MADAM'S ADVICE

It becomes a guide for young women of the 90's from an unlikely source; a women not of the '90s but of the early 80's. What it distills to is essentially this: don't reject the traditions or the rules of the past; alter them slightly, coat them in new phrases. And change the goal: the twentysomething women of the 90's are not afraid to be alone, they don't need a man to take care of them. Instead: they don't want to be alone, they like a man around. In the end, the methods may be the same but now we're at least being honest.

Here are just a few:

Always wear make-up. When men say they like you without make-up, they don't mean it. They mean: don't wear a lot of make-up. Always wear a little make-up.
Pick up gossip and funny stories to tell him that he could retell at work. He'll love you for it.
Be supportive of his male hobbies: if you're going out of town, buy him a few tickets to the hockey game and tell him to take the guys (Note: if his interest is something less neanderthal, though, you better not let him go without you -- he might meet another women.)
Always look good when he takes you to a business function. Never underestimate the importance of this to him.

Common sense, right? Not truly sexist advice. Not really self-degrading if you take it, right? How about this one:

Don't gain weight after getting married. It makes men feel cheated, as in: this wasn't the deal they bargained for.

Slightly more questionable. Love is about more than looks, right? And if a man loves you enough to marry you and then leaves you because you gain 10 pounds, then who in the hell would want to be married to him anyway, right??? And why is it ok for him to gain weight and not you? You are the one having the babies.

It started as kind of a joke. My friend Jennifer and I couldn't figure out what to do as a gift for our friend Paige's Bridal Shower. Since we were both bride's maids and were hosting the shower, a truly great gift seemed important. Lingerie was boring, and she has too much of it. She was registered at Tiffany's and Bloomingdale for everything from vases to napkins to silver and her family alone had all those bases covered. The morning of the shower we hunted with equal desperation for the sun-flowers (completely out of season) that her mother demanded be the theme flower of the shower and lingerie that might be bizarre enought to not be duplicated by the endless numbers of aunts and great-aunts and cousins that would be filling my house that afternoon. We found nothing.

Create family photo albums and traditions that will make it hard for him to leave you because when he thinks about it, he'll be afraid to miss them. Take pictures of these occasions and show them to him often to remind him of this.

The shower reminded me of a skit from the long-defunct Tracy Ullman show (come to think of it, it very closely resembled a skit that her recent HBO special contained.) I don't have enought experience with large Jewish families to know whether they were a characature or not, but it was a great afternoon.

Paige's mother, her mother's mother, and her mother's best friend represented her mother's half of the family. Her father's three sisters, their daughters, her father's mother and great-Aunts pretty much made up the rest of the party. As expected, there was great animosity between her mother and her father's family.

The groom was from California and mercifully therefore, none of his family was present. Mercifully because it gave the Bride's family to complain about them endlessly. (Try to picture this: A very rich, very Jewish girl from a very rich, very Jewish family from New York marries a very waspy poor boy republican from a very poor, very wasp ex-60's radicals family.)

Then Jennifer had a brainstorm: she had written an article on continuing education courses in New York and said: The Mayflower Madam used to teach a seminar on how to keep your man happy. It seemed perfect until Jennifer insisted we had to go with her. Paige is completely conservative compared to Jean. She is a Republican. She was getting married to an investment banker at the age of 22. Together they planned to move to New Jersey and buy their first house by the age of 30 so that she could quit work and stay home with the two children they would by then have. The seminar seemed like an appropriately embarassing gift coming from us. Paige, after all, didn't really think it appropriate to discuss sex candidly. It would be fun. And it was appropriately in keeping with the very traditional and very sexist wedding that was to follow.

It got less fun as the event grew near. Jenn and I both nearly forgot about it and when we remembered we both decided it had been a slightly stupid idea and we would now have to endure. Paige, who had turned beet red when she'd read our card (she had refused to read it to the Aunts and Cousins) was the only one actually excited about it.

We went.

learn how to give a great blow job, it's essential.

