Ghaaastly

Anyone who has seen Auntie Mame with Rosalind Russell will have a relative they can identify as “so Auntie Mame.” This means eccentric, full of life, free spirited, and living life by her own rules. My grandmother was “so Auntie Mame,” but so is my mother, my aunts, my great-grandmother, my sister, and from what I’ve learned, generations of women in the family. I’m sure you can imagine the family get-togethers when all the women in the family are out-doing each other with, as RuPaul says, charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent.

If you are an Auntie Mame type, then everyone else, myself included, are “nice people who work very hard.” Or, worse, they are parvenus. In the movie, Gloria Upson is that type. She is snobbish, tasteless, and awful. I’d love to have friends like Gloria Upson and Bunny Bixler. She’s so top drawer. I do have a great grandmother who was a Bixler, and a great-great grandfather nicknamed Bunny, or Pinky. So I’m sure they would gladly welcome me at their snobby club. We could play ping-pong, drive in their brand new big American car, and buy brand new fashionable things at top-drawer stores. This is, no doubt, much more fun than returning year after year to Brooks Brothers and J. Press to buy the same gingham shirts and khakis.