As anyone who read and remembers the Official Preppy Handbook (OPH) will know, the word "Preppie" seems to have originated in a mercifully forgotten best seller called Love Story wherein it is used in a pejorative fashion. Birnbach's book, as is often pointed out, was originally written as satire. She came not to praise preppies but to bury them.
So why did the thing take off? Short answer is that people really admire preppies whether they admit it to themselves or not. It's a lifestyle of success and, as I said before, it takes virtue—hard-won virtue—to pull it off. And the OPH made that clear for anyone who cared to read it.
Right from the beginning, the OPH was a gentle, loving satire. The people portrayed in the book were Lisa Birnbach's friends. Quite literally, her friends were the models for all the photos. Years before Sacha Baron Cohen, Birnbach mastered the marketing technique of playing the part full time. She did press interviews in character. (Speaking of mercifully forgotten, anyone heard of Sacha Baron Cohen lately?)
And she was further helped by a bunch of humorless, knee-jerk idiots in the press. I remember seeing her being interviewed on PBS at the time and that interviewer could not conceal her hatred for Birnbach. And, touchy as this may be, preppy means culturally and morally conservative.
For some of us who'd reached adulthood at the beginning of the 1980s, this was our chance to rebel against two sets of values we hated. It was a chance to rebel against the jean-wearing rock and roll thugs we'd been to high school with. But more importantly (warning, rare political content ahead) it was a chance to rebel against the bureaucrats and technocrats who'd run the country into the ground. This is a political comment but not a partisan one, the technocrats ruled both sides of the aisle.
I'd say that many of the same conditions hold now. A certain group out there have gotten tired of the guys in their slovenly clothes and girls in their slutwear. But, far more important, they've seem politicians of all stripes come and go and yet the same group of bureaucrats and interest groups seem to run everything no matter what. And the arrogant jerks in the press are in league with the bureaucrats and interest groups just like they were in the 1970s. And people have decided to rebel. Those who like to do everything, including rebellion, in an elegant and restrained fashion, are gravitating back to prep. (And some of us never left.)
All that said, there were a couple of huge gaps in Birnbach's portrait of preppies. She mocked the way we call our parents "Mommy" and "Daddy" all our lives (here in Canada it's "Mummy" not "Mommy", by the way, and knowing the difference is important) but she sort of glossed over how important mothers and fathers are to preps. We have them and we love them and you really don't even begin to understand the values and virtues that go into making up a preppy without seeing that.
The other big hole in the account was religion. Preps don't talk about religion a lot but it does matter to us. We're not big on preaching—the ideal preppy church is one where a five minute sermon is a long sermon. We're big on elegant but restrained liturgy. Most of all, we really don't like hearing political and economic or environmental screeds from the pulpit.
(By the way, we feel the same way about politics and the arts. No prep would say, "Just shut the ____ up and sing," but we share the sentiment. Actually, a little precision is required here. We'd never say it to anyone's face but if we're alone having a drink with a good friend and no one else can overhear, particularly children, and the mood feels right, we might just say "I wish [insert artist's name here] would just shut the ___ up and sing.")
I agree with your assessment about parents and religion, although I think your view of the latter is more reflective of the Episcopal Church, which most of the original preps were. The other thing Lisa doesn't get is that a true prep a) knows what noblesse oblige means and b) practices it. This virtue was much more common among the original preps than those who aspire to Prepdom today. And this did not only mean philanthropy, it also meant volunteerism. Volunteerism was a hallmark of old money prep wives--the Junior League for example, which sponsored the debutante cotillions--the original meaning of "coming out" before it was appropriated by gays--to raise money for local charities. Without these and other volunteer activities, largely by the prep wives, many of the hospitals, libraries, and museums we enjoy in this country would not have been possible.
ReplyDeleteYou're absolutely right about the Episcopal Church (they call themselves Anglican on this side of the border). It's hard to imagine nowadays, but a lot of Catholics used to have serious envy of the Episcopals. If only my church were more like that, people used to think once upon a time.
ReplyDeleteYou are also correct about noblesse oblige and volunteerism. I remember that a lot of people attacked the idea for political reasons once upon a time but, really, the cost of having governments replace community spirited volunteers is prohibitive.
That's absolutely true. But since women--including the prep wives--entered the work force on a mass scale, volunteerism is way down, and these organizations can't possibly pay for the thousands of hours the volunteers put in. So they look to the government for help which, as you say, is prohibitive.
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