I was a professional Southern Belle
In my life I have a few rules that I live by. One of them is: never do a job that requires you to wear a uniform.
In lieu of deciding exactly what it was I wanted to do with my working life, I thought this rule was at the very least a good place to start. The no-uniform decision was largely a result of some early and unfortunate brushes with nylon waitress and petrol attendant nastinesses that I had to endure whilst trying to get by as a student. I vowed that once I graduated, I would never let polyester enslave me again, unless it was by some bizarre personal choice.
One particular uniform stands out amongst the rest though. I once had to wear a “Gone with the Wind”-style Southern Belle dress on Bourbon Street, New Orleans. For work.
The venue was the Tricou House, 711 Bourbon Street. The Tricou House was a restaurant, bar and the only non-transvestite, non-erotic dance or non-gay nightclub in Bourbon Street. My mate and I worked there for 3 months (shhh…illegally) when we were 21.
If you worked the bar or restaurant you got paid $1 an hour but got the opportunity to earn good tips. If you “worked the dress” as it was termed, enticing tourists into the bar or restaurant with your faux-Southern charms, you got $7 an hour but no prospect of tips.
What you did get was people annoying you, sexually harassing you ,wanting their photo taken with you or openly feeling sorry for you. Working the dress was not an easy option and certainly not for the shrinking violet. However, when the bar was slow (mostly during the week) there was not much chance of tips whilst waitressing, and there was no way I was working for 7 hours at $1 an hour.
So I checked in my dignity, pulled on the frilly horror and took to the street to be gazed at, chatted up, laughed at, sleazed at and marveled at in equal measure. Off I’d go uneasily into the streets of the Big Easy, muttering something along the lines of,
“Aah have always depended on the kindness of strangers…”
or ,
“Aah feel all the time like a cat on a hot tin roof…”
It didn’t take long before I became a flippin’ bona fide tourist attraction. At one point it was me and Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid vying for the top chart spot of Most Photographed Female Tourism Icons in the Northern Hemisphere. And she only won because she had them out. Tart.
There were three dresses to choose from- one red, one apple green and one enormous lilac one that a monster dress girl must have worn at some point, but three of me could have squeezed into. All the dresses had enormous hooped skirts with a frilly underskirt and an accompanying frilly umbrella which also doubled as a weapon, should it be required. All dresses stank to high heaven of B.O. having never been washed in their existence. Point of fact: New Orleans is about 80% humidity and 35 degrees in summer.
So 5 days a week I was the “Dress Girl”, channeling Vivien Leigh and spraying the pits of the dress with layer upon layer of Sure. All over the world there are holiday snaps of people with their arm round a Scottish fake Southern Belle smiling in a forced way outside a restaurant in New Orleans. It would be hilarious to see them all, but an impossible task, I know. But there must be HUNDREDS of them all over the world. Three months I worked that bloody dress and I got my photo taken at least 15 times a night. I make that over 900 photos.
If anyone was in New Orleans in the Summer of 1990, have a look back at your snaps; I’ll be in there somewhere. Scan it in and send it to me will you? If I manange to get 100 of them, I’ll stage an art exhibition of them.
I’d like to think that even now some poor lassie is standing outside the Tricou House now with that green dress on (I favoured the green) and there’s still some Misssy sweat in the pits, cos I’m sure the buggers haven’t had them dry cleaned since I wore it. One thing’s for sure, Scarlett O’Hara would NOT have pulled Rhett Butler in any of these garments. Civil War or no Civil War.
Strangely, I don’t have any photos of me in the dress, although my friend claims she has one somewhere, so I may still be able to post it up one day. So, until that day, I do some Googling… you never know. And I find this bizarre photo courtesy of Gil Davis at GatesofDixie.com.
And that, my friends, is the lilac dress of yore. But I must make it clear, in case there’s any doubt; that photo is NOT of me.
As I said, I favoured the green.
STOP PRESS (01/09/08): My thoughts go out to all the Southern New Orleans belles, beaus and otherwise that are yet again in fear for their most excellent city. Fingers crossed Gustav passes you all by and you can return home soon. (Misssy, ex-fake Southern Belle and friend of the Big Easy.)
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