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)
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