Newport Manners & Etiquette: Gender Etiquette

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Didi Lorillard, GoLocalWorcester Manners + Etiquette Expert

Gender etiquette is a gnawing concern this fall with questions to Didi Lorillard at NewportManners asking about whether old-fashioned manners and etiquette are here to stay or have passed away.

Who holds the umbrella?

Q. Leaving an office building after a business meeting recently, it was raining cats and dogs. My co-worker didn't have an umbrella, so I unfurled mine in the gusting wind and held it high enough to shelter us both. At one point, on our trek through the sheeting rain, she handled the umbrella while I fumbled around in the pockets of my windbreaker for my car key. We reached her car first. I waited while she opened the door and left the shield of my umbrella before handing it back to me saying, "Thank you, George." I proceeded to my car the next row over.

My question is this. On all fronts my female counterpart and I are equally compensated by our company, and we always pay for our own meals when we're on the road. Nonetheless, it felt strange having her hold the umbrella. Should I have been more of a gentleman and taken the umbrella back from her once I had my car key in hand? Or was it more correct for us to take turns managing the umbrella? It was mighty windy. GN, Seattle

A. The person with the longest or strongest arm holds the umbrella. If the woman is the taller of the two, then having her hold the umbrella would keep you both dryer. Since it was your umbrella, gently taking it back after finding your car key would have been appropriate.

Does a man always stand for a woman?

Q. My 83-year-old father and I are going to visit some friends of his in NYC for the weekend. They are also in their 80’s. They are kind and unpretentious but formal about manners and etiquette. For example, when I saw them earlier this year, I noticed that every time the wife enters the room or gets up from the dining room table, her husband stands up until she sits down. I feel compelled to stand up too. It’s old fashioned and polite, but as the youngest man in the room I find it awkward. Do my father and I have to stand up every time, too?

ES, Chicago, IL

A. Whenever you’re in someone else’s house, follow their customs, meaning their manners and etiquette. For instance, if everyone held hands around the table and said grace, wouldn’t you take the hand of the person to your left and the person to your right and say grace, too? Of course you would.

This weekend, whenever your hostess walks into the room or stands up from the dinner table, follow suit. Watch her husband. He is well trained.

Who knows, she may have learned to expect that kind of gesture of respect from her husband and his mother, or he learned it at one time by watching her father. Perhaps both.

If she is essentially putting the courses on the table and clearing, then you would make a halfhearted gesture to stand that looks like a slight bow. Certainly your father could manage a semblance of a bow.

At the end of his life when my father was in a wheelchair he would automatically try to stand when I entered the room or rejoined the dining table. Resting his hands on the sides of the chair he pushed himself up to a half stand.

At first I tried to persuade dad that he didn’t have to stand. My pleas fell on temporarily deaf ears. I gave up when I came to learn that standing was an automatic natural response for some men when a woman enters their space.

Even for me, his daughter, who still appreciates it when a man stands for me when I enter the room or rise up from the table.

You probably don’t want to look around the room to find that you are the last man sitting while the rest are standing.

When in doubt, stand.

Gender etiquette for who opens the door?

Q. Newly divorced and dating, I'm not sure of the proper gender etiquette for holding open a door for a woman. Although I never ran around to open the car door for my wife, I always made an effort to open any door we were approaching together. Is it condescending, or not, to hold the door open because the person behind you is a woman? Am I expected to hold the door open for her? JW, Newport, RI

A. Look at it this way. When passing through an entrance or exit that is not automated and you can see or hear someone coming up behind you, wouldn't you slow down a bit to hold the door open a nanosecond longer so that the person following could catch the door for him or herself? Or are you so self-absorbed that you don't give a fig about the person behind you, regardless of their gender?

Didi Lorillard writes about manners and etiquette at NewportManners.