#propriety

These six Ziegfeld Girls insisted on having their lunch in their bathing suits, June 5, 1925. The girls—Mildred Lunney, Margy Martin, Helen Sheldon, Catherine Frey, Bobbie Powers, and Edith Babson—went from rehearsal to Keen's Chop House attired only in their beachwear. Paul Henkel, the manager of the restaurant, strenuously objected, claiming they were not properly dressed. Henkel was asked when he had become a censor of women's wear. After much discussion, in which the rest of the diners voted in favor of the girls, they were served.

Fit in, don’t make a fuss, don’t complain or rebel or seem unnecessarily different. Propriety was everything. The house was meticulously clean and tidy. Fiona and I were always washed and combed and well dressed. Fiona was rebuked if she slipped into a Northampton accent... Like Dad, she’d risen a long way and found herself in a place that never quite felt like solid ground. She assumed other people would judge her in the way that she judged them, by the way she spoke, the way she dressed, the cream carpets, the framed maps of the county. I don’t think it ever occurred to her that people might look at her and ask, ‘Was she kind? Did she care about other people? Did she love her children?’