Pride In Possessions Not Polite

Showing off is bad manners, as every child knows. “Oh, you’re just showing off,” even the littlest ones will say scornfully as a way of refusing to concede defeat when they have been shown up.

So how do we get people to admire our stuff?

Within the ranks of showoffs, there is special condemnation for those who show off with their possessions. While it is true that pride in having skills or receiving honors is supposed to be masked with humility, kindly disposed people (a category in which Miss Manners oddly places herself) have a certain amount of sympathy for those who occasionally peek out gleefully from under the mask. Achievements are presumably the result of dedication and work, which we do admire openly.

But pride in owning things is not appealing. Although the argument can certainly be made that skill goes into the selection and placement of what one owns, and having paid for it suggests a direct link to working, it still comes off as crass.

What inevitably springs to mind when objects are flaunted is the monetary value they represent, and flaunting money is just not respectable. In spite of our ancestors’ efforts to link wealth with virtue on the grounds that God gives merit raises, anyone who still believes that the rich and poor deserve their respective states is advised not to say so.

Yet charitable people occasionally get excited about having new toys and want to show them off. Miss Manners cannot see a great deal of harm in this, provided they don’t show off.

Perhaps that little distinction is not clear. Perhaps the whole problem is puzzling to a society of crazed consumers. With everyone going around offering critical evaluations of everyone else’s clothes, cars, furniture and groceries, demanding to know where it was all bought and for how much, it may seem unnecessary to worry about how to draw an object of pride to anyone’s attention.

But in spite of provocation and temptation, Miss Manners expects polite people to refrain from behaving like shopkeepers and customers in their social lives. She doesn’t care for the attitudes and comments that displaying and examining one another’s wares provokes and tempts them to reveal.

Nobody but Miss Manners remembers that there is an etiquette rule on the books against “commenting on one’s things.” Even “What a lovely house you have” used to be considered impertinent on the grounds that a compliment, as much as an insult, presupposes that people are appraising one another’s belongings.

Far from discouraging showing off, that rule was based on a biggie: that one’s things didn’t even necessarily represent one’s taste because one didn’t actually go out and buy things. One inherited them.

So Miss Manners isn’t going all out to defend the no-comments rule. But in letting go, she insists that limits still have to be set.

There has to be a presumption of particular interest on the part of one’s targeted audience. It’s not nice to go around shouting, “Look what I got!” Nor does it unfailingly produce admiration.

Those who can safely be presumed to take a kindly interest are: people who love you; shopping pals, for whom the rules about comparing bargains and finds are suspended; collectors or fanciers of the particular item you want to show off; prospective or recent purchasers of the same sort of thing; and those who express enthusiastic interest.

Miss Manners is not saying you cannot stimulate this interest - but only if you recognize that you are honor-bound to listen to advice you solicit, issue housewarming invitations only to people you plan to entertain again, and find occasions to reciprocate the admiration. The last is particularly valuable, as it proves to them that you have good taste.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Judith Martin United Features Syndicate