made habit.
And they should be. I daily see men and women making life so much harder for themselves through lack of charm. I see sullen body language that invites the rest of the world to respond in sullen kind. I hear voices that I shouldn’t hear, period: If you’re speaking so loudly in a restaurant that people who aren’t at your table can understand what you’re saying, you’re speaking too loudly. I hear voices that set my teeth on edge: In men, high-pitched or nasal voices — or monotone, sullen, and grunting voices; in women, voices marred by upspeak and vocal fry. I hear verbal tics that are guaranteed to annoy — “likes,” “and, uhs.” These people are making life harder for themselves: They’re creating a zone of irritation around them.
But the good news is that all of this can be fixed — and fixed easily! Most of it can even be fixed in a single lesson, after which it’s just a matter of conscious practice for a week or two. Then it becomes a habit.
I reckon it’s now even more important to teach these things to our youngfolk. So many of their social interactions are now conducted online that they really have no chance of acquiring these skills by osmosis.
I thus propose to bring back Charm School.
“Charm school” was, I think, reserved for women, but the same principles apply to men. A high-pitched voice, a hesitant voice, a squeaky voice — all of these things are handicaps. Men and women need to be taught how to make their voices warm, gentle, and animated. Posture, too, should be taught, as should walking gracefully. (Life is so much easier for people with good posture. This is unfair, of course. Good posture is not the same thing as good character. But it’s true.)
So that’s my weekend proposal.
What lessons would you include in charm school?
And how would you go about bringing it back?
Published in General
The South is just like France this way — even (maybe especially) Paris, despite it being a huge, busy city. It doesn’t matter how much of a hurry you’re in, or how many people are waiting in line. If you fail to say, “Bonjour Madame” or “Bonjour Monsieur” before asking for whatever it is you need, the rest of that interaction will be frosty. The French cling to “manners” fiercely, and I’ve come to admire them for it. They’re right to believe that an insistence upon small social pleasantries, on treating everyone — including the harried clerk who sells you your ticket in the metro station — like a human being, first, and only second as someone who’s there to sell you something, makes life more pleasant, more full of charm, for everyone.
When I explain Paris to visiting Americans, I often draw the analogy with the South. The South is known for moving unhurriedly, which isn’t true of Paris, but it’s the same idea: Shopping isn’t just about crossing all the items you need off your list, it’s about the social interaction with the cheese-seller, the pharmacist, the baker. It can be maddening, sometimes, if you’re not feeling chatty. But on the whole, I think it meets a very deep need to feel connected to your neighborhood and the people around you.
I wonder if that explains why the French in North America figured out faster than the English or Spanish how to do trade relations with the Indians. Because for most Indian groups, trade was a matter of relationships, not just a market exchange of goods.
Yeah, these are small things that take a bit of getting used to. I’d argue that things like this fall under the category of “different, but equally good.” I obviously do not subscribe to the notion that all cultures are “equally good.” But in some instances, they are. I don’t think it’s inherently more or less polite to begin the day with shaking hands, as opposed to “What’s up?” But I think it’s inherently impolite to ignore local mores about what constitutes a polite way to greet someone.
I’m now so used to the French way of doing things that I’ll get momentarily confused when I meet Americans who are visiting from out of town: “Should I kiss them on both cheeks? No, wait, we don’t do that, that would be completely weird.” But if I spend 48 hours back in the US, I quickly revert to normalcy.
We’re a very unaffectionate culture, physically. We rarely touch people unless we’re romantically involved with them. Deep down, I kind of prefer that: it’s how I was raised. But I can understand how we might seem cold to people who are used to endless handshaking and cheek-kissing.
That’s a great question. I have no idea. It sounds plausible, doesn’t it? But I suspect a lot of this culture is post-revolutionary (post the French Revolution, that is). It’s part of the ideas of “égalité and fraternité: Don’t treat the little people like little people, lest they lop your head off. So I don’t know much at all about the culture of pre-revolution French traders; I suspect it might not have been anything like contemporary French culture.
Fascinating question, though.
