Southern Belles and Charms

I think the South is the best place to get home decor items for your house. Because it's really homey down there. And people are really really really into Southern hospitality and charm and not one person I know who lives there, wants the appearance that they just don't care.

It's all about staging and make-up and impact. Yet, the Southern belle lives on in the deep South. Although I'm certain it's a more temperate thing than it was in the past. The thing still exists. And most women who live in the town in which I lived for five years, don't dare go out of the house without being 'presentable'.

I noticed this attitude when I once hosted the friend of my daughter, Maddy. Her name was--well, let's just call her Mary-Ellen for anonymity sake. Anyway, Mary-Ellen had stayed overnight and the girls were busily playing with their feet in the swimming pool (it was early spring and too chilly to swim) and running around in the backyard. They were both 14 at the time. I was outside watching them and thinking, "how cute that they are both growing up but are still so playful and child-like in some ways."

Minutes later, Mary-Ellen's mother called and told her daughter that she'd be picking her up in no more than thirty minutes. When Mary-Ellen's mom stopped by to get her, she took one look at her girl and said, "Honey, we are going to be stopping at Kroger on the way home. Now, you'd better run upstairs and throw some make-up on cause you don't want to be seen like that."

She obediently disappeared and when she descended the stairs, she looked like a completely different creature.

The entire exchange took me a bit by surprise. What kind of example is it to set? I wondered though she was such a pleasant person and I really wanted to be friends. This was the very same mother who months later also told me that if I wanted to properly train my youngest in the ways of etiquette and social decorum, I'd probably want to register her quickly in 'social' where she would need to enlist a male counterpart her very age and learn to dance properly just like those others in their age group.

And also learn which utensils were appropriate when sitting down to eat. It's like a finishing school, she genteelly explained. And that is merely one example of how things are down that way. Yes it's changed from the days of Scarlett O'Hara. But ever so slightly.