How To Be A Lady...

"Politeness does not always produce kindness of heart, justice, complacency, or gratitude, but it gives to a man at least the appearance of it, and makes him seem externally what he really should be."
— La Bruyere

Check out this wonderful blog post from fellow blogger Fiona, How To Be A Lady. She discusses a new show called The Girls of Hedsor Hall, where wild American girls are sent to an English finishing school to learn how to act like a lady. I have watched a couple of episodes and it's quite remarkable how atrocious, but also commonplace, some nasty behavior has become for many young women in our society. Watching their scenes in the nightclubs and when they've had a bit too much to drink wasn't so out of the ordinary considering some of the antics I've seen when I've been out. Very entertaining and informative, but I wonder if MTV viewers will be as eager to hop on the bandwagon and follow these girls as they were to follow the examples set by Teen Mom. Wishful thinking I fear!

On a side note, I was reading a book called "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter," and there's a moment where Aunt Julia, a recent divorcee, muses on what courting was like when she was younger. The passage goes "She laughed. But immediately a sad, disabused expression crossed her face. 'In my day, boys composed acrostics, sent girls flowers, took weeks to work up enough nerve to give them a kiss. What an obscene thing love has become among kids today.'" This book was written by a man, author Mario Vargas Llosa, and perhaps he was just as nostalgic for the days when boys could have that anticipation for something so simple as a kiss. I truly believe women pioneer the tone of humanity, and as the genteel sex becomes, well, less genteel, we see less chivalry, less etiquette, fewer displays of manners and fewer opportunities for men to rise to their best when women set the bar so low.