I think even in America, neighborhoods in big cities have certain similarities to small towns, in that many people walk to the corner grocery store to do their shopping. There may be a deli, bakery, coffee shop, dry cleaner, etc. within walking distance than they frequent often, and get to know the owner and key staff members as neighbors.
Whereas most of my experience, and I think the mainstream American experience these days, is of suburban living and driving to large shopping malls and big box stores with a large staff working shifts and a lot of turnover. The friendly kid at Best Buy who helped me select a new printer last year might not be working there next time I go back, or he might be off that day, and in any case if I’m shopping for a new phone, that’s not his department.
Hmm, I’d have thought the reverse: good manners are a mark of “good breeding” in a class-based society, and people of lower social classes strive to learn them to improve their lot in life. We’ve discussed the good manners of Southerners, and the South was historically more aristocratic than the North.
Whereas I think the suspicion of “putting on airs” is a distinctly egalitarian notion: what, you think you’re better than me with your fancy big words and your hoity-toity manners?
Egalite is all very well, but you don’t people to think you’re trashy! Iow, it works if there is something you’re all better than together. Right?
It can damage the vocal cords, though it doesn’t always. Fry is sometimes used in exercises to correct vocal faults:
Fry in speech is not always a purposeful affectation, but can be the instinctive result of attempting to phonate below your modal register. If your modal voice is high, and especially if tension prevents you from taking your modal voice down to its absolute lower limit, it’s natural to do what you have to (fry) to reach the lower pitches expected of you. (Male singers, for example, are expected to fry low notes if they can’t hit them modally – not that expected is the same as desired. It’s expected in the sense that if it’s not desired, men must be asked not to do it, since otherwise many will.)
The typical female speaking voice is pitched around G3, and my modal voice poops out above that. Women use pitch changes to stress words more than men do, and drops in pitch risk dipping momentarily into fry unless you start high enough in your modal voice to avoid it, which would put me at the pitch of children, B3 or higher. I don’t mind having a childish pitch when I speak foreign words. A childish pitch in English doesn’t sound “natural” to me, though.
I think these dips into fry are different from the “sexy baby” affectation, since that voice is unrelentingly raspy, rather than coarsening only on pitch drops. Nonetheless, evidently fry can annoy to the degree it’s present, meaning partly present is still partly annoying. Just as a “too high”, “plummy” tone can also annoy, since that sounds like its own affectation.
Here’s a sampling of men using vocal fry in speech. It does seem to be less jarring when men do it.
Tom Watson Jr, the long-time CEO of IBM, greatly admired an IBM executive who had worked himself from a rough coal-mining area. When Watson asked the man what he felt had been the keys to his success, he responded: (1) reading the classics, (2) listening to classical music, and (3) buying clothes from Brooks Brothers.
Hmm, what might the modern-day equivalent of these points be?…
That’s indeed the way he comes across on TV. But a friend of mine had dinner with him, in a group setting, and commented that Gates was “very courteous…treated everyone including the waiters with a lot of respect…except for the journalists”
They are the modern equivalents of themselves.
I think this is part of Claire’s point. But is it cause or symptom?
And the Social Register set has to teach their children manners just like the rest of us. It’s not genetic.
And we come full-circle!
Wow, there’s so much here. Where to start? Vocal fry: While some people attempt to use vocal fry as a range extender, IMO it’s nothing more than a stunt. For those who achieve any semblance of a pitch in their “fry range,” if you can call it a range at all, that’s fine for a trick. It is not a pleasing sound, and IMO has no place in vocal performance. If you’re trying to perform something that requires fry, you’re singing the wrong part. In speaking voice, vocal fry signals to me that she speaker is dehydrated. And that alone, for a singer, is really, really bad. @vicrylcontessa, please address this. You’re absolutely the perfect person to do so.
Re: manners – the only place I’ve been where I find manners worse than California cities in NYNY, the place so rude they named it twice as a warning to the unsuspecting. It’s not so much so in rural California, but even then, the moment you cross the border, you find people much more friendly, polite and helpful. Even in Oregon and Nevada, even though they’re so heavily influenced by their rude and socialist neighbor.
Out of time. Maybe more later.
