Madam Ori and I woke up at the crack of dawn Thursday morning to watch the royal nuptials, and we both watched entranced as HRH Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge (we are on HRH formalities here) got in her fancy car and went to Westminster Abbey to get hitched.
Now this, by Royal standards, was a small family wedding, only a couple thousand of their nearest and dearest, and oh yeah, the TV cameras. This got me thinking a lot about the public versus the private. There is something very Mad Men-esq about keeping the private things in our lives, just that, private. As we move toward a more and more reality driven culture, (and believe me the idea of ‘reality’ is pretty subjective.) Often wonder (SATC-like) when do you keep the private private?
Personally, I believe in separation of church and state in all matters of life. I don’t bring my personal problems to work, and I don’t involve people who are just acquaintances in my home life in any significant way. Madam Ori and I, both being the product of Jamaican mothering, seem to live by the dictum; don’t put your business in the street. This means no crying in baseball, this means no falling down drunk in public places and generally keeping a smile on your face even if their isn’t a bounce in your step. On one of my favorite Mad Men episodes Peggy is sobbing in the break room and Joan tells her quite sternly ““This is why I don’t allow crying in the break room. It erodes morale. There’s a place to do that, like you’re apartment.”
Yup, your apartment, or the bathroom, in a locked stall. As women we are often taken less seriously in the public sphere, and while some may say that a little emotion is what keeps us feminine it’s also what can make us susceptible to the kind of criticism that results from the profluence of emotion.
I am not advocating ice queendom, but a little more pause, in who we tell what. I believe that there is a time and a place for everything, and much of that should take place not out in the great wide world, but at home. Like a lady.
