Womanly comportment...hand placement

So a friend sent me this link to Bitter BettyBlogs the topic being standing positions and what to do with ones ladylilke hands and arms. Interesting tutorial. I can remember some of the advice in this vein in many a publication of my very early youth.

One friends reaction: "Ha ha, the look on the model's face is like, "what is this bullsh*t I'm doing!?" The slenderizing position looks like you're afraid your butt is going to fall of if you let go! AH, but my very favorite! I think we should all go somewhere and express pertness! HAHAHAHAHA! It looks like her arms got put on backwards at the fembot factory! HAHAHA! Oh, and for the love of GOD, the big girls better not let their arms be akimbo! (what?!) It doesn't say why, just don't do it."

Another friends reaction: "I practiced these for a while (in front of a mirror of course!) first #2 to “slenderize the hip line” then I moved on to #3 to “minimize the waistline” but came to a dead STOP when I read “Warning to the overweight” about this position requiring the arms to be akimbo and that I should avoid this-----what the heck??!! If I wasn’t overweight, I wouldn’t be trying to “minimize my waistline”!!! But, I do have to say I agree with you...let’s all go somewhere and express pertness! Or what the heck maybe a cowboy’s (shouldn’t that be cowgirl) hand position----that should be attractive but I’ll make sure I do it symmetrically…"

I remember “Charm School.” YES, I *DID* attend Charm School. I was unimaginably young, the year was 1958. I learned to walk, talk and in general comport myself as a LADY. DO NOT CROSS YOUR LEGS AT THE KNEE. Demurely cross them at the ankle, always holding those knees (naughty KNEES) tightly together...Cross ones little arms at the wrists demurely in the lap after sitting in this lady-like position. We actually WALKED WITH BOOKS ON OUR HEADS to practice the smooth walk. We had a fashion show and learned to walk and turn and pose, much as in this tome on hand and arm positions...hahhahha.

Well, I know how to wear gloves, and what gloves go with what occasions...hats, ditto...all augmented by my mother’s able teaching. She herself however, was NEVER accused of PERTNESS...hahhha...if you knew her you’d know that. She was a capable, assertive, able woman who did everything from knock out walls and remake our old house, to tarring the roof, growing the flowers and veges, and sewing, knitting, doll making and repair, and photography, reading and painting. But, I digress....

Yes, we should be more aware of our INNER PERTNESSES!! But seriously folks, you have to admit that this is a better image than the tattooed woman with her boobs flopping along, her flip-flops matching the rhythm, chewing her gum noisily with her mouth open, slogging through the grocery store, smacking her little ones, yelling at the top of her lungs to the man in her life who is over stuffing frozen meat into his shirt...

Michael Chabon addendum...

Talking to another Portis fan today I remembered that when I first started to read Yiddish Policeman I had a sudden epiphany. Chabon is the closest thing to Portis I have read. There is a feeling of "kindred spirit" there...some fascination with the ridiculous. A great choice to follow reading Yiddish Policeman is Masters of Atlantis. You'll never read schlock again.

Michael Chabon's Sitka...

I finished The Yiddish Policeman's Union over the long weekend. I started it a few days before the weekend, and I attempted to make it last longer, but it just would not. It captured me and tunneled me through that oddest of looking glasses and into a parallel universe of Jewish Sitka just before reversion. I lived in Okinawa just previous to that island's reversion to Japan, and there is indeed a surrealistic component to the temporary state of mind in a place which is neither one nor the other quite yet. In Sitka, the reversion has its upheaval religiously and socially, no one knows their fate. To be tossed out ignominiously into a cold world is nothing new to Jewish life, but the population had ignored the 60 year inability to make the Jewish state in Alaska permanent, and was confused and depressed about the coming abyss. Into this Meyer Landsman falls over a body in his flophouse of a cheap hotel whose identity and fate become an obsession for the policeman. Meyer has his own problems - an ex-wife he loves, a friend he counts on, and assorted characters who come and go through Chabon's brilliant world. His fascination with the chess pieces of the dead man's life becomes an unfolding story of a miraculous life, a Holy Man who found the modern world and its convoluted motives too much. I can't say any more because as usual, Michael Chabon has written a completely original novel which has to be read. Any fluid language of bookish critique would be exceedingly superfluous. Do I need to add that I think Chabon the most brilliant writer on the scene? I missed his book signing in Seattle last year by one day, and I still rue that I didn't change that plane ticket...

Alan Furst once more...

Last night I finished The Polish Officer. Furst (read all about his books in the New York Times) only gets better at crafting the time, the place and the characters. When I have to leave these friends at the end of the book, I am left hoping. I referred to the last novel as depressing in another post, but depressing isn't the right word. The realities of WWII were awful. No poetic effusions I could craft would make that any different. Just awful. The Germans and the Russians tramped over the top of the Poles, and that is just a fact, among many other facts about the period. What happens to people's lives, and how radicalized ordinary folk can become is the eternal theme of Furst's work. The germ of conscience, the surprising surge of honor and bravery in those who had considered themselves ordinary folk, continues to fascinate Furst and it fascinates me.These are novels of merit and worth, not genre novels, not what is referred to, irritatingly enough, as "easy reads." The main problem with good writing is that you can't go back, you can't settle anymore. If tricked into reading Furst or Portis because you thought it was genre, or you thought it looked swell, you are caught up in the search for more. I am a reader. I read as a child; I read whatever I thought looked interesting, and my parents never stepped in (She READS! Isn't it wonderful? They were wonderful). SO, I read voraciously and widely. I am not a writer because so many other people have done that already. Too many as it turns out. So much is drek. Now I only read what I want to read, and there are years of books ahead of me that I may not get to in this lifetime. You can be sure Alan Furst's work will top the pile.

Summer...reading...

Light reading has captured me for the last several weeks. After finishing Alan Furst's Night Soldiers I was ready for some M.C. Beaton. The Furst novel was so heavy. A depressing, intricate story of Eastern Europe and the Balkans pre and during WWII, it had an ending that was a surprisingly hopeful one. Furst writes with a dexterity and depth not found in a lot of modern writing, and I look forward to each novel. I know his characters now, and each one is a friend. I have a few Beaton books lined up, and just finished another Lawrence Block Bernie Rhodenbarr novel. This time I read The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart and it was the best of the Rhodenbarr's so far! Very witty, very New York. The resolutions of the mysteries in this series do seem pulled out of the woodwork. You don't have the clues in book really, so the books aren't about clever detection as much as about the characters, the city, the humor. I think they make terrific airplane reading, or summer entertainment. Donald Westlake's Dortmunder series is far better plotted, and more entertaining all around, but I will read Rhodenbarr books as I find them, and I love the whole New York City thing.