FINISHING SCHOOLS? WHAT ARE THEY?

What's a Finishing School? 

I've often thought the term "finishing" has some negative implications, such as you're through. You're done. Sad.

Finishing School used to be where rich parents sent their daughters to refine their manners and prepare themselves to join Society, perhaps to become debutants, but  "deb" or not, to become the wives of men of means and importance, where socializing and entertaining were part of the lifestyle. When education wasn't emphasized or careers impossible, young women as teenagers were sometimes sent off to these schools without completing high school or the school might offer some classes that could bring a person up to the level where they could run a household or pass today's GED. Although women through the centuries have had intelligence, when marriage and children were the intention it wasn't thought education was important.

Diana Spencer, never a scholarly teen, went. So did Jacqueline Bouvier who became First Lady of the United States and Carla Bruni wife of former President of France,  Nicolas Sarkozy.

Like chocolates, the schools in Switzerland were said to be the finest.

Though young women with advantages and opportunities to socialize with rich people have been exposed to that lifestyle growing up, these schools were meant to further refine and to communicate that they were all grown up and ready to be married.

Now there is only one finishing school left operating in that country and the curriculum has changed because today many women opt for higher education and go directly from prep school to university. There are schools elsewhere though, in London, in Japan.

Finishing is actually, in my opinion, Polishing.

Putting your best forward. Smoothing communication. Removing the rude.

Now, being polished can very much be about your career, especially if you need to navigate the customs of other cultures. This is especially true when a person from Europe or America needs to do business in Japan or China.

There are some variants of Finishing School. In the United States "Charm" school is often a Modeling School. Posture (walking tall, perhaps balancing a book on your head), composure (keeping your hands still and in your lap or your legs together when sitting) and having someone else advise you on fashion, hair, and cosmetics, is key.

I've had associates who went to these schools as teenagers as they did want to try modeling or were going into fashion or hair dressing.

I've regularly met men and women who desperately needed to become less crude. Some were good people but ones who blurted without thinking how insensitive they were being to others. Despite succeeding past their parents, they still told horrible jokes, openly put people down for not having as much as they did or ridiculed disabled people, ate with their mouths open, wore scuffed brown shoes with blue suits, or talked only about themselves. It could be cringe worthy.

Finishing Schools vary on what you might be taught so I've made a list. Please note that men too need the information that's taught. 

Table manners.

How to set a table for casual dining to banquets.

Napkin folding.

Flower arranging.

How to be a host or house guest.

Dealing with delicate situations. (What to say or not say.)

Gifts. What's appropriate.

Running a household. (How to hire and deal with servants.)

What to wear for various sports and events.

Some may include.

Dancing.

Languages.

Skiing.

Horseback riding.

I think people who are encountering those more privileged than themselves tend to repress themselves and observe, following the lead of others around them, in order to learn. My experience is that the very rich from birth like what they like and are not so out to impress. 

Who needs it?

I'd say anyone going into international business or diplomacy. World travelers. Anyone who finds themselves involved in business in foreign countries. Scholarship students to private or elite colleges.

What does it cost? 

Several schools I found on the Internet didn't show their prices, others did. Some went on line for classes during Covid-19 others like Anna Bey's School of Affluence are always on line. A discount price I noticed on one school's web site had cut their price from $1500 to $500. I found one article, from a 2013 Business Insider, called "Wealthy Chinese Women Are Paying $16,000 for 10 Days of Finishing School" by Liz O'Connor.

You can learn some of these things by reading books. Go for the ones published recently.

I decided that I would not link to any schools because I don't think I've ever linked to anything that costs money like this. I'm sure you can do a little research yourself if you're thinking of going.

Missy

C 2021 All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights.

ANNA BEY : UPLEVELING INFLUENCER and HONORARY MISTRESS OF THE MONTH

 ANNA BEY

One of many images found on Google Images of Anna, who herself posts many images on Instagram.

