The Lost Art of Being a Dame

Faux-litas

In Britain, preschool girls can learn to strip with their very own Peekaboo Pole-Dancing Kits – complete with kiddie garter belts and play money. I shit you NOT. On both sides of the pond, first-graders can buy shirts emblazoned with slogans like "So many boys, so little time."

One of the reasons I wanted to write the book THE LOST ART OF BEING A DAME is the paucity of bona fide dames around these days. This is particularly true when I look at a lot of young women. I hope I don’t sound priggish when I say a lot of ‘em look like prostitutes. Those who know me are now thinking to themselves, “But Dixie, aren’t you normally a fan of all that’s tramp-y?” Well yes, because I am a fan of style; women of ill repute, and those who don’t give a flying fig about their repute, often dress more creatively, whimsically, and goddess-y than those of with shiny reputes.

But today’s faux-litas and ho-litas haven’t any style. (And a lot of them haven’t any panties either.) These tabloid-androids and their fans aren’t being creative, whimsical, or reveling in their divine feminine awesomeness. They seem to mistake flaunting their bodies with celebrating their bodies. But I doubt they’re even enjoying their bodies much; with so much pressure to be unrealistically skinny and simultaneously voluptuous, girls are striving for Barbie bodies and not much else. Today too many girls are single-mindedly pursuing a one-dimensional appeal that has nothing to do with substance or style.

In her new book, THE LOLITA EFFECT, Professor Gigi Durham criticizes the damaging representations of female sexuality today. She shines a bright light on the plethora of products aimed at very young girls, prepping them for the cradle-to-grave inadequacy and consumerism.

Neither Dr. Durham or myself are anti-sex. But selling sexuality to very young girls is actually anti-sex. It’s inauthentic, unhealthy, and Durham and I believe we have a responsibility as adults and shouldn’t abandon our little girls to navigate this territory on their own.

Dames Know Happiness is an Inside Job

One of the great things about following the Tao of Dame ™ is the jettisoning of old “strategies” and embracing a sort of self-contained wholeness in their place. The dame has a sort of self-reliance that doesn’t exclude other people, but doesn’t depend upon them either. A dame has the air of someone who has her needs met. She either meets them herself, knows how to get them met, or has an abiding faith that they will be met in good time. There’s no desperation, no neediness.

Sure, the strategies for getting needs met sometimes work, but at what price? When they do work, they steal a little part of you. Every action, every verbalization, every feeling that says “I NEED you/that/him/those” chips away at wholeness. And for every time these default behaviors work, there are a dozen times when they don't. the well-known irony is that the more you convey you need something/someone, the less likely you are to get it. Whether you believe in the Law of Attraction, or you just have the common sense to know that desperation is the least attractive perfume, emitting lack just perpetuates lackness.

In my own life, I’ve needed things and people badly. Or so I thought. But I came to realize that what I really needed were the feelings those people/things/experiences conferred. And since each one of us is our own feelings manufacturing machine, I discovered those feelings are available to me at anytime. I can choose to feel a certain way, or be a certain way, without words or trappings of approbation. Damn, it took me over 3 decades, but I finally figured out what that Dorothy Gale dame learned in a day or two back in Oz. I can be as brave, smart, loved and happy as I decide to be. Happiness is indeed an inside job.

My Britches

This morning I was thinking about all the things I've been taught about not being big. When I was a girl, I'd often hear things like"Don't get too big for your britches!' and "Who do you think you are?" (Actually, I heard those exact things.) When I was in elementary school my parents would often tell me, "Don't be a Philadelphia lawyer." I wasn't completely clear on what that admonition was all about (I was, after all, like 8) but I got the gist; it meant don't argue, don't question, just accept things.

I learned my lessons well. To this day I've been terrified of doing or saying anything that might possibly construed by anyone (strangers, friends, passersby) as "being too big for my britches." I've literally been terrified of seeming not only arrogant, but its little sisters: ambitious, confident, assured, self-possessed. The line between feigning smallness and feeling smallness had become completely blurred for me. I knew, KNEW, that to get along, to be liked, to be not disliked, I had to make myself small. At the very least smaller.

No more. I'm done. It's still a big part of my psyche. It's still my default response, my go-to emotion, my comfortable way of navigating the world. But I'm interested in being myself. I'm ready to dame up. Yeah, it takes me out of my "comfort zone," WAY out, but that's where I aim to go.

Rhoda and Maerose

So many dames, so little time to type about them all. So here are just 2 very different but very rockin' dames:

Anjelica Huston
Angelica’s one of those women just born cool. She just slunk out of the womb all tall and unusual-looking and smarter and waaay more together than you and me. She’s so slick that in The Grifters, you’re not terribly surprised her own son has the hots for her. Which begs the question: In Prizzi’s Honor why in the world would Jack Nicholson prefer Kathleen Turner to her? And right there “on the Oriental.” But then in real life Jack was a big enough jack to let Anjelica slip through his fingers and take up with baby ectomorphs like Lara Flynn Boyle. But hell, everyday we see men choose whipped cream, fair-haired, slight-nosed chicks and bypass the truly happening broads. And Anjelica, she just watches it all go down with the bemused grace of someone who knows they got it going on.

Valerie Harper
For a generation of smart alecky girls who knew they couldn’t – and wouldn’t -- be Mary, Rhoda Morgenstern was the role model to watch. Valerie Harper’s portrayal of the funny, self-deprecating, down-to-earth window dresser was the epitome of the sassy best friend archetype whose humor and low self-esteem put up a smoke screen over how mighty happening she really is. Though Rhoda lives on in our hearts, minds, re-runs, and the occasional reunion TV-movie, Valerie has moved on to age gracefully and gorgeously in films and stage roles. As if her sassy role modeling weren’t enough, Valerie has also been a staunch women’s rights advocate and authored Today I Am a Ma’am to commiserate with and empower her post-menopausal sistahs.

(I first wrote about AH and VH and other "older" hotties for BUST Magazine.)