Neighbour’s younger son, Robert, had a sports car.
He’s three years older, so I’d be at least 15 when he invited me and my schoolfriend Mary Liew to go for a ride in his convertible. We sat on the boot, and let our hair fly in the wind as the car sped along in the night air.
The car had two horns, I soon discovered.
Singaporeans in those days used their car horns a lot, mostly out of impatience: urging a dawdling pedestrian crossing the road to hurry up and get out of the way.
When Robert caught sight of an old man crossing the road in his doddery way, he tooted the car horn that went like a fog horn: a low, growly, frog-croak sound.
Then Robert spotted two young ladies walking down the road ahead of him. He tooted the other horn: a shrill, wolf-whistle sound.
Whenever I think of a sports car, that evening ride in Robert’s sports car would come to mind, complete with the sound effects.
(Singapore, 1960s)
An article in the Metro of 07 December 2020 features an East London school bringing in an etiquette expert from outside to teach their pupils “how to improve their appearance, etiquette and communication skills” for “making sure they are as confident as they can be during interviews, and, if successful, at their new schools”. The lessons covered “everything from…sitting position…to table settings, greetings and posture”.
This reminds me of my Deportment classes at secretarial school back in 1973–1974 in Singapore.
The Deportment class teacher was an ex-model from London, Miss Cleo Manning. She appeared for the first lesson dressed in hot pants (remember those?) and a page boy hairdo cropped quite short, à la Twiggy. She could’ve stepped straight out of London’s Hippy Sixties.
Lesson One was for Miss Manning to assess each one of us: point out our weaknesses for us to make improvements on in subsequent weeks. We’d be graded, the same as for the other skills (shorthand, typing, Business English, etc.).
A few months before this, I’d decided to perm my hair, to give it more body, as I have proportionately wide shoulders and a proportionately small head. This proved to be a right pain. Every time I washed my shoulder-length hair, it’d lose its curls a bit, which meant spending ages putting it in curlers, waiting for the hair to dry out, then removing the curlers. Easily half an hour, if not longer. At twice a week, this amounts to a lot of time spent on just maintaining the perm. If I was going out on a date, I’d have to blow-dry the hair to speed up the process, which meant adding to my mother’s electricity bill. After a few months of this hassle, I decided to let the perm die out. (No, I don’t think we had hair straighteners in those days. Or I hadn’t heard of them.)
It was at this stage that my Deportment classes began.
Miss Manning took one look at me, with this neither-curly-nor-straight hair on my head, and told me my hair was “shaggy”. I was instantly reminded of the shaggy dog (breed: Old English Sheepdog) featured in the adverts at the time for a well-known brand of paint: all fur, even covering the eyes.
She also said that, without eye shadow or lipstick, my face didn’t stand out — she could hardly see my eyes or my mouth.
(My consolation was: most of my classmates were given a low grade for this as well. Lots of Singapore girls in those days — maybe still today — didn’t wear make-up at all, never mind heavy make-up.)
(Singapore,1974)
Miss Manning’s Deportment classes were the last period of the school day (3:30–4:30pm).
There’d be a mad rush to the ladies’ loo, to apply as much eye shadow and lipstick as possible. Not just the amount, but the shade as well: striking blue eye shadow, scarlet lipstick.
We’d look at each other and say, “Uggh, you look horrible! But you’ll get a good grade from Miss Manning!”
And we certainly did. She was very pleased with the results: “That’s better! Now I can see your eyes and your mouth!” The stronger the colour of the eye shadow and the lipstick, the higher the mark.
Because the class finished at 4:30pm, we didn’t have time to go to the ladies’ loo to clean up our faces, as it was too close to 5pm when office workers generally knocked off work, so we’d rush out to the bus stop looking like performers straight out of a Chinese opera. Putting up with stares — some in shock, some in disapproval — was nothing if we could just manage to get on the bus home.
The only person in our class to escape the eye-shadow-and-lipstick requirement was Somyot — a young man from Thailand. (Not sure why he’d chosen to do a secretarial course in 1970s Singapore when gender roles were certainly very clearly defined.)