Just when I thought to honor ANNA BEY with an Honorary Mistress of the Month because I think she'd be (or maybe has been) a successful Mistress, she started the year out by getting married. She moved to Geneva, Switzerland from London, England. She married her love, a man originally from Lebanon, a banker whose privacy she will respect, in a small civil ceremony due to Covid-19 restriction. She'd been with him for about three or four years. She says they'll get around to a proper church wedding after Covid-19.

But that doesn't mean she never was Kept.

I first encountered Anna on YouTube and I must have watched every one of her many professionally made videos in which she talks about elite life; fashion, composure, etiquette, and many other subjects of interest to those women who want to "level up." She starts by addressing her audience as "elegant ladies."

I found that I agree with her on some of what she has to say, though not everything. One thing I strongly do not agree with Anna about is that if a man has women friends he is just not that into you. I'll write more about that later in this month.

I find Anna Bey to be beautiful, charming, intelligent, wise, accomplished, and willing to help other women. She runs her School of Affluence for a reasonable fee, an online finishing school, or you can go to one of her websites where she posts free advice pages to supplement her videos. (You sign up on her mailing list.) I'm convinced that she is sincere in her willingness to share her lifestyle philosophy, that she has learned from harsh experiences in her own life, and that she can be a positive influence on other women. She says no matter what path you've been down, you can always turn around.

Anna believes in self improvement from the inside out though she first became known for modeling fashions she approved of. You can even listen to her video about which handbags that costs thousands are not classy. She even wrote a book on how to be classy. 

Yes, she spent $10,000 to get her nose done and wears hair extensions but she's a also into positive affirmations, dream boards, journaling, astrology, and psycho-therapy too, for as long as it takes. 

Of course, here at MISTRESS MANIFESTO BLOGSPOT, we know that there are very many ways to love, and that there are very many ways to be a Mistress. In fact, sometimes, with so many people living together today without marriage, it becomes a bit difficult to know what adultery is. Plus some women knowingly and willingly share men and not everyone is interested in monogamy. 

Being a Mistress does not require adultery. It often does but unmarried men have Mistresses too. I'm also sure when I say that being Kept does not require that you be fully supported financially by another person. Though a Classic Mistress expects and gets this, today there are few Classic Mistresses. 

I think a woman's independence begins with education and work. Opportunities for women are better now than ever, at least generally in the West, though still not at all equal to what men have overall. Covid-19 has effected women's employment far more than men's: I was told that by a person who works to help women gain job experience at a non-profit. As a result of today's desire for independence, most women like to be working at something, paid or unpaid. Women like to have their own money, which they earn. For Anna this has become teaching and running her business. She advises women to get busy. She also says the reality is most women who gain an elite lifestyle do so through men.

Has Anna benefited from a man's generosity? Surely, for she advises women not to keep cheap men in their lives and says rich wives should not be embarrassed about living off their husbands.

A moment here from me about "Sugar."

A Mistress and her Man are not in "just" a Sugar Baby and Sugar Daddy relationship either, though some of those experiences become loving relationships that endure. We have to be a bit cautious because there are people who sign on to be Sugar Babies who might be living as escorts or a Sugar Daddy might see it as hiring one rather than having relationships.

Sure there may be economic benefits to being a Mistress, but that's not all there is to it. If that's all there is to it, it probably won't last. Mistresses love their men and their men love them too or what's the point? Why would you chance being punished for going against the social norms or get dragged into a terrorizing divorce to tie yourself to another person in a unloving relationship when you could be out there looking for love? 

Here in the pages of Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot there are examples of women (and some men) who have been Kept, completely, a little, a while, or a lifetime! 

Although I don't know so, I get the feeling Anna has been Kept, without knowing if the man or men were married. I want to say that many women have experienced being in a extra-marital relationship for a while, didn't like it or did, but the experience didn't stop them from one day having a career or a legal marriage if they wanted one.

