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Overview
“Thank you Helen Ellis for writing down the Southern Lady Code so that others may learn.” —Ann Patchett, bestselling author of The Dutch House
Helen Ellis has a mantra: “If you don't have something nice to say, say something not-so-nice in a nice way.” Say “weathered” instead of “she looks like a cake left out in the rain” and “I’m not in charge” instead of “they’re doing it wrong.”
In these twenty-three raucous essays, Ellis transforms herself into a dominatrix Donna Reed to save her marriage, inadvertently steals a Burberry trench coat, avoids a neck lift, and finds a black-tie gown that gives her the confidence of a drag queen. While she may have left Alabama for New York City, Helen Ellis is clinging to her Southern accent like mayonnaise to white bread, and offering readers a hilarious, completely singular view on womanhood for both sides of the Mason-Dixon.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780525562924 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 04/28/2020 |
| Pages: | 224 |
| Sales rank: | 488,984 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Making a Marriage Magically Tidy
I have the reputation of living what Marie Kondo would call a “magically tidy” life. My tights are rolled like sushi, my tabletops are bare, my kitchen is so clean I could perform surgery in it. But I wasn’t always this way. When I was twenty-three, I left my New York City apartment with a panty liner stuck to my back.
Yes, it was used. Yes, earlier that day, I’d taken it off and tossed it onto my twin bed like a bear throws salmon bones onto a rock. Once it was there, I guess I forgot about it. It was probably camouflaged. I promise you there was other stuff on the bed. My bed used to look like a landfill.
Maybe I threw my coat over it and it stuck. And then I put my coat back on and rode a bus thirty blocks with a panty liner between my shoulder blades. No, nobody said a word. I didn’t know it was there until my date gave me a hug and then peeled it off like he was at a burlesque show in hell.
This was not the man I married.
The man I married walked into my apartment and found Pop-Tart crusts on my couch. I can still see his face, bewildered and big-eyed, pointing at the crusts as if to ask, “Do you see them too?”
I shrugged.
He sat on the sofa. It is my husband’s nature to accept me the way that I am.
My nature is to leave every cabinet and drawer open like a burglar. My superpower is balancing the most stuff on a bathroom sink. If I had my druthers, I’d let cat puke dry on a carpet so it’s easier to scrape up. If druthers were things, and I had a coupon for druthers, I’d stockpile them like Jell‑O because you never know when you might need some druthers.
My husband fell in love with a creative woman. “Creative” is Southern Lady Code for slob.
But it is one thing to accept a slob for who she is; it is another to live with her.
A year into our marriage, my husband complained.
He said, “Would you mind keeping the dining room table clean? It’s the first thing I see when I come home.”
What I heard was: “I want a divorce.”
What I said was: “Do you want a divorce?”
“No,” he said. “I just want a clean table.”
I called my mother.
Mama asked, “What’s on the table?”
“Oh, everything. Whatever comes off my body when I come home. Shopping bags, food, coffee cups, mail. My coat.”
“Your coat?”
“So I don’t hang my coat in the closet—that makes me a terrible person? He knew who he was marrying. Why do I have to change?”
Mama said, “Helen Michelle, for heaven’s sake, this is a problem that can be easily solved. Do you know what other married women deal with? Drunks, cheaters, poverty, men married to their Atari.”
“Mama, there’s no such thing as Atari anymore.”
“Helen Michelle, some women would be beaten with a bag of oranges for sass talk like that. You married a saint. Clean the goddamned table.”
And so, to save my marriage, I taught myself to clean.
Not knowing where to start, I knelt before the TV at the Church of Joan Crawford, who said as Mildred Pierce, “Never leave one room without something for another.”
Yes, I’ll admit she had a temper, but she knew how to clean.
You scrub a floor on your hands and knees. You shake a can of Comet like a piggy bank. You hang your clothes in your closet a finger’s width apart. And no, you do not have wire hangers. Ever.
I have wooden hangers from the Container Store. They’re walnut and cost $7.99 for a pack of six. I bought the hangers online because stepping into the Container Store for me is like stepping into a crack den. See, you’re an addict trying to organize your crack, and they’re selling you pretty boxes to put your crack in.
Pretty boxes are crack, so now you have more crack. But wooden hangers are okay. They’re like mimosas. Nobody’s going to OD on mimosas. Wooden hangers give you a boost of confidence. They make you feel rich and thin. They make a plain white shirt sexy. You promise yourself you’ll fill one closet, and then you’ll quit.
But I didn’t quit. To keep my buzz going, I asked my husband if I could clean his closet.
He asked, “What does that mean?”
I said, “Switch out your plastic hangers for wooden ones. What do you think I mean?”
“I don’t know, something new for Saturday night?” He did the air quotes: “Clean my closet.”
My new ways were so new he assumed I was making sexual advances. It’s understandable—so much dirty talk sounds so hygienic: salad spinning and putting a teabag on a saucer. It’s like Martha Stewart wrote Urban Dictionary.
My husband opened his closet door and stepped aside. The man trusts me. I rehung his closet with military precision.
He said, “I never knew it could be this good.”
We kissed.
And then I relapsed.
I don’t know how it happened. Maybe it was leaving the Dutch oven to soak overnight. Maybe it was tee-peeing books on my desk like a bonfire. Maybe it was shucking my panties off like shoes. And then my coat fell off the dining room table. And I left it there because the cats were using it as a bed. There it stayed along with laundry, newspapers, restaurant leftovers (that never made it to the fridge), and Zappos returns.
