New York, a city that never was in the same league with the Old South or the court of Louis XIV when it came to the niceties of etiquette, is undergoing, along with other places, changes in what passes for courtesy.
The other day, in an upstairs Brazilian restaurant off Times Square, a young couple sat opposite each other at lunch. Over the coffee, the man and the woman leaned over the table and kissed several times. Then they examined the bill and discussed how much each would pay. Presumably they lived happily ever after on separate incomes.
This new relationship between men and women is effecting changes in what used to be called “manners,” and those brought up in the belief that the woman is a fragile flower who must always receive deference are filled with consternation at the disappearance of the old ways. Younger people seem not to be concerned with the formal courtesies and rely on common‐sense politness to determine what they do.
Of course, in New York, courtesy has almost always been honored as much in the breach as in the performance. The classic story tells of a woman who trips while running for the bus. A man runs past her, turning around to shout, reassuringly, “Don't worry, lady, ‐I'll hold the door!”
Many male New Yorkers remember that when they were young, they would, on the subway, bury their noses in newspaper or book to avoid noticing the woman hanging on the handstrap above them. Polite people gave their seats to the pregnant, the handicapped and the aged, nobody else beat them to it during a brief watchful interval.
Courtesy Has Its Risks
The dangers of courtesy above and beyond the call of minimum moral duty have always been evident. A decade or so ago, a man walking into Saks Fifth Avenue noted that an elderly woman, coming out, was fainting. He managed to get his arm around her head before it hit the floor. The store took his statement and the woman came to, thanking her benefactor profusely. A week or so later, having taken his name from the statement, she brought suit against him for $100,000, claiming that he had pushed her. She lost the suit, but it cost the courteous man $500 in legal fees.
These are somewhat extreme examples. Courtesy is little more than a personto‐person token of good will and innocent intent. It should, in the best of all possible worlds, prevent jostling, pushing, noise and nasty contretemps arising from misun derstanding. There are few people who call for the end of human politeness, whatever their views are on equality of the sexes or the changing values of mankind.
“Insôfar as the courtesies were an expression of contempt and of a protective attitude toward women, those courtesies can go,” said Betty Friedan, the feminist leader. “But where courtesy is an expression of concern, of, well, niceness, that's different. It should be something more free and spontaneous. If I'm climbing out of a car with a lot of packages, it's great to have someone hold the car door for me. I'd do it for a man who had packages.
“If a woman is pregnant or a man is old and ill, it's nice to give them a seat,” she said. “There should be mutuality. It's all right to light a cigarette for a woman—nobody should really smoke —but she should also light a cigarette for a man.
“People should be tender and protective and good to each other,” Miss Friedan continued. “But, on the other hand, where the courtesies expressed the idea of woman on a pedestal, nothing is served by women insisting on them. They are empty and practiced as a put‐down and should go.”
Mrs. Elizabeth L. Post, who is Emily Post's granddaughter‐in‐law and will soon have on the market the volume “New Emily Post's Etiquette,” is not in basic disagreement with Miss Friedan's views.
“The emphasis has changed from formalities‐ to less formal,” she said. “There more emphasis on getting along with each other, showing that you care about others. The human being hasn't changed much. There is a basic desire to conform. The young don't conform to the old, but they do conform to each other. You have to make standards.”
In New York, men rarely took their hats off in office building elevators but often did in apartment house elevators. They mostly keep their hats on in all elevators now. Some men always insisted on letting women out of elevators first, but some women resent this as condescension and also feel that it creates more discomfort because they have to push past those in front of them anyhow.
‘How to Act’
“I guess we're going through a period in which some people are confused about how to act,” said Dr. Terry Saario, a woman who is a program officer at the Ford Foundation. “I noticed the other day that there was a man standing at the front of the elevator. He was paralyzed when it came to getting out, he didn't know what to do. Finally, he turned away from us and let us off first.
“A lot of the formality has disappeared,” she said. “I help a man put his coat on and open the door for him. That's common courtesy. The discomfort I sense is not so much in courtesy but in how to treat a woman who's a professional. Men wonder whether they can use lewd language and tell off‐color jokes. I doubt if men will ever be comfortable with this. I don't think that young men are ‘socialized’ differently from old men, but maybe their own interactions with women have changed them.”
Dr. Saario, who feels that courtesies need not be linked to sex differences, has found another difficult situation for men.
“When I have to take a guest, a man, out for lunch, it throws some people when I pay,” she said. “They feel the necessity to comment and there is a nervous giggle. The waiter stands there, not knowing where to place the check.”
While courtesy may not loom large against the enormous canvas of human travail, it can mirror the state of society at the moment. A bus dispatcher at 54th Street and Seventh Avenue said that people are a bit more edgy since business has gone bad, but, as a woman thanked him profusely for making change, he added, `They really don't change all that much. New Yorkers are no worse than anyone else.”
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