We walked into the conference room at the Park Lane Hotel and sat in the front row (not my idea). On the small table at the front of the room was a pitcher of water, a glass, several copies of Ms. Madam's book, and a perfect yellow banana.

We waited all night for her to get to that banana.

She finally got to the subject of blow-jobs. After stressing the importance of this act to a man, she attempted to explain a man's relationship to his penis: Men identify with IT, she said. They see it as an independent entity. If you don't like IT, then maybe you don't like Him. Play with it, she advised. Become friends with it. Name it. (But never, never, "Little Tom" or "John Jr.") "Men like women who like sex," she said. She gave a detailed lesson on how to give the perfect blow job (pretend to swallow it so they can't tell.)

But she didn't, alas, use the banana.

We sat somewhat aloofly during the first half hour of Sidney's talk. She explained about how she had been wrongfully accused: the true story was that she was the victim of a lnadlord-tenant dispute that got carried away. Men, in her experience, prefer women who are young, blond, big-breasted and athletic. Not really news to us. Annoying to hear, but what we'd expected.

But when she started with the advice: use a buff puff with Nuetrogena spring rain body bath every other day for 6 weeks and then once a week to get rid of cellulite on the back of your upper thighs and rear -- then, both Paige and Jennifer nudged me to take notes.

So I took out my organizer and wrote: Buff puff w/Nuetrogena Rain Water Gel. It seemed reasonable, I thought. Definitely worth a try. It worked for all my girls, said Sidney. And then, since I had my pen and paper out, I continued to take notes: Wear make-up. Make them feel special and unique. Don't judge or criticize. It made me feel a little guilty as I listened. I had tried to make my boyfriend feel special, but I did criticize. And I wasn't blond.

Relationships are most important to you than they are to him, so women need to be the ones to do the work.

Gosh, I thought. It is kind of true. Depressing, but true. She went on: Men are goal oriented, women are process oriented. That's why we're into foreplay and they're into sex. Good point, I found myself thinking. Paige was nodding. Jennifer was depressed. She was living with her boyfriend and they hadn't had sex in 6 months.

Be aggresive when it comes to sex, Sidney said. Nothing sexist about that, right? She even had suggestions: play photographer when he's nude, send him on a treasure hunt, try bondage, it can be exciting. Body paints are fun. Seasame oil. Bustiers. Take a champagne bath. I wrote away. Paige was getting bored. Tried that, she whispered. Done that. That was fun. We stared at her in amazement. So much for being the liberal ones.

... leave a trial of lingerie from the door to the bed and then lie there nude waiting for him to come home. Jennifer raised her hand: Excuse me, but if I tried that my boyfriend would tell me to pick up the dirty laundry, she said. Some men just aren't romantic, Sidney said. You have to do your best. Jenn pouted. I sighed. Whatever we were doing obviously wasn't working.

On the other hand, Paige, the one we'd thought it would be fun to chock and embarass, wasn't enlightened at all. Nothing new to her. And she was the one getting married. So maybe instead of being amused and appaled by her wedding palns and life style, we should have been taking notes.

What does it all mean? That only Republicans wear red lingerie and have kinky sex while (as Paige calls them) feminist art-sy men are so busy respecting you that you can't have any fun? That he'll end up leaving you for a call girl?

Probably not. I learned enough in college as an English major to be able to seriously deconstruct (not a word I used often away from those Ivy Halls) Sidney's lesson and reveal it for the sexist, stone-age, women-hating meaning it really had. But some things are better left implied and I really hated semiotics. What Sidney said was ridiculous enough to write this article, but credulous enough to make all three of us think about. What she advises is definitely offensive in this day and age, but it's not new. Michael Pfiefer may have been right: the Year of the Women merely means that Demi Moore was sold to Robert Redford for one million dollars while three years ago Julia Roberts went to Richard Gere for a mere three thousand.

We've come a long way, baby.

Natasha Fried works for the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour.