On a question of curtsying.
From preschool, when I grew up, we were taught to curtsy. Some of us at least could appreciate that this was an act of poise and dignity. But in seeming contradiction to that, the one thing that struck us all was pulling up our skirts. And boys were there and could see this. Once boys found out about this, they would snigger and point at us. It was an act of shaming and dominance in kindergarten for boys to pull up girls' skirts, a rape culture established already in symbolic acts, so early in life.
So curtsying involved an action whose boundaries were fraught with issues of personal autonomy and security for girls. That alone might account for why the practice has died out, not to mention the drastic changes in social patterns since Victorian times. It was already obsolete when it was being taught to us in the JFK administration, except for when meeting the crowned heads of Europe. Since Jackie Kennedy was so adept at wearing white gloves and charming European royalty, it's no wonder that curtsying was on the syllabus. It would also be useful in ballet class. But most of all, in those days there lingered the old-fashioned belief that the upbringing of young ladies necessarily imparted the whole set of refined social graces.
But now I want to present a long-overdue reality check about the skirt issue.
The traditions we have been taught were codified in late Victorian times. Back then, women wore ankle-length skirts for everyday attire. But their formal attire was a floor-length gown. If you bend your knees while wearing a floor-length skirt, you will smoosh it into the floor. To hold it up off the ground is an elementary display of refinement. When a Victorian girl was being taught to present herself formally for the first time, she also had to be taught how to negotiate the boundaries of a skirt that was suddenly much longer than anything she'd worn up till that point. So some manipulation of the skirt was coded into the pedagogy of curtsying.
But nowadays, when floor-length skirts are a rarity, those of us who curtsy still pull our skirts up. Because we've been taught to do it that way since we were girls. Even though there's no longer a need for it, it's come to be expected. This is an act of courtly refinement: nothing is taken any farther than just enough. If your hem is floor-length, yes, you hold up the skirt by as much as your knee-bending lowers you-two inches, three at most? You still keep the hem hovering just above the floor. But if your hem is ankle-length or shorter, there's no reason to hike up anything at all.
What you do with your hands is hold the sides of the skirt. It adds a graceful flourish to complement your knee-bending if you hold the sides outward (not upward) just a little. This is best executed in full skirts, which are always a feature of old-fashioned formal attire. They bell out some during the descent part of a curtsy. Holding the sides is a graceful gesture to complement the fullness of the skirt, and in general to help one negotiate a full skirt through three-dimensional space.
So curtsying involved an action whose boundaries were fraught with issues of personal autonomy and security for girls. That alone might account for why the practice has died out, not to mention the drastic changes in social patterns since Victorian times. It was already obsolete when it was being taught to us in the JFK administration, except for when meeting the crowned heads of Europe. Since Jackie Kennedy was so adept at wearing white gloves and charming European royalty, it's no wonder that curtsying was on the syllabus. It would also be useful in ballet class. But most of all, in those days there lingered the old-fashioned belief that the upbringing of young ladies necessarily imparted the whole set of refined social graces.
But now I want to present a long-overdue reality check about the skirt issue.
The traditions we have been taught were codified in late Victorian times. Back then, women wore ankle-length skirts for everyday attire. But their formal attire was a floor-length gown. If you bend your knees while wearing a floor-length skirt, you will smoosh it into the floor. To hold it up off the ground is an elementary display of refinement. When a Victorian girl was being taught to present herself formally for the first time, she also had to be taught how to negotiate the boundaries of a skirt that was suddenly much longer than anything she'd worn up till that point. So some manipulation of the skirt was coded into the pedagogy of curtsying.
But nowadays, when floor-length skirts are a rarity, those of us who curtsy still pull our skirts up. Because we've been taught to do it that way since we were girls. Even though there's no longer a need for it, it's come to be expected. This is an act of courtly refinement: nothing is taken any farther than just enough. If your hem is floor-length, yes, you hold up the skirt by as much as your knee-bending lowers you-two inches, three at most? You still keep the hem hovering just above the floor. But if your hem is ankle-length or shorter, there's no reason to hike up anything at all.
What you do with your hands is hold the sides of the skirt. It adds a graceful flourish to complement your knee-bending if you hold the sides outward (not upward) just a little. This is best executed in full skirts, which are always a feature of old-fashioned formal attire. They bell out some during the descent part of a curtsy. Holding the sides is a graceful gesture to complement the fullness of the skirt, and in general to help one negotiate a full skirt through three-dimensional space.