The New Rules for Blondes (12 page)

I had come on too strong with Lollipop Guild, and apparently great highlights do not a kind soul make. I felt like a tween boy who had just asked a girl way out of his league to be his date for the big school dance, only to be given the Heisman hard and fast. Like a good boxer or a bad glutton for punishment, I wasn’t down for long, though. Within minutes, I saw another figure approaching the door and was elated. I’d take what I had learned in that Lollipop Guild interaction and apply it here.
Be cool, Coppock,
I thought.

This time it was Angela from the overcrowded bunkhouse that was the second-floor apartment. Five girls crammed into a tiny apartment (bunk beds and all), and they seemed to resent Mary Beth and me because our apartment was so spacious. I wanted to explain to them, “We didn’t set up the room assignments, ya cunts. Just give me a chance—I’m fucking
nice
!”

As I anxiously watched Angela pull her key from the front-door lock and begin walking into the lobby, I thought back to my sole interaction with her. It was during our first few weeks in London, and all of the students living in the building were gathered in the first-floor apartment (home to Lollipop Guild and the Prudish Twosome
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) for a party. Mary Beth and I had brought along a few cans of Strongbow because (1) our parents raised us well, teaching us that you don’t ever visit the home of a friend and arrive empty-handed
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and (2) we imagined that their idea of “enough alcohol for a party” was definitely not enough alcohol for a party, so we had to bring provisions.

After the standard initial pleasantries and greetings, Mary Beth and I found ourselves chatting with a few of the second-floor ladies, who already seemed to hate us for our dumb luck on the apartment front. Like a standup comedian doing “road material” (so called because it can be done anywhere for any audience, usually on the road), I initiated conversation about the astronomical cost of living in London. We can all agree that airplane food is bad, men and women are different, and living in London is pricey. Perfect! Let’s commiserate, second-floor ladies who resent me for my sick apartment.

“Oh my goodness, it’s ridiculous,” Mary Beth agreed. “My college back in the U.S. is in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania, so I guess I just got used to the prices and rent around there, ya know?”

“Yeah! Cigarettes in upstate New York are about five dollars right now, but here in London I have to spend five pounds on my Marlboro Lights, and that’s about seven fifty!” I chimed in.

“And the price of going out at night! You don’t have to pay a cover to get into a pub, but the more lively bars and dance clubs all have cover charges, then once you’re in there, the drinks are so pricey, too!” Mary Beth contributed.

“Yeah, well, that’s why we really don’t go out very much,” said Angela from the second-floor apartment. “I mean, I’d rather wear my money than drink my money,” she snapped and gave us a smug smile.

Mary Beth and I looked at her strangely while the wheels were spinning in my head and I thought,
Yeah, well, I’d rather experience London and explore neighborhoods and enjoy the nightlife than spend money on flimsy, poorly made clothes from Topshop that I’ll inevitably outgrow and get sick of. Also, what was with that icy one-liner? Had we unknowingly offended her by enjoying London nightlife and dating guys who wore leather pants? We were just going with the flow of la vida London!

Back in the freezing stairwell, I was desperate and ready to say whatever I had to say to get into a warm apartment. So what if Angela had sad hair and self-righteous logic, and was letting her London experience pass her by—I was locked out of my apartment and freezing. Time to turn on the charm.

“Hey, Angela,” I said as she looked over the assortment of catalogs and envelopes cluttered on the mail table.

“Hi, Selena—how are you?” she asked.

OK, this is good
, I thought.
We’re engaging in conversation. She doesn’t think I’m a total asshole, it seems. Maybe just a bit of a party girl but not an asshole. Let’s just stay calm and not compare this lobby to a carpeted jail or say the word “friggin’,” OK?

“Oh man, not so great. I got locked out of my apartment this morning—”

“This morning! It’s five p.m. now!” she exclaimed.

“I know! Brutal, huh?” I said, elated that Angela possessed emotions and a willingness to empathize with others, unlike Lollipop Guild. “I’m such a moron—I came down here to put money in the dryer, and I managed to totally lock myself out of my apartment! Mary Beth’s in class all day, and I’ve been stuck here freezing in these scrubby clothes,” I said, hoping that my acknowledgment of how gross I looked would prevent her from hating me for wearing a T-shirt whose premise was “ugly people = comedy gold.”

Just then, the magic words rolled off her Topshop-shopping tongue: “Do you want to come sit in my apartment until Mary Beth gets back?”