I will admit, though, that while I watched dozens of Anna Bey videos, the thought kept running through my head, "Is she a Mistress? She'd be a good lifestyle coach for Mistresses." The reason was primarily because of her emphasis on obtaining a partner, a man, who does help a woman financially, that also helps her - as she helps him - "level up," a term I get while wishing there was a better way to put it.

Why not aspire to better and greater for yourself and your children?

Well, the condemnation of Anna is fierce, and it begins and does not end with the term Gold Digger, which she addresses in one of her videos. She says a Gold Digger is a person only into it for money and her high financial standards do not mean she is one. One rake considers her a "former yacht girl" implying she once lived a life of travel and leisure in exchange for casual sex thereby ruining herself for love. (I think of Groupies and think many of them went for the casual sex without the luxury and in some cases any love. There's a lot of raunchy and not elegant aspects to Rock and Roll.) In an interview with Cosmopolitan magazine in 2018, Anna admitted to having some experience with the jet set and boating scene. A frightening experience lead her to decide she needed to find a better way to partake in the rich life. Implied is that she could've been entrapped. She started as a blogger with a site called Jet Set Babe in about 2012 and expanded from there. 

Other women, who ought to take down their videos now, attacked Anna with claims that she's a fake because they didn't believe she had a man or was living affluently. 

I have a problem with the attitude. You see, if we condemned every person who once was a nobody with nothing but had aspirations and worked hard on themselves we'd be condemning a hell of a lot of people. Most people aren't born with a lot of advantages. We'd be condemning people such as the author of Sex and the Single Girl and a long time Cosmopolitan magazine editor Helen Hurley Brown, who influenced a generation beginning in the 1960's. We could even find fault with First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis who started out in an elite world but still "leveled up" and believed a woman should do this for her children, not just herself.*

I've also read attacks on Anna from people who seem to think we shouldn't dare try to be more than we got born into; these posters can't be Americans!

Anna has said publicly in interviews that she does not think she could love a man who was poor. That's her honesty. Some people think that way and won't say it. The other side of this is that being obsessed with status can turn a person into a person who's loosing their soul. She is wary of that. She says we are all human, we all make mistakes, and while striving for elegance we must be careful not to get into the perfectionism of elegance extremism.

Another reason I think of Anna as an Honorary Mistress is that she's pragmatic. You see, Anna basically sees femininity in a traditional way, the way until very recently in history most women had to. She sees that it's still a man's world. So some of what she has to say is just what most every older woman I knew growing up thought. Anna isn't "conservative" in thinking her way. (If you think a child needs a daddy, you're conservative.) A man needs to show he can support a woman and a family before he can be in a relationship that could lead to children.

He pays for dates and if he shows off his expensive car to you it's to show you he can support you.

If he is not using some his earnings to help you succeed as a woman, then you may find yourself living like an unmarried woman when "off the market" in marriage to him.

Anna calls the men worth having "high value" men but she also admits that in order to meet wealthy men and keep them you most often have to gain status too. Initially this is about how you look but it's also how you walk and talk, your manners, and the boundaries you set.

Anna Bey, about 35, was born Aija Raty and grew up in Stockholm, Sweden with parents who are professionals. Her mother comes from Russian heritage. After high school, at about 19, she moved to Italy, a country she loves, living in Rome. Her first boyfriend came from money and showed her the good life. She knew she wanted that life. As a self improvement lifestyle coach, she tells her students it takes time to transform. Hers is ongoing. She is multi lingual, has some marketing background, and last summer attended a Swiss "finishing school" to improve her knowledge of entertaining, which she can then pass onto her students.

I will admit, so far I haven't heard Anna talk about being Kept, being a Mistress, or advising women that they should aim for marriage though she has strong ideas about how to avoid bad boys and men who don't treat a woman as his priority. I did find one video where she condemns cheating. Perhaps it's her world view or the words she uses that seem to indicate that she's aware of alternative lifestyles.

Please continue on this month to read about Anna!

C 2021 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

If interested in Helen Gurley Brown or Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, look for posts about them within this blog's archive using the search feature. 

