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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
That assumes there are rules out there to be learned, which in turn assumes we’re all playing by the same set of rules.
I’m not entirely sure that holds true anymore. When enough time has passed that most everyone has forgotten or changed the rules, then each situation has to be improvised anew.
Once everyone has learned the rules, then we need new rules to show who the well-mannered people are. Otherwise we’ll have no way to condescend to the arrivistes, Brexiters, and Trumpsters. By the way, “condescension” was important to upper class manners in George Washington’s time. It was was a way of being personable with lower class persons–making them comfortable in your presence while still keeping your distance.
“Everybody’s playing the game, but nobody’s rules are the same. Nobody’s on nobody’s side.”
No, it’s nothing as coordinated as the elites deciding to make up new rules to humiliate the less-elite. Indeed, the direction of influence often goes the other way. Registers of behavior (like language) exist but the informal rules it’s so embarrassing to run afoul of are more fractured than stratified these days.
Or perhaps they were always this fractured, but tended to be fractured by geography in eras with less travel and communication, and so we noticed it less.
These days, yes. But there are always some who are trying to go back to the old days.