From the book A Southern Belle Primer:

Fallen Belles

Even belles from the loveliest of Southern families sometimes move away. They go to places like New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles and they get caught up in a world where ladies are called women and nobody wears pantyhose in the summer. Before you know it, these belles start to like the idea of wash-and-wear hair and throwing away their eyeliner. They even open their own car doors and pretend that “red eye” refers to a late-night plane flight and not a gravy that goes with ham.

But there’s something about Southern upbringing that never completely goes away. Here are Ten telltale signs that a girl is truly a belle:

1) She calls the refrigerator the icebox.
2) Even if she’s ninety, she calls her father “Daddy.”
3) She would rather walk down Fifth Avenue naked than wear white shoes before Easter or after Labor Day.
4) She refers to a handbag as a pocketbook.
5) She doesn’t have a couch. She has a sofa.
6) She drinks iced tea in the middle of a blizzard.
7) She will march for women’s rights for twenty miles but she would rather die than walk two feet with a lighted cigarette.
8 ) She dyes her shoes to match her cocktail dress.
9) All her parties have themes.
10) She has a deviled egg plate.

Even though I didn’t grow up in the South, I do have a pocketbook. I don’t open my own car door. I own a deviled egg plate. Yummy! I also use a buggy at the grocery store and my children say “Ma’am?” instead of “What?”. I’ve learned that the S word is something different than I thought it was. You should have seen my face when my little, innocent niece told me, “You just said the “S” word!”. I was new to the family, had not even started my Belle training and we were at my now-niece’s 1st birthday party. I wanted to crawl into the floor in mortification thinking I had said a really naughty word by accident. Thankfully I found out she meant Stupid and not…. well, you know. It can also mean “Shut Up” in certain families.

I am not a fallen belle. I’m not technically a Belle at all. But I’m trying! And every now and then, I will get a look of approval from Magnolia and I will know that each day brings me a little closer to the Promise Land.
~susanne