GIVE ME A BREAK:ON THE DORT the other day, a group of secondary school rugby players were discussing their upcoming debs. "She said she was going to buy me a suit," said one. All round disbelief and gawking. "I'd planned to rent one," he continued. Nods of acknowledgement. "So?" one of his friends said. You could tell by their expressions that they'd already paid their deposits. "So she says I can't wear a rented suit." The friends' drew back. You could smell their fear at this new form of social leprosy: suit rental.
“She’s bought you a suit?”
“Nah, I bought myself one.”
That little piece of information took a couple of Dort stops to sink in. I wanted to ask him how much he’d spent and if the girlfriend helped him pick it out, and how he explained the need for this huge outlay to his parents.
Even more than that, I wanted to have a word with the girlfriend, whom I imagine is one of those fake-tanned, big-haired, super-groomed, short-skirted harridans who makes other people’s lives hell because she’s worth it. When a guy asks her to the debs (though I suspect she asked him instead, girls don’t wait to be asked out anymore) her first thought is how she can whip him in to shape. The suit is only the beginning. The poor young man will be having chest waxing, sunbed sessions and a facial before he reaches the standards of presentability required by his girlfriend.
Which prompts me to write, Dear Glamazon, do you really think it matters what he’s wearing? What about how he treats you? Does he listen to you (apart from taking orders about his clothing)? Does he write you little notes or leave flowers on your doorstep? Do you actually like him, or is it just that he’s a good-looking rugby player? And if your anticipation of the evening is as superficial as clothing, how do you know the snog won’t be superficial, too?
The debs brings out an exaggerated 1950s-style of role-playing where women are exaggeratedly feminine and men so awkward where they look like they’re going out with their older sisters.
It's all about the clothes, not the behaviour or the confidence and this goes for people in their 20s as much as people of debs age. Take the picture on the front page of The Irish Timeslast week of Ronan O'Gara with his hands in pockets meeting the Queen, while Brian O'Driscoll seemed to giggle with his hand over his mouth behind her back, as if to say: "Isn't this funny?" Both men were wearing very nice suits. And Ireland is so proud of them that they were being presented to the Queen with whom the Irish have an ambivalent relationship.
You could argue that anyone who cares how the rugby players behaved is totally out of date. The Queen isn’t what she was in the past, when an empire depended on her. Today, the Queen’s financial investments have devalued as fast as her grandson Harry’s bachelor appeal. Her presence at an event – meeting rugby players or whomever – is a ritualised remnant of a colonial past that no longer exists.
Some people have made more out of it, asking whether O’Gara was making a deliberate political point, but I don’t think so. I think the current generation of teens and 20-somethings just don’t know how to behave. The nuns used to make sure that children grew up knowing how to behave properly and now that they’re gone, anything goes.
A slouching hands-in-pockets greeting is the result of the death of social grace. I don’t care if the little old lady greeting you is your very own great-grandmother from Ballywherever, you should be polite. And being polite does not consist of standing there with your hands in your pockets like a local yokel while your friend has a laugh behind granny’s back.
The Queen doesn’t expect people to bow and curtsy and neither should we. But there’s a middle ground where young people can feel confident in social situations and behave with genuine good manners. And good manners is not forcing your escort to buy a suit, or pressuring anyone into behaving in a way they’re uncomfortable with. Putting other people at ease, rather than making them feel like losers, is something the Queen does very well.
My solution: a compulsory course in schools on social etiquette. Now that the nuns are mostly gone from secondary schools, we should be teaching natural good manners. The art of meeting and greeting, social conversation without mumbling and swearing, how to eat with a knife and fork. French and Spanish parents do this with their kids from a young age. In Ireland, we’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater and a lot of our kids have become chavs who think it’s what you wear, not how you behave that gives you class. It’s not the rugby player’s suit that matters, it’s what he does when he’s wearing it.
