The term “old-fashioned” is not quite the pejorative crusher it used to be, Miss Manners has noticed with some relief. Old-fashioned households, complete with children and cushions, are quite the latest thing.
For most of this century, the term “old-fashioned” (when applied to anything not containing liquor and even some folks who did) was a choice insult. The world was perceived as moving rapidly, churning out ever better ideas, products and ways of living, and stragglers were shot with scorn. Goodness knows this epithet was lobbed often enough at defenseless Miss Manners. She is a devotee of the Stopped Clock School of Fashion, by which one is madly chic twice every decade, when the clothing one prefers cycles around; and behind the times—or one can equally well say way, way ahead of them—the other years. She also admits to holding old-fashioned values, or at least she used to, until that became a code term for taking an unseemly interest in how other people pursue romance.
So you can imagine Miss Manners’ alarm when, at the end of the 20th century, old-fashionedness became adorable. Even the Victorians, that beleaguered generation that promised to rival the Puritans for disrepute among its descendants, evolved into—cutie-pies. Miss Manners is afraid there is no other way to say it. She sometimes wonders whether global warming isn’t the result of all of them spinning in their graves at once.
The most visible effect has been on households. After years of open space, geometrical shapes and bare surfaces, nooks and padding are everywhere. There is so much coziness and warmth that Miss Manners worries that the citizens must be having trouble finding their beds under their pillow collections. Handicrafts are booming; at least, taking instruction in handicrafts is booming. To perform household tasks the hardest way possible is considered a demonstration of loving care and personal attention. Why buy a bag of potato chips when you can spend the day making them?
Miss Manners could tell you why, possibly drawing in embarrassing reminders about how everyone claims to be too busy nowadays to perform the ordinary little politenesses of life. Not that she is opposed to charming hobbies or enhancing the home. Laces and tassels are quite to her overstuffed taste, and she reminds herself that lurching into the ludicrous, as demonstrated by the current enthusiasts with their crammed parlors and mincing manners, was an authentic plague of Victorian times.
There is something more deeply upsetting about this, however. It is all very well to turn one’s home into a theme park at the expense of history, which isn’t around to defend itself, but not if it does damage to the present. That happens when the artifacts take on so much weight that they crush the spirit—when the food receives more attention than the people who eat it, or when stylistic harmony inspires disharmony against those whose tastes and presents don’t meet the standard.
Miss Manners is not so shallow as to say that surfaces don’t matter. Nor is she after a period spirit to go with the bric-a-brac. We don’t live Victorian lives, and a good thing that is, too. What bothers her is any sort of decoration piled on top of an unsound structure. The foundation of a civilized household is made with such qualities as respect, generosity, hospitality and shared time and resources. These things are not subject to going in and out of fashion.
DEAR MISS MANNERS – I have once again seen an ad on TV with an adult drinking juice from the family-sized container from the refrigerator. Would one dare to accept a drink of juice in anyone’s home, after watching this happen over and over again?
GENTLE READER – Miss Manners has always hoped that people have more sense than to get their manners lessons from television commercials, in which case you wouldn’t have to worry about this problem in real life. Please don’t disillusion her.