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I think we are overlooking "the tour guide" who follows you from room to room showing their home trying hard to make you love it.
And this has what to do with male vs. female turnoffs in a home? I would think that would be a turnoff for either gender. Or was this meant for a different thread?
I can overlook decor, even gazillion family pics all over the place.Unless it's going to be a real pain to get rid of...wallpaper and red walls make me cringe.
My turn off is a dirty house. I look at pics on line and I'm like really!?! You knew your agent was coming to take pics and you have unmade beds, dirty clothes on floor, sinkful of dirty dishes etc.
If you are that lazy what else went by the wayside??
Well, actually, my Husband and I (and the kids, too) would consider any decor that is too gender-specific to be for people of a lower social class than our own.
What I just said sounds really vile and snobby, but I'm putting into words something that most people are too nice to come out and say. Gender Obsession, like Sexual Dimorphism, tends to increase as social status and IQ decrease.
We came up from lower-than-nothing, and I suspect that without our Decorator to guide us, we would have fallen into working class gender traps, where decor was concerned (He became our Decorator, long before he had clients or degrees, and before we had a cent to our names with which to pay him.). But the fact is that he did save us from doing-up a sleazy little all-pink "little girl's room" for our infant Daughter, when we gentrified our first apartment building and lived in one of the units. And he saved us from doing a "boy's room", when the boys came along. Lucky for us, he was able to analyze, verbalize, and capitalize-upon a great many issues regarding social ascendancy, when most Designers (and their clients) were just oblivious, unthinking, little trend-followers.
Well, after we got our first real jobs, and moved to Mississippi's Capital, we bought a building there, and turned the nightmarish warren of storage rooms and pigeon coops on the roof, into a rather spectacular penthouse (much sweat equity on our parts, and many volunteered hours of labor from our circle of friends). Our Daughter's room had maps and globes, and a telescope for the clerestory window. And so did her brothers' room. Who said a girl should have Pretti Pynk Plastikk Poniez, instead of a life-like Pterodactyl suspended over her bed? (she still has 'Terri the Pterodactyl', flying high over the packing table in her Wardrobe Room) I think the regional magazines still use vignette shots of those rooms, in their 'makeover issues' - even after all these years.
And maybe that's why our Daughter grew up to be a surgeon, instead of some pathetic creature, making Minimum Wage in a 'creative' profession - forced to marry some nasty, abusive thing with medical training from some Third World university - because she needed a meal ticket. That seems to happen to a lot of pretty blonde princesses who got degrees in 'Drama' and Music - girls who had the sleazy white "Girl's Group" furniture sets from Sears, with the cheap, ruffly, Dotted Swiss curtains, in "Little Girl Pink".
So then, despite our being non-white, we got quietly recruited to what was then the top neighborhood in the state. This was about the time a man who owned banks and goldmines (and who owns the summer place on New England's coast, where Presidents vacation) was building nearby. The founder of FedEx and Netscape would soon be building, a few blocks over. People who own the utilities for entire Caribbean nations live there. Ultra-chic Steel Heiress Genevieve Falk had her famous art-filled, ultra-modern house there (complete with retractable glass roof over the natatorium). Top families from Argentina and France quietly settled into that area of rolling hills and leafy glades.
It was the premier part and moment of a largely-vanished time and place called Fashionable Northeast Jackson. And we were discretely offered a foreclosure on an oversized 60s ranch house there. It was pennies-on-the-Dollar, and left us lots of budget for improvements. People in Fashionable Northeast Jackson were extremely advanced, when it came to material things. Scalamandre fabrics, Boussac wallcoverings, silk passementerie... these things abounded there. You could say 'Scalamandre Brocatelle', without fear of sounding pretentious. When people were not talking about clothing, dieting, which cars conferred higher social status (only Bentley outranked Volvo), exercise, advanced degrees, and landscaping, they were talking about decorating. Mostly, they were talking about decor. Decorating was like a religion, there.
So, as the job progressed, neighborhood people out jogging, strolling, and snooping, would come up the drive, to look at the progress. Other than church, gym, and shopping, there was NOTHING else to do in that town. Being proactive, and to assert the fact that I was not a Mexican on the construction crew... and that I could actually speak English... I would meet them with a smile and and a handshake, "Hello! I'm Gloria VonSnootenhorn. What do you think of our new home, so far?" (not my real name, but we did totally change our names to ritzy ones, as college freshman newlyweds).