“Oh my goodness, would you mind!? That would be fantastic!” I tried to stop myself from appearing too excited.

We went up to her apartment, where I warmed up and ate some McVitie’s cookies. The second-floor bunkhouse looked just like Mary Beth’s and my apartment upstairs, just with more bodies per square foot. Their apartment was carpeted with the same indestructible dark-gray carpet as ours was. Their walls were almost blindingly plain white, and the living room had only a few pieces of dorm furniture that were so dinky and insubstantial that they felt like children’s furniture.

Angela took her personal mantra of “I’d rather wear my money than drink my money” quite seriously, as her tiny bedroom was filled with clothes from Topshop, Selfridges, and H&M. Everything was bland and made of synthetic material, not surprisingly. She was perfectly nice, and I began to feel a sense of guilt that perhaps I had prejudged this random girl from the floor below. Her system was to shop instead of party—that’s fine. She made an offhand, smarmy remark once, but she probably meant nothing by it and she just saved me from going insane in the lobby. Who knows how long I would have been stuck there if she hadn’t appeared? Lollipop Guild hadn’t been willing to help, but Angela had been and her kindness was touching and inspiring. The gratitude I felt toward Angela led me to stage five: acceptance. An odd calm came over me and I reveled in the fact that I was a brunette for a little while. What a kick! What a different, interesting experience.

About an hour later, Mary Beth arrived home, and after I told her the tale of my lockout, I went into my bedroom to look at some photos of me with dark hair. I didn’t look half bad, I thought. It looked very unfamiliar to me, but that didn’t make it bad. I just wasn’t used to seeing myself with brown hair—it was a shock to the system. But I needed to accept it. I hadn’t missed the Tube because of my brown hair. I had brown hair and I lived in London—people do it all the time! To quote Dr. Phil,
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I needed to get real with myself: I missed being blonde, and I was being a whiny brat about it. To quote another one of Dr. Phil’s myriad mantras: I had to name it to claim it. I just wanted to be blonde. Having dark-brown hair was a fun experience, but perhaps I should have just experimented with a wig. I knew what I needed to do: I needed to quit brunette life. We’d had a good run, but blonde hair is in my veins (not literally, but you know what I mean). I needed to get back to feeling like me. The lessons of my time on the dark side weren’t lost on me, though.

In my time spent walking down the boulevard of brunette dreams, I developed a great respect for bombshells such as Jane Russell, Cindy Crawford, Elizabeth Taylor, Penelope Cruz, and Ava Gardner. These women ooze(d) sex appeal without utilizing a drop of peroxide, and for that I was (and still am) in awe of them. Unfortunately, despite Cameron Diaz’s inspiration, I just couldn’t find a comfortable spot to lay my head in the brunette community. I rued the day that I bullied John the family colorist into making me almost raven-haired. But what was I to do? Hit up the British pharmacy Boots the Chemist and see if they had hair dye? Could I handle this dye job at home? What if I tried to go back to blonde but ended up orangey, like Brenda Walsh in that episode of
90210
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where she dyes at home, then is forced to wear a
Blossom
-style hat to West Beverly High!? I’ll take Dylan McKay as a boyfriend, but orange hair would be even worse than brown, I feared. What if I thought I was buying hair dye but it turned out to be something else, like the time when Mary Beth and I went shopping for pants (as in, clothing covering your crotch, ass, and legs that Lady Gaga rarely wears) and specifically asked a clerk for “tight pants,” only to learn that in Britain, “pants” is what you call underwear. Tight pants! We’d unknowingly been seeking snug undies!

Mary Beth had endured enough of my brunette bitching and finally marched me to Boots, where we bought two highlighting kits. Yes, Mary Beth decided to jump on the blonde-highlight bandwagon, too! We could only find kits that were the draconian pull-through cap system for at-home highlighting, but it would have to do. Thankfully, MB and I worked as a team, with her jabbing a metal hook into my scalp and pulling hair out through the plastic cap for me, and vice versa. Within the hour, I was a brunette with lots of blonde streaks, which, in some blonde-starved countries, passes for blonde.

