Polish Your Poise with Madame Chic: Lessons in Everyday Elegance by Jennifer L. ScottMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
*1.5 Stars*
It's a good thing that I only borrowed this from the library, as I would have been quite disappointed had I bought it instead! I've read Scott's previous two books and enjoyed both, however this one fell flat for me.
Lessons from Madame Chic, Scott's first book, is part-memoir-part-how-to-guide centered around her time living abroad with a host family in Paris, France when she was young and the "lessons" that her host mother, "Madame Chic," taught her about being a confident, self-actualized, and poised young lady 'the French way.' In her second book At Home with Madame Chic, Scott expands upon her first book and demonstrates how she uses the lessons she learned while in Paris in her now Californian home as a wife and new mother, with plenty more 'how-to's' on running a smooth home while remaining always 'chic'. While not at all revolutionary in content and a bit on the preachy side, both are an easy, light read and her stories about living in Paris are entertaining if you can look past the 1950's house-wife aspect that appears in each. I am by no means a supporter of such clearly gendered roles in the home, nor do I consider myself 'chic' or 'posh' in any way, but she means well and I've kept on with her books due to my love of all things French.
However in reading her third book, I may just have to call it quits on Scott. Her material is already stretched pretty thin in her second book, and now with the third, I feel like I just re-read books one and two. Not only that, but it reads like an early 19th-century etiquette book for girls - complete with lists of "DO's" and "DON'TS" at the dinner table or while entertaining friends, how to eat particularly difficult foods like artichokes and spaghetti, and (perhaps most adamantly) to NEVER wear lounge-wear when at home. I get it - wearing pj's in public is lazy, but if I want to change into my comfy pants when I get home...I'm going to do it!
So, like I said, Scott means well in her quest to "elevate the arts" and rid the world of the slovenly-dressed, poorly-mannered heathens (which is how I believe she'd say it, not me), but I also couldn't help but think while reading this last book in particular that although we could all use a little reminder in how to be polite humans, there are far more pressing matters in the world that actually need our attention, non?
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