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GENTLE READER: How many times has Miss Manners said that . . . for the bridal couple or the guests to consider a wedding invitation as a solicitation for dry goods is in disgusting taste?
But what are the wedding invitations supposed to say? Does a first husband get invited if the children want him there? What does the bride wear if she is pregnant? Questions that once seemed to need no "correct" answers now support a whole manners-teaching industry. The 1,018-page 1984 edition of Emily Post's classic Etiquette, updated by her granddaughter-in-law Elizabeth Post, contains a special section on pregnant brides ("It should be remembered that this is a happy occasion . . ."). More explicit among the recent manuals are SexEtiquette, by Marilyn Hamel ("Should I? Can I? May I? Must I?"), and Sex Tips for Girls, by Cynthia Heimel ("Including important advice on 'Zen and the Art of Diaphragm Insertion' "). On a more humdrum front, Baldrige is now writing a compendium on how to behave at work, while George Mazzei has published The New Office Etiquette: A Guide to Getting Along in the Corporate Age.
For those who find such reading burdensome, there are classes. Baldrige offers lectures and seminars for ill-mannered executives at banks, insurance companies and other protocol-minded firms. "Young managers," she says, "are simply not aware of the nuances of social behavior. It's appalling that young people graduating from Vassar, Harvard and Stanford don't know the meaning of an RSVP. They often don't show up when they're invited, or they show up with a date." To mend their ways, Baldrige charges a sobering $3,500 a lecture, $6,000 for a full-day seminar.
"Americans work very hard to get to the top, and they want to feel comfortable there," says Marjabelle Stewart, who has been giving etiquette lessons for nearly two decades and now savors a sense of triumph. She offers "Petite Protocol" for preschool children; she also conducts executive seminars in table manners, which she optimistically touts as "International Dining: Eating Your Way to the Top." Stewart has franchised some 480 apostles around the country to teach "White Gloves and Party Manners" at $15 an hour, and enrollment has tripled in the past two years. Like a number of others, she credits the new mood to Ronald Reagan (and let us not forget Nancy and all those mink coats at the Inauguration and the $210,000 new chinaware at the White House). Says Stewart: "One of the greatest things this President has brought is good manners. He shows you can be nice to your wife and comfortable with her admiring you. It's a fabulous example of American manners."
Others read the signals in other ways. "Society today is sitting next to your hairdresser at dinner," according to Liz Smith, gossip columnist for the New York Daily News. She was inspired to that judgment by a White House Rose Garden party attended by, among others, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, a Secretary of State and a Supreme Court Justice, and Mrs. Reagan's New York hairdresser, Monsieur Marc (who later quoted the Liz Smith line on the jacket of his memoirs, Nouveau Is Better Than No Riche at All).