Southern Lady Code

Southern Lady Code (2019) is a collection of humorous essays written by American author Helen Ellis. Raised in Alabama but currently living in New York City, Ellis uses observational humor to explore a broad range of topics including marriage, sexuality, and regional divides in the United States. According to NPR, "Southern Lady Code may not be weighty, but Ellis is fun."

In the first essay, "Making a Marriage Magically Tidy," Ellis explains her growth from the kind of person who in her twenties leaves her New York apartment with a panty liner stuck to her back, to become such a relentlessly "tidy" person that she compares herself to the lifestyle guru, Marie Kondo. Ellis’s sloppiness becomes problematic only after she marries her husband. While it is in her husband's nature to accept Ellis, flaws and all, it becomes difficult for him to live amid the Pop-Tart crusts and cat vomit that his wife fails to clean. When her husband makes the simple request of asking Ellis to not leave her coat, purse, and other belongings on the dining room table, she perceives this as a prelude to divorce. Fortunately, her mother calms her down, advising, "Do you know what other married women deal with? Drunks, cheaters, poverty, men married to their Atari."

To make life easier for her husband, Ellis learns to clean, throwing herself into the art of cleanliness with a sense of focus normally reserved for recovering drug addicts. Not only does she clean the entire house, but she also reorganizes every inch of it, including her husband's closet. Nevertheless, before long Ellis "relapses," leaving her coat on the dinner table, then the floor, where her cats use it as a bed. Newspapers and other debris from Ellis's life pile up around her home. To scare herself straight, Ellis even binge-watches the television show, Hoarders.



Ellis discovers the gospel of lifestyle guru Marie Kondo, who advises readers to throw away anything that doesn't "spark joy." In this too, Ellis takes things to the extreme. But as she rids her life of all unnecessary junk, she finds, "What is left is us"—she and her husband.

Later, in the essay, Ellis argues that a strong marital unit requires a certain amount of acceptance that one's spouse won't always rush to one’s rescue. "Accept it," she writes, "every time you cry out from another room, your husband isn't going to call out, 'Are you ok?'"

In "Free to Be…You and Me (And Childfree)," Ellis discusses her decision not to bring children into this world and how some of her friends tend to be put off by this. Through this discussion, Ellis puts forth one of many code-phrases used by southern ladies. If a southern lady is asked if she wants to have kids, and she replies, "If it happens, it happens," that means she definitely does not want children.



Other essays are more straightforward advice columns, like the appropriately direct "Young Ladies, Listen to Me." Among her nuggets of wisdom in this essay are, "Flip-flops are not shoes," "Leggings are not pants," and "If a deliveryman packs two forks, you're overeating."

Elsewhere, Ellis gives yet more advice in an essay titled, "How to Be the Best Guest." First and foremost, a good guest should eat what she is given and never overly inspect an hors d'oeuvre before ingesting it. If one wants to be the best guest, she should also spend time talking with the worst guest, generally a man who is only invited because his wife is well-liked. Finally, Ellis argues that "the best guest is the first one in and the first one out."

Near the end of the collection, Ellis further explores her relationship with her mother in "An Emily Post for the Apocalypse." Her mother earns this nickname because she offers such nuggets of advice as, "Helen Michelle, if you're going to commit suicide, what you do is get into a bathtub fully clothed." This is because it will be awkward for those who find you to see you—in her mother's parlance—"nekkid." While other mothers focus their attention on teaching their children good manners in normal situations, Ellis is fixated on ensuring her daughter practices strong etiquette in the most extreme of scenarios.



In the next-to-last essay, "Serious Women," Ellis shifts her tone dramatically to relate her experience of sitting in a courtroom watching a woman on trial for killing a pregnant woman and removing the fetus, which miraculously survives. The defendant goes on to pretend to pass off the baby as hers. Ellis is in attendance because she wants to support the prosecutor, a friend of hers.

Although Southern Lady Code often reads like a self-help book, Ellis's lessons are infused with a dose of deep irony and humor, calling into question the sincerity of her advice.