Manners

While waiting for an elevator the other day, I stood aside to let the women waiting with me enter first. They, however, waited for me to enter, with the result that all of us missed the elevator and had to wait for the next one. “We’re all too polite!” one of the women said, with some exasperation. They had waited for me to enter either because I was closer to it or because they considered my advanced age a reason for them to defer to me. In any event, none of them acted as if “ladies first” were a rule of proper etiquette.

But once it was. A man didn’t enter an elevator before a woman did and he removed his hat if he shared the elevator with a woman. There were other rules too: when walking with a woman on a city sidewalk, a man walked on the curbside. He held doors open for women and allowed them to precede him through an entrance. At a restaurant, he held a woman’s chair as she sat down in it, rose when she left the table for the ladies room (now the women's room) and rose again when she returned, and he remained standing until she had seated herself again. He held their coats as they took them off or put them on. He lit their cigarettes.

These rules began to go out of fashion in the late sixties, with the advent of the modern feminist movement, which viewed these behaviors as a means of subjugating women, keeping them in their place. The rules implied that women were too delicate to fend for themselves, that they needed masculine protection, that they should not try to compete in the rough and tumble world of work, that their proper role was at home.

I’m not tempted to light women’s cigarettes these days, because none of the women I know smoke. I seldom stand when a woman rises from a restaurant table, because we are generally with another couple, and the other man, no matter how old, is thoroughly modern in this respect and never stands up for her. But I still tend to stand aside to let women enter elevators and doorways before I do, although I understand that no one will think me a boor if I don’t, and in fact they may think I’m gumming up the works by not moving faster. I sometimes remove my hat when in an elevator with a woman, although if she notices, she probably thinks I'm too warm. I doubt that it occurs to her that I’m trying to be polite. On those occasions when I keep my hat firmly on my head in the presence of a woman, I feel uncomfortable, although I know this is ridiculous.

They say that for the rest of their lives, men dress the way they did in college. The same, perhaps, can be said for manners. I know mine are outmoded, but I find it hard to let them go.