* In a book written by singer-songwriter Carly Simon who was good friends with Jackie, Jackie advised her to marry up, to think of her children. Carly wrote a book also about her life with ex-husband James Taylor and his Mistress Evie was profiled in this blog.

Research for this month's posts including watching dozens of videos by and about Anna Bey, pro and con, reading internet news articles, as well as looking at her web sites, images, and so on. Interviews she willing did tended to be headlined to sensationalize, and gave me the impression she was not being reported accurately or heard. She is not a matchmaker, for instance, nor is she a dating coach and in upleveling she's guiding you on how to have a better life, not guaranteeing a woman will marry a billionaire.

CO CO CHANEL - NAZI and SPY or SOCIETY WOMAN in LOVE?

*A version of the book is subtitled "Nazi Agent" Was her

"Secret War" to keep her business?

Gabriella "CoCo" Chanel

1882 - 1971

In June of 2011, I elected CoCo Chanel, as Mistress of the Month.  Here she is again, this time as a possible spy for Nazi Germany. She grew up in a convent where she'd been left as a child when her mother died by a father who didn't want his children.  Her way out of being the equivalent of a foster child who had to make it alone was to sing for her supper, and become a Mistress. Lovers financed her attempts at business, as a hat maker and then as a revolutionary and renown fashion designer who became wealthy from sales of her signature perfume Chanel  No. 5 and had over 2500 employees, mostly women, when the Nazis took over Paris.  She never had a marriage or children herself, but she was generous to her family, the education of her sister's children.  She also is known to have financed men she was interested in, having achieved independence and unusual success "for a woman."
Chanel succeeded through enterprise and creativity, and though she rose up in society to have both the exiled Duke of Windsor and his wife, the Duchess Wallis Simpson, and hero Winston Churchill as friends.
The author of this book, Hal Vaughan, exposes her relationship with spy Baron Hans Gunther Von Dincklage, called Spatz, and we wonder how much did she know. I don't believe she ever forgot what it was to be impoverished, orphaned, or living in the class system that made men choose more suitable well born women as wives.  But consider CoCo often said and was quoted as believing that it was essential for a woman to have a man in her life, to be in love, to love.  She had many disappointments and heartbreaks before she ever met Spatz, a charming younger man living in the South of France, with a half Jewish wife, who came across as more Upper Crust English than German.  She was in her fifties and he in his forties when they became involved.

As you may know from reading my blog, I read every book I feature from cover to cover, and in the last year or so have been reading some books as audio books. Doing so has opened the time I have to read and I especially love it when an author reads their own work.  However, I must tell you upfront that this book as an audio book was a total turn off.  The woman reader (Why when the author is a man?) had such condemnation of CoCo in her sneering attitude and intonations that I couldn't bear to continue to listen to her.  It gave the impression that this "International Best Seller" existed condemn and give an unbalanced account of CoCo.  I winced hearing this aggressively negative voice.
I decided to give reading the old fashioned text a try, and found this was a story that built and had much research to it.  But I was not swayed to the point that I might think that CoCo should have been tried as a war criminal just because while designing costumes very briefly in Hollywood in 1931 (including Gloria Swanson) that she noticed it was run by Jews. 