Are those mutually exclusive? I think some people are conflating charm with politeness, but I’m not sure they’re the same thing.
Take for instance an actual awkward, nerdy teenager — many are courteous and polite. They don’t act like a stereotypical arrogant jock who bullies everyone around him. They aren’t being intentionally rude or disrespectful, just awkward, because they haven’t learned how to carry themselves, how to speak properly, and 1001 other complex social conventions.
Hey! Some of us aspire to that.
Oh, sure, it can mean you’re singing the wrong part. Which some of us occasionally do, for various reasons, including it being the condition of getting to sing in a fairly prestigious group at all.
When I was young and stupid, since it was clear I had no usable alto range, I would go for the growliest timbre I could and sing with the tenors – because the world needs tenors a lot more than it does sopranos! Now I’ve stopped doing that. But are there times when it’s “Midge sings alto or nothing”? Yes. Because I’m a little fish in a very big pond. Now, I get assigned parts whose lowest notes I simply do not sing. Is this crazy? Sure, but it’s directors’ prerogative to be just as crazy as they want to be, and it benefits me nothing to sass them for it.
Exactly what I was about to say. Politeness is a virtue in itself, and one I treasure enormously, but it’s not quite the same thing as charm — although there’s some overlap.
What do you do if you automatically feel “ick” just touching a stranger.
Absolutely nothing. It would be hugely impolite to betray that. You pretend you don’t notice.
As Adam Carolla put it, “Don’t be you. Be a better version of you.” Even Trump fans like VDH want Trump to be a better version of himself.
Would charm school be helpful to high-functioning autistic or Aspie people? Everything that Aspies do wrong (posture, speech, intonation) seem to be addressed by charm school.
See, for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Theatre_Workshop_of_the_Handicapped
Yes, I think it would.
Well, the one thing that did occur to me is to take positive steps to mask any telltale involuntary responses, like palmar sweat, since our bodies sometimes notice even when we’re pretending not to.
We don’t have direct control over our autonomic nervous system. We have some limited indirect control, and coping mechanisms.
I graduated high school with terrible startle reactions, not to all human contact, but to unexpected human contact. A year or so of college, studying in the “nerd lounge”, finally cured me of that, since the guys would otherwise find it very funny to sneak up on me just to startle me. Really, it was funny. But even funnier (for me, at least) when it no longer worked.
I don’t know, because I don’t have any experience of trying to teach these things to high-functioning autistic or Aspie people, but I reckon it would be, sure. Perhaps the curriculum would need to be adjusted slightly to take into account how Aspies learn — maybe it would need to be broken down even more finely, because if I understand correctly, the problem Aspies have is that a lot of things about body language that seem “natural” to non-Aspies just don’t to them. Any Aspies here have any thoughts about this?
My Aspie nephew can absolutely do “charm” when required. I was really impressed when last I saw him here in Paris, because he was the most awkward teenager you can imagine — and because I know his parents worked like stink with him on all of those issues (charm, manners, behaving the way non-Aspie people expect people to behave), and that they were driven to despair at times by the challenge. The last thing you’d guess from meeting him is that none of the charming things he does come naturally to him. (His mom is French, by the way, which I think has something to do with it: French parents place a lot of stress on teaching their kids to behave “correctly.”)
Truth is, I could try to invent a plausible-sounding answer, but I just don’t know. I’m sure there is an answer, and that it’s an interesting one. But I truly don’t know enough to make an educated guess. It would be a fascinating project to work on — the evolution of the concept of “manners” and the way this notion evolved with, or against, the idea of “aristocracy.” and with, or against, the growing premium placed on “equality.” If some graduate student out there is looking for a doctoral thesis, I bet this is fertile soil. (It may be that the definitive work on the subject has been written already, but if so, I’m unaware of it.)
Speaking of charms, rather than just charm schools…
Here are some examples …
And
Once you don’t have to think about the rules, you can focus on actually enjoying the event.
Some of these things- handshakes, small talk, dining manners- are still taught at business schools, or at least the one I attended. Interviewing skills in particular were emphasized, for obvious reasons. Interview skills were also covered in engineering school, though not in the same depth.