Well, I'd give them a tour, and the ones who mattered (as opposed to the pasty-faced, minivan-driving no-necks from nowhere, out rubbernecking in the rich neighborhoods) would subtly convey their approval, after cooing their pleasure at seeing that our curtains were heavily-puddled, and that our paintings were stacked - "...aaaaaawl thuh way up ta thaaayit gaaaaaaw-ah-juhs ka-craaaayown mouldin! Now, thaayit's real play-uh-stuh, iddn' it? I know you paid at least faw-uh-teh Daw-uh-luhs uh lineuh foo-uht!", that there was "no big ol' Redneck den", and, when the furnishings were in place, "...no pink in your Daughter's room! I think that K-Mart Pink is so Redneck. Don't you? And not a ruffle in sight! This is WONDERFUL!"
Recently, someone renovating in Eastover (the area I just described - still the epicenter of wealth in Jackson) told someone who told someone who told me about a super-studly Builder who was in conference with the job's Decorator and the Client. The Builder was suggesting adding, in part of the Master Bath/Wardrobe area, "some pine Paul Bunyan legs, like I got in my Master Bath at home." The client is a man, and so maybe the Contractor thought something "manly" was appropriate for his Wardrobe area.
The Decorator (who had married big money, and so could be as rude as she wanted to be) stopped that big, gorgeous hunk of Redneck lusciousness in mid-suggestion, and reminded him, "I am the Designer. You are the Contractor. I have the ideas. You execute them. And frankly, after hearing you say "Paul Bunyan", I am having serious doubts as to whether you should even be the Contractor on a job like this."
That house, I just heard, is about to be published. There is not a gender-specific square inch in the whole place(not even a spot with a discretely-hidden big-screen TV, for "watching games with friends").
Here, in our new place, we were proud of the Laundry Room. Our Laundress has serious training, and worked on historic costumes in New York museums. Concepts like 'Acid Reserve' are child's play to her. If they can do it in St. Petersburg's museums, she can do it. She trained there. We went for the whole schmir in that room: a big bank of high, north-facing windows, for optimal light; polished azure plaster on the ceiling; blazing gold leaf German Baroque crown, capping walls of the palest Shell Pink; and a 24-light Murano chandelier in the middle of it all. This is Portland. One reason for moving here is that you can get really, really good help. The Arborist has advanced training. The man who comes in to keep the Rose Garden has books out. Someone equally hotsy-totsy is restoring the ecosystem in the Meadow.
But our Laundress is the absolute Top Jewel in the Tiara: the Star in our home. I doubt there was ever a Rothschild or a Czarina who had a better person handling the clothes. She's a smart lady - drives a new Mercedes - has a kid in med school. We were so proud of having a room worthy of her, on the few days a week we can afford to have her here. So, on a tour of the house, in bops this little chotchkeleh of a trophy wife from Long Island. Kinda tacky, this one... The only thing about the house that excites her is the Laundry Room. "Oooooh! This is the most feminine room in the house!" Discreet looks are darting back and forth, between our Laundress, our Daughter, and myself. The magic is gone. Nobody's said it, but a room we viewed as a Russian interpretation of a Venetian drawing room is now just feminine. Ew.
The concept that I'm conveying with this long megilleh is that gender-specific decorating is considered, by the Cognoscenti, to be rather trashy and downmarket.
Last edited by GrandviewGloria; 05-02-2014 at 01:37 PM..
Because money gives you license to be obnoxious and condescending to people who make less money than you do, right?
I'm sure you loved being treated that way before you 'got rich.'
I would dearly love to see the research behind "Gender Obsession, like Sexual Dimorphism, tending to increase as social status and IQ decrease."
Actually, you're putting the cart before the horse. We did well because we packaged ourselves in ways which did not invite contempt. People will go out of their way to help those who are poor, but who are intelligently bettering themselves.
I didn't say I approved of that other person's Decorator, and her rudeness. And neither she nor her client would have been invited into our homes or to our gatherings. They are distinctly "not our kind of people". Unlike that heifer (who, without a big net worth would not have attracted a narcissistic, status-hungry client - or many other clients - and would, like most Decorators, have ended-up working at a fabric store, somewhere, wistfully saying, "I don't decorate, anymore..."), I had to work my way up. Making everyone glad they've interacted with me - and leaving them looking forward to the next interaction - has been my goal.
I will add that generally, the rich/brilliant/successful/inspired/motivated have been nicer to me than have the poor/dispirited/stupid/unambitious. In fact, I was actively persecuted in the impoverished backwoods mudhole of a 'community' where I grew up. Only the two "rich" families there treated me with civility. As they say, "Water seeks its own level." I had to seek mine, in order to find a sense of belonging.
As for your last sentence, I see no reason to quote research on something which exists in such easily observable abundance.
Careful Gloria, you're sounding a lot like L.O. New Money.
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For males
Because money gives you license to be obnoxious and condescending to people who make less money than you do, right?