That Hollywood films were and are made by Jewish people, particular male studio heads was in fact true in her era (and still is dominated by Jewish people), and perhaps this truth spoken is misinterpreted as Anti-Semitism.  For if she really were, would she have lent her name?  Or is it being implied that she herself was just greedy and irresponsible to her contract? If she was truly anti-Semitic then she probably would have not accepted the commission from a Jewish studio boss. She was paid very well - a million - but didn't need the money. If truly anti-Semetic she probably would not have made a deal on her perfume with a Jewish company in the first place. (Her costumes were not successful and she considered Hollywood too glittery and false.)
Nor do I ever find convincing generalizations that Catholics and Christians were raised to believe that Jews killed Jesus.  I never heard that personally from any pulpit or in school or out of the mouth of anyone I knew; some people may have thought that but then they are ignorant of the Roman-occupied culture during Jesus' time.
That she felt ripped off by the Jewish-owned perfume company that made most of the profit on her perfume, is true.  She legally battled with them but eventually let them buy her out, so to speak.  She might have done so of any business partner. In a 1924 deal to have her perfume produced to meet great demand, she soon felt swindled and spent the next 25 years saying so, but her perfume is what provided her most of her wealth.
What I wanted was the cold hard facts of CoCo's involvement with Nazi's sans the Baron. Can be believe he admitted to her that he was a spy and asked her to work with him? That the Baron was a special man to her as a woman, that's where CoCo may have been played.  He was known to be a seducer.  He was there in the South of France to infiltrate society that lived there, as did CoCo live some of the time.  He was there to report on Naval operations. That was his secret job. Frankly if I knew someone had married a Jewish or half-Jewish woman I would not assume they were a Nazi.
It's also that she may have played him and others with one objective which may sound selfish, but that is to survive as her world crumbled around her, to continue her business that she had to shut down and leave, to keep her employees, to continue to help her family.  When she finally got out of Paris before the occupation, her employees mostly having fled to the countryside, people starving and in the streets, in bitter cold without heat, it was to her family that she fled.  So what if she could afford a chauffer and a Rolls Royce?  Wasn't she just as entitled to be afraid for her life?

And so if we focus on what the author dug up about the Baron, who was no doubt a spy for Nazi Germany, we can start there. 
In the 1930's CoCo was worth in today's money about $230 million dollars. In the mid 1930's Adolph Hitler's second in command, Joseph Goebbels - who controlled all media - approved Baron Hans Gunther Von Dincklage as a special attaché to the German Embassy in Paris.  French intelligence as well as Swiss intelligence was watching him.  He was part of a "cell" of several hundred Nazi intelligence people in France.  But intelligence may have been keeping an eye on the Baron while CoCo may have been one of many kept ignorant - at least for a while. The Baron's wealth was not close to hers.  He was set up and being paid by Germany.

In Paris the Ritz Hotel became an island of wealth where the elite people moved to live as if there were no war.  Chanel lived there as well as having a workspace and apartment across the street from the back door. The author makes the case that Chanel and some of her dear friends were morphine addicts for much of their lives, and that Chanel used the drug due to the depression she felt when yet another man she loved died suddenly - though this is repeated in the book as fact, it didn't seem to be substantiated, however, let's accept it and think "OK she had weaknesses."
During World War I, one tenth of French men died fighting.  No one wanted to believe another World War would begin but in 1939 when panic hit Paris, there were no taxis, no telephones, and 4 million French fled south, often on foot, ahead of the German army.  By then a lot of people were sorting through garbage cans outside of restaurants to solve their hunger pangs.

Dincklage divorced his wife Maximiliane a few months before the Nuremberg laws of 1934 deprived her of her citizenship.  No one knows for sure when Chanel met Dincklage, but he was married then and he did not divorce for CoCo but to be in compliance with the Nazi regime according to the author.  She testified when questioned after the war that they knew each other for 25 years.

