14 thoughts on “SNARK WEEK: Shitty Curtsies

  1. When I was a teenager, my father (who did amateur theatre) taught me what he said was a curtsy for presentation at court. Standing on my left (non-dominant) foot, I pointed my right toe forward and slightly left, then swept it in a large arc around me to as far behind me as it would go, sinking till I was almost sitting on my right thigh. Is this at all for real, and if so — when?? Thanks to whoever knows.

  2. I’m not going to lie, having the Versailles hoi polloi from MARIE ANTOINETTE (BBC) get their references almost entirely proper, except
    for one awkward customer, just adds to the verisimilitude.

    After all, there’s always one.

  3. Although most of her form is lovely, I note that the baroque dance lady has given in to clutching her skirts — ephemeral as they are!

  4. Some folks over on Tumblr were discussing this and a lot of women mentioned being taught to do the whole grab your skirt curtsy as children, so I wonder if it got turned into something messy through a weird game of etiquette telephone or something.

  5. One of my favorite curtsy scenes was in the first Downton Abbey movie (2019). Cora, Mary, and Edith are visiting Princess Mary. The three of them take a small step backward, drop down with a gentle head bob and immaculately straight backs, and then rise. In perfect unison. They were undoubtedly trained by the Dowager Countess!

    https://youtu.be/nSXiL_Ee-Uo?si=P8mWCTn7G5kNbbZy shows the curtsy at the very beginning of a minute-long clip.

  6. I think wee aristo girls were taught to hold their skirts up in the 20th century at Mme Vacani’s dance school in London. They also taught social dances. I’ve seen old photos of the little ones holding up their starched Liberty of London print dresses as they practice – adorbs. And of course Outlander’s Claire can curtsy – it was still expected of English women in the 1940s. Onto a different film, is it me, or does anyone else thing that the baroque style is more of a plié than a curtsy?

  7. You have trained me well…………when I saw the still from the “Buccaneers I said out loud, without missing a beat……..”no chemise?…..that’s going to chafe”

  8. I remember in the SCA, how we’d say “you’re not offering your bewbs to the crown” when demonstrating/practicing courtsy’s. That being said, I never saw any pics or video of myself in a curtsy, so have zero idea if I was doing them well, adequately, or terribly. And whatever garb I happened to be wearing for the day definitely did impact the situation, I always felt reasonably graceful in a cotehardie, but kind of weird in the Viking stuff. And I never figured out what I should do if I were in armor.

  9. Verity might have an excuse that she’s holding her skirt up because she’s trying to show Demelza the correct feet position. Except that in this case, she should have hiked it up a lot more.

  10. Weirdly I have trained for this one! The videos above are basic reverences, what you would give to an equal or very close superior. What we often see attempted in frock flicks are the deeper curtsies reserved for royalty (and high nobility depending on your degree of social separation). But they almost always go for the late eighteenth century variant of non supportive foot behind rather than non supportive leg forward (you need to get it out out the way as there is a limit to how low you can go with feet in first position, the classic diamond shaped curtsy). So we get anachronistic, badly performed reverences; they are meant to showcase control, as well as convey the correct amount of respect. French etiquette manuals from the mid eighteenth century assumed the reader could execute both styles, and some refer to the emerging foot forward variant, but often give lists of who to give them to (some english ones do as well).

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