My time as a brown-haired lady was brief—just six months. Yes, I managed to pass through the Kübler-Ross five stages of grief in only six months. Like an embedded reporter who experiences life in the trenches, I have fought the battle of brunette life and lived to tell the tale. I have war stories, London photos in which I’m barely recognizable, and a closet full of jewel-tone tops to show for it. I encourage you to experience life on the dark side firsthand, as a personal challenge to test out a new look, a tool to engender sympathy and understanding for your fellow woman, and a gutsy endeavor to prove your own strength to yourself (like people who do triathlons). Sure, adopting a head of dark hair is a tough task for the true blonde, but one must endure winter to experience the spring. Peering at the world through brunette-colored glasses will make you appreciate the attention, levity, and energy of life as a blonde. And if nothing else, brown hair is a good foundation on which to layer gorgeous caramel highlights.

PART THREE

Blonde Behavior

CHAPTER 11

RULE:
Keep It Classy

E
arlier we discussed the brassy-vs.-ashy phenomenon. If you aspire to be an ashy blonde, Grace Kelly, ice queen type, then you’d better review your Emily Post etiquette book because women like that wouldn’t be caught dead using the wrong fork. Grace Kelly and other cool, withholding blondes all have one thing in common (other than their use of purple shampoo): class. Your class is revealed to the world through your clothing, behavior, activities, and disposition. In Europe, where the classes are extremely stratified, manners and etiquette are hugely consequential. In the United States, the American dream is built on the concept of class ascension. As Americans, we believe that anyone can move classes and quite easily marry up or marry down. It’s not just for socialites anymore! As a by-product of that, manners and etiquette are given less weight in the United States. This difference between Europe and the United States means that Americans traveling in Europe can easily offend or horrify Europeans by lacking manners and being ignorant of etiquette. And as my mother says about etiquette gaffes, “There’s really no recovery from that. You are expected to know how to behave—especially in Europe.”

My parents frequently lament the loss of manners and social graces in American society, and I learned everything I know about manners from them. When I was a kid, my parents, sisters, and I ate dinner together every night, and we’d all talk about our days and catch up. My sisters and I weren’t permitted to leave the dinner table until we asked to be excused, and we were expected to help with clearing plates, loading the dishwasher, and the like. When my parents had friends over to the house, the three of us daughters were put to work greeting guests, putting away coats, passing hors d’oeuvres, and generally learning how to be polite. I didn’t realize it at the time, but these family rituals taught me how to be a well-behaved kid and I grew into a classy blonde. When we reached our teen years, my father bought tome-like etiquette books for my sisters and me, and these books have served as useful reference manuals. Both of my parents are very gracious and know a lot about the appropriate things to do and ways to carry yourself based on the circumstances, and they passed that down to my sisters and me. My mother spouts off un-PC and hilarious advice and tidbits about manners. Some of her greatest hits include: “When a person snaps her gum, it’s as though she is telling the world, ‘I’m dumb, I’m dumb, I’m dumb.’ ” “Cruises are horrible.” “Red Lobster is seafood for landlocked idiots.”

I sat down with my ashy blonde mother and grilled her about assorted tidbits for keeping it classy that you might not find in your standard etiquette book. My mother was educated at a Swiss boarding school (just like that mean, icy blonde stepmother threatens in
The Parent Trap
) and at an all-girls school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan (just like
Gossip Girl
). If anybody knows about hostess gifts or the proper way to RSVP to a wedding, it’s Susan Coppock.

When I sat down with my mother to receive her data dump of etiquette rules accrued over her sixty-plus years as a classy blonde, the first thing on her mind was finger bowls. Yes, finger bowls. An antiquated part of a black-tie place setting, a finger bowl is a bowl of tepid water with a circle of lemon floating in it perched atop a small plate with a doily on it. You are meant to submerge your fingers into the water between the main course and dessert. A finger bowl is tantamount to a tiny, lemony sink that is delivered to each place setting—the old-timey equivalent of antibacterial hand gel. Outside of a manicurist’s salon, I have never encountered a finger bowl. I suspect that they were pulled out of rotation around 1968, but it was my mother’s first thought. Keep in mind that at her Deb ball at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, she had to perform a dramatic public curtsy and was escorted by not one but two males. Her father was a Victorian—born in the late 1800s—no joke. She’s from a different era, when propriety was paramount.

“Finger bowls—first thing you should have in this chapter. It’s about how to be classy? OK. At a fancy dinner, when a finger bowl is placed at your setting after the entrée, it will be placed on a paper doily and a plate. When you are done using the finger bowl, pick up the bowl and the doily and move them away from you and to the left of the plate that remains in front of you. Put it where your bread plate had been before,” she instructed me. So, should you travel back in time to a black-tie dinner circa 1940, you’ll be all set. But let’s go occasion by occasion and review some etiquette advice that my mother shared with me over the years. These are tips that you might use in the present day told through the precious lens that is me.