My husband played hopscotch, never uttering a word of contempt, seemingly okay to coast on the memory of a pristine home as if it had been a once-in-a-lifetime bucket-list thrill like white-water rafting or winning a Pulitzer. Sure, he could have put things away, but every closet except for his was bulging and breathing like a porthole to another dimension.
I scared myself straight by binge-watching Hoarders. What do you mean, that lady couldn’t claw her way through her grocery bag “collection” to give her husband CPR?
So I gave books I had read to libraries. Clothes I hadn’t worn in a year went to secondhand stores. I gave away the microwave because I can melt Velveeta on a stove.
And then came Marie Kondo’s book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Or as I like to call it: “Surprise, You’re Still a Hoarder!”
Kondo’s big question is: Does it spark joy?
I took a harder look around my home and answered: Pretty boxes of novel manuscripts that were never published did not spark joy. Designer shoes I bought at sample sales but never wore because they pinched my feet did not spark joy. My husband confessed that his inheritance of Greek doilies and paintings of fishing boats from his grandmother did not spark joy. So, out it all went.
And what is left is us. And my husband is happier. I’m happier, too. Turns out I like a tidy house. And I like cleaning.
Dusting is meditative. Boiling the fridge relieves PMS. Making the bed is my cardio, because to make a bed properly, you have to circle it like a shark. And all the while, I listen to audiobooks I would be too embarrassed to be caught reading. Not in the mood to clean a toilet? Listen to Naked Came the Stranger, and see if that doesn’t pass the time.
The downside is that my husband has created a monster. I burn through paper towels like an arsonist. I joyride my vacuum—which has a headlight—in the dark.
And I don’t do it in pearls and a crinoline skirt. It’s not unusual for me to wear an apron over my pajamas.
I say, “Hey, it’s me or the apartment. We can’t both be pristine.”
Without hesitation, my husband will always choose the apartment.
Sometimes, I invite him to join in my efforts, offering him the most awful tasks as if I’m giving him a treat. I’ll say, “I’m going to let you scoop the cat box” or “I’m going to let you scrape the processed cheese out of the pan.”
My husband says, “You’re like a dominatrix Donna Reed.”
I say, “Take off your shirt and scrape the pan, dear.”
He takes off his shirt and scrapes the pan. In our more than twenty years together, my husband’s nature hasn’t changed.
Me, I’m a recovering slob. Every day I have to remind myself to put the moisturizer back in the medicine cabinet, the cereal back in the cupboard, and the trash out before the can overflows. I have to remind myself to hang my coat in the closet.
And when I accomplish all of this, I really do feel like a magician. Because now, when my husband comes home, the first thing he sees is me.
Table of Contents
Making a Marriage Magically Tidy 1
The Topeka Three-Way 11
How to Stay Happily Married 19
Free to Be … You and Me (And Childfree) 23
A Room of One's Own (That's Full of Gay Men) 35
The Other Woman's Burberry Coat 49
Peggy Sue Got Marijuana 59
What Every Girl Should Learn From ABC's the Bachelor 69
The Ghost Experience 73
Party Foul 87
Today was a Good Day! 99
Straighten Up and Fly Right 103
Halloween People 111
Tonight We're Gonna Party Like It's 1979 123
How to be the Best Guest 129
When to Write a Thank-You Note 135
An Emily Post for the Apocalypse 141
How I Watch Pornography Like a Lady 149
Dumb Boobs 159
Young Ladies, Listen to Me 169
Seven Things I'm Doing Instead of a Neck Lift 173
Serious Women 181
That Kind of Woman 195
Acknowledgments 301
Reading Group Guide
1. Why do you think Helen Ellis chose to arrange the essays in Southern Lady Code the way that she did?
2. How does Ellis talk about the “Southern Lady Code”? Does the tone remain the same throughout, or does it change with each essay?
3. Ellis has an incredible sense of humor. What were some of the funniest lines or scenarios to you?
4. In “The Ghost Experience,” Ellis discusses many encounters with the supernatural. Do you get the sense that Ellis believes in ghosts? Do you?
5. There are several shorter essays that come across as instructional but also somewhat farcical, like “How to Stay Happily Married” and “What Every Girl Should Learn from ABC’s The Bachelor.” What do you think is the intention behind these brief interludes?
6. In “Making a Marriage Magically Tidy,” Ellis admits to being a reformed slob and tells us how “It is in [her] husband’s nature to accept [her] the way [she] is.” Discuss the way she talks about their relationship. Does Ellis’s relationship with her husband remind you of relationships in your life?
7. In “Free To Be. . . You And Me (And Childfree),” Ellis talks about her and her husband’s decision not to have children. This can be a polarizing topic, but Ellis presents both sides of the argument here. Is this a topic you feel strongly about? Why or why not?
8. In “Party Foul,” Ellis’s parents play an extreme practical joke during one of her birthday parties. Have you ever been a part of something similar? What was your reaction to this story?
9. Some Southern Lady practices are very traditional, as in “When to Write a Thank-You Note” or “An Emily Post for the Apocalypse.” These habits appear to have served Ellis well over the course of her life. Do you think society has moved away from these traditional practices? Why or why not? Do you think we would benefit from bringing them back? Why or why not?
10. Ellis approaches more serious topics, like mammograms, a murder trial, and muggings, with the same degree of levity (and a healthy dose of self-satire) that she does every other topic. Discuss how humor can work as a coping mechanism for life’s more difficult experiences.
11. Which of the essays was your favorite or resonated with you most? Why?
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