The political and economic conditions in Europe had people choosing sides, even sides that were not winning. People thought that Communists, Socialists, and Fascists wanted to take over France.  Germany and England were not so much considered the enemy but Russians - Bolsheviks - many who were Jewish - were.  People feared a Russian Revolution scenario in France.  As a friend to the exiled Duke of Windsor, who had given up his Kingship for the woman he loved, his Mistress Wallis Simpson, CoCo had taken to meeting up with them and other friends in Switzerland.  Winston Churchill and his son Randolph were also visitors and friends - in England - and in France - and in Switzerland.  Hitler promised that he would reinstall the Duke of Windsor as the British King when Germany won the war.  The Duke and Duchess went to meet Hitler and famously photographed happily shaking hands. If you are social with such people, who are of a more elite status than you, would you follow their lead?
Seven years ago in June 2011 CoCo Chanel, the woman said to have been responsible for dramatically changing the fashion and style of womens' wear, was our Mistress of the Month.  You might want to go back to that month for an overall more balanced view.  As for other Nazi Mistresses, I spent a whole month on them in November 2017.
This book seems to make the case that CoCo was, rather than once in her twenties a love sick woman who struggled with the early limitations of desperate poverty, a more of an experienced and worldly Mistress of more men than previously revealed in films and books.  Throughout her adult life she had relationships, she loved, she was sexual. Her men were of various ethnic backgrounds that influenced her designs. Instead of thinking that the early heartbreaks left her focused only on designing clothes, and perfume, we can think of CoCo who was a woman of business with a sense of responsibility to her employees and family, not just herself. The most convincing part of the book is that she took a trip to Germany and indeed met a Nazi leader herself.


A little later in this month of posts, I'll write more about the relationship CoCo had with the Nazi Spy that I learned from this book.  I would like my readers to ask themselves if they have kept a relationship going with a man after learning something negative about how he conducts business or treats other people.

C 2018 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot  All Rights Including International and Internet Rights Reserved.

SWITZERLAND FLY TWA VINTAGE POSTER

ALINA KABAEVA :THE PROBABLE MISTRESS OF PRIME MINISTER VLADIMIR PUTIN) MAKES PUBLIC APPEARANCE WITH TWO BOYS

UPDATE - VIDEO and PHOTO of this beautiful accomplished woman, talking about her baby daughter! EXPRESS UK - ALINA TALKS DAUGHTER

DAILY MAIL ; Alina Kabaeva makes public appearance with two boys and wedding ring

In February 2011, I elected ALINA KABAEVA as (Probable) MISTRESS OF THE MONTH, as Mistress of Vladimir Putin, who as you know, rules Russia as Prime Minister.  The rumor had been swirling around the world that the ex Olympic athlete had his favor, and if you use the search feature embedded in this blog, you can bring up primary posts on the beautiful Alina.

Though I will also post the link above as an update on the first blog post I made on Alina, last night I was riveted to find that the Daily Mail, a publication that hails from the United Kingdom, has a scoop on her.  For Alina showed up at a ice skating event expensively dressed and beautifully embroidered dress and well tailored coat, supposedly half hiding a wedding band, and WITH TWO BOYS, whose identities and ages are unknown.

Now a while back, I heard a rumor that a Russian woman, said to be Putin's mistress, had given birth in Switzerland.  (A great country for Mistresses by the way.)  There was no mention of the name of this woman, and it might not have been Alina, but let's just say that if the woman was Alina, then the child would probably not be one of these two boys, that child would be too young.  One of the boys does to me look like Vladimir, but then maybe he just looks Russian.

In 2013  Putin and his long time first wife did divorce, simply.  He has refused to speak of his private life, and perhaps that is for the best.  We do get so caught up here in the United States on the private lives of our public officials.  The questions is always whether of not what happens in their private life has or will reflect on their performance in office, and if someone has a messy private life it usually does not reflect well on them. However, even a World Leader such as Prime Minister Putin does need a private life, to love and be loved. It could be said that such a man needs a woman to give him a wonderful life outside of his work.  - Missy


FROM THE LINKED ARTICLE :

She is rarely seen in public but when she is, the former gymnast is accompanied by a large security detail which is believed to be government-organized.  

Claims of a relationship between Putin and Kabaeva fist began in 2008 when it was reported by a Moscow newspaper run by media tycoon and former KGB spy Alexander Lebedev.

There were rumors that Kabaeva was pregnant last May when she attended a girls' gymnastics competition in Moscow wearing a loose-fitting red dress which appeared to be hiding a baby bump.

Russian media said she looked slightly 'overweight' and 'older' in the dress which was in stark contrast to her usual, figure-hugging ensembles.

In October the same year, a slim-line Kabaeva was spotted wearing a ring on her right hand for the first time.