Dinner Parties

• Never arrive at a friend’s home for a party or gathering empty-handed. Always bring something—it makes you seem rich and in the know. A small gift for the house or a bottle of nice wine is an appropriate item to take along to a dinner party or cocktail party in a friend’s home. Never bring something that the hosts must tend to immediately (cut flowers, a small rodent) as they’ll already have their hands full. Just hand them whatever brilliant gift you have brought and make a beeline to the bar or, better yet, the unmanned booze table.
  
• If the party is a cocktail party or has a cocktail hour, you will probably find yourself attempting to hold a glass and a small plate while feeding yourself hors d’oeuvres. Humans simply do not have enough digits or hands for this! If only you were a spider at a cocktail party, am I right? This juggling of wine and plate while consuming said treats simply can’t be done, and you’ll probably end up spilling wine on the host’s carpet or, even worse, on your own clothing. So think strategically: What do you need more right now, a drink or food? If you’re hungry and need to fill up a bit, focus on food only. If the food is really good, get down on it
  54
  because it ain’t going to last long as the party fills up with people. Shovel those miniquiches and cheese ball things in your mouth with reckless abandon so that you can switch to drinks pronto. I usually eat a snack at home before cocktail parties, which leaves me free to just hold on to a cocktail and not worry about getting seeds in my teeth. Plus, that way nobody has to be traumatized by how I look when I start chowing down on a miniquiche. It’s not pretty. I can polish off an entire tray of those babies in no time flat.
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  That type of chowing down is best done, as my mother would say,
  en famille
  .
  
• If the passed hors d’oeuvres includes something hard to eat like shrimp on skewers or drumsticks (yes, I’ve seen both served as friggity hors d’oeuvres—I know, are you friggin’ shitting me?), just don’t do it. Do you want a wrasslin’ match to go down? You vs. shrimp skewer? The skewer will take that title belt every time. I was once at a party where a young woman was absolutely mowing on a drumstick as she tried to talk to me. I was horrified. I was probably talking about something completely uncouth and ridiculous (as I am wont to do), but her caveman-like chow-down was stunningly inappropriate. You’re under no obligation to help the hostess polish off her (horribly chosen) hors d’oeuvres. Nancy Reagan’s antidrug refrain from the 1980s is what your oversize hors d’oeuvre refrain from the new millennium should be: “Just say no.”
  
• Always offer to help the host. If it’s a party without a catering staff, then offer to pass hors d’oeuvres or refill wineglasses. It’s always greatly appreciated when someone pitches in. Plus, that way you get first dibs on the good stuff.
  
• Once seated at a dinner party, know what belongs to you using the childlike “lowercase
  b
  –lowercase
  d
  ” trick that you can do with your thumb and pointer finger. This trick reminds you that your bread plate is the one to the left, and your drinks are to the right. You might have a few different glasses at your setting. You’ll probably have water (a regular-looking tumbler), a white wine glass (a traditional wineglass, but skinnier than a red wine glass), a red wine glass (pretty fat—picture a mouse drinking his way to the bottom, then passing out
  56
  ), and possibly a champagne flute (tall and thin for maximum jazzy bubbling). Be sure to put the napkin on your lap as soon as you sit down in your seat.
  
• If you are seated at a dinner party and being served by a cater waiter, don’t start eating the food placed in front of you until everyone has been served and the host (or hostess) has begun eating. If you are at a benefit sort of event, where your table doesn’t have a “host,” then you wait for the oldest woman at the table to begin eating and you may begin after her. If you’re at a work event or it’s at all unclear, just wait for everyone to be served and for somebody else to start eating. Then lean into that dinner plate like a pig at a trough, or pour the entrée into a small bag and strap it around your ears, feedbag style.
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• If the dinner party is out at a restaurant and you are being taken out to dinner, don’t order the lobster if your host is getting the pasta. Follow his or her lead with regard to price of entrée. If the host orders a salad to start and a medium-priced entrée, you can order a salad to start and a similarly priced entrée.
  