(Singapore,1974)
We went through the usual routine of walking around with a book balanced on our heads. This meant head held up, chin up, shoulders squared, so that we wouldn’t slouch. It also made us walk more elegantly, not stomp around like tomboys (or worse, fish wives!).
We were also taught how to sit, especially in a low sofa or armchair, without showing our knickers. (This being Singapore, we were still in mini skirts/dresses, as it usually took a decade for us in the East to catch up with trends in the West.)
None of this was new to me.
What I didn’t know before was how to unbutton your coat. Singapore being in the tropics (1 degree north of the Equator, actually), we don’t wear coats, not even jackets, so we never have to cross that bridge.
It was quite an interesting lesson in visual elegance/tidiness.
The usually-instinctive unbuttoning of one’s coat is from the top downwards. This, however, would leave the top flopping open as you move on to the next button down, which is visually not tidy. Unbuttoning from the bottom up would not create this visual untidiness. Little details like that which we girls born and brought up in the tropics didn’t really pay attention to.
(Singapore,1974)
How to get in and out of a sports car without showing your knickers?
I was the only one in the class who was able to answer this question.
Don’t forget, we were still in mini skirt phase in Singapore at the time. (Actually, writing this has just made me realise that they’d picked the right person in Miss C|eo Manning: her hot pants and page boy haircut were as frozen in the Sixties as our mini skirts!)
Sports cars usually sit quite low, which is already problematic enough for getting in and out of. Add to that the fact that to get into one, it usually means that it’s parked by the kerb. This adds four inches (nearly 2 cm) to the distance between your feet on the pavement and the floor of the car, making it even more difficult to step elegantly into the car without opening out your legs wider. In a mini skirt, it’ll be well nigh impossible. At best, clumsy and inelegant. At worst, hitching up your already short skirt to stride into the low floor of the sports car. And of course, exposing your knickers the moment you sit down — probably not “sit down” but “flop down with a heavy thump” as it’s so low.
Miss Manning posed this question to the class: Does anyone know how to get in and out of a sports car with elegance and without showing your knickers?
No one knew the answer.
I was the only one who did.
There’s more than one way of doing it, depending on the length of your skirt (how manoeuvrable your legs are), and on what the distance is between where your feet are (on the pavement or on the ground) and the floor of the sports car.
One way is to hold on to anything you can, and ease/swing your bottom onto the low seat while holding on to these supports and keeping your legs/knees together. Then swing your legs into the car, still keeping your knees/legs together. This will ensure non-exposure of your knickers.
The supports would normally be the top of the open door for one hand, the roof of the car or the top of the seat back for the other. It does require a bit of muscular strength and dexterous balancing. A small price if you want to be in the sports-car clique.
Even if one’s skirt allows it, one should try to avoid stepping into the car one leg first, sitting down, then moving the other leg in. It’s all to do with visual inelegance, as it means opening out one’s legs.
Miss Manning was most impressed, and gave me the top mark for this.
(How did I know about getting into and out of sports cars? Read my blog on this — to come.)
(Singapore,1974)
Two other interesting things we were taught by Miss Manning were:
(1) How to shut the door of the interview room after you’ve got in. This was another visual tidiness exercise. One would usually enter the room, and turn round to shut the door. This would mean showing your back to the interviewer(s) in the room. Miss Manning said that it wasn’t just not nice for them to see your back. More importantly, you want to present them with your smiling Chinese-opera-performer face (complete with strong eye shadow and bright red lipstick), to make a strong first impression. Yes, very logical, very strategic.
So, you enter the room, facing the interviewer(s), reach out for the door behind you, and shut it, still facing the interviewer(s). And smiling your Chinese-opera-performer face, complete with strong eye shadow and bright red lipstick.
(2) How to extricate your hand after the handshake. This was a lesson in diplomacy should the interviewer turn out to be a DOM (dirty old man). Whether it’s the first handshake, or the parting one, if the DOM grips your hand tightly and won’t let go (while he’s leering at your blue eye shadow and scarlet lipstick), you say with a smile and a sweet voice, most politely, “Can I have my hand back, please?”
As an ex-model, Miss Manning presumably had a lot of experience from a lot of exposure to DOMs.
(Singapore,1974)
