Deportment classes: 01 (Singapore)

 

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)