• When eating at a restaurant, the person who orders the bottle of wine becomes the “decider” on wine.
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  The waiter will bring the bottle to that person and ask him or her to taste it, look at the cork (potentially), and give the green light on that bottle. Once that person approves the bottle of wine, the waiter should pour it for the women first, then the men. Yes, formal wine service at a restaurant was the original impetus for Queen Latifah’s 1989 jam “Ladies First.”
  
• During the dinner party, attempt to include everyone in conversation. Be a good guest—ask questions of the people around you; talk about safe, noncontroversial topics; and engage in conversation with people on either side of you. If you act interested and ask people about their interests, you will be a dream guest (which will get you invited to more dinner parties and mean more free dinners—eyes on the prize, kid!). Don’t dominate conversation, but certainly contribute and share funny anecdotes. After you share a story, it’s nice to sort of lob the focus to another person. Like a tennis match, minus the tiny white skirts and unending cardio. If you feel like you have nothing in common with the person sitting next to you, ask them about their pets, their home, or their children. They probably have at least one of those things and people love yammering on about all of them.
  
• When you are done eating, place your knife and fork together in the center of your plate. This indicates to the waiter that you are done eating, but it should be done whether or not there is a waiter clearing plates. If you are at a dinner party in a home, offer to help clear plates once all diners’ forks and knives are positioned this way. If the host takes you up on your offer to help clear, simply pick up a plate (and fork and knife laid across) in each hand. Don’t scrape food or stack plates too high—carrying one in each hand is plenty to make you the VIP of the dinner party.
  
• Don’t overstay your welcome. If you attend a dinner party in a friend’s home, don’t linger much longer after dessert and coffee have been served. I have been on the hosting end of this situation when a friend just kept on chatting and drinking until four a.m., despite my comments that I was tired and really needed to hit the hay. Don’t be that guy.
  
• If the dinner party was particularly well done, labor-intensive, or part of a visit to a friend’s home (and you spent a night or two), send a thank-you note to the host. Send a real one via snail mail. People love snail mail. Even more than they love actual snails.
  

Weddings

• When you receive an invitation to a wedding, check your calendar as soon as possible and reply in a timely manner. As harsh as this might sound, many brides and grooms have second- and third-string invite lists (I know! It’s like high school football!), so you should RSVP to a wedding immediately so that the couple can get a head count quickly and invite additional friends if there’s room. Respond to the invitation in whatever manner is specified by that couple. Some couples include response cards, and all you need to do is check a box (chicken or fish?) and write your name. Others include the more classic blank response card, and you must write out a full response on that card. The response should be written in third person (completely weird, I know) and reiterate all necessary information. The template for this is “Selena E. Coppock accepts with pleasure the kind invitation of [insert names of people throwing the wedding] to the wedding of Alison and Brian on Saturday, September 28, 2013, at 5 o’clock in the evening.”
  
• If you must travel for the wedding and/or stay in a hotel, book that travel and room as quickly as you can. Don’t you dare be that guy who calls the bride a week before her wedding and is like, “That hotel is all booked up—where else can I stay?” You’re an adult—book a room in the hotel block early on, or figure it out on your own. This includes transportation to and from the rehearsal dinner, the wedding, or brunch the next day. Most weddings have shuttle buses or at least small maps or directions available at the hotel, but if this wedding doesn’t, you’ve simply got to figure it out on your own. Do not bother the bride or groom in the days leading up to the wedding. They are busy fighting with their parents while posing for photos.
  
• Dress appropriately for the event—dress, nice shoes, shawl, clutch. I always have a shawl with me at weddings because I prefer to be a bit covered up while inside the church, and then I can simply put the shawl on my chair at the reception if necessary. Later in the night, once you have busted out some sweet moves on the dance floor and worked up a sweat, the shawl can even be used as a makeshift towel for a personal sweat wipe-down.
  
• You have twelve months after the wedding to get the couple a gift. If you have a bunch of weddings coming up, it might be easiest to simply order the gift online via the couple’s registry (wedding websites have made all of that so simple) and check that off your to-do list so that you don’t forget. If you attend the wedding alone, a gift worth fifty to a hundred dollars is pretty standard. If you brought a date, you’ll probably want to hit the high end of that rate and send a gift that’s at least a hundred. If you’re hard up for money, don’t be shy about coordinating with friends to buy a joint gift that might be easier on everybody. That’s completely fine—no one should melt their American Express card trying to keep up with their friends’ weddings. Unfortunately for me, that’s a lesson that I learned a bit too late. About twenty weddings too late.