"Where do girls learn about charm? Maybe from our mothers and aunts and their friends, but more profoundly, I think, from screens: movies and TV tell us it is possible to sparkle as if you were made of colored glass. To be charmed by someone is to like her, even if you don’t really know her; to charm is to make people like you before they know you. Of course I connect my ideas about this particular charm to actors and actresses: stars are mirrors of our own desires, and they exist on screen to please us. Where I grew up, to be charming meant to give pleasure without (showing that you were) trying. Then and now, to be charming means to navigate the adult world with ease, because the goal of charm is to glide past gatekeepers. As a child, these were my teachers, my parents’ friends, the adults who ran everything. As an adult, these gatekeepers are authorities, real or perceived: my bosses, sure, but also anyone in a position to judge me, including my students. Then and now, I sought rewards for poise and grace, even as I rejoiced in my secret gracelessness, obnoxiousness, in the absence of these judges." - Jessie

"But my friend Abi was, like me, raised with/among/to charm. She lives in France now, where she is often called une fille charmante as “a kind of nod of approval, given that charm in this country feels like prerequisite to being a woman.” Abi said: ... 'I don’t say thank you anymore when someone tells me I speak French well, I raise my eyebrows and say ‘yes, so do you.’" LOL I do this in Chinese sometimes: "Oh thank you! Yours is also not bad!" - Jessie

"My own relationship with charm is equally fraught. In any new situation—a new job, a new town, a new group of people—I default to charm, even when I want to “just be myself.” As soon as either I am secure or I have the sense that this charm is expected or required, I want to rid myself of it. I become Cartman on Maury: “Whatever, I do what I want.” To reject charm is to reject self-control, but only after you have achieved it. With those I am close to, I am charmless. Charm won’t survive intimacy, or intimacy can’t survive charm. On the occasions that I am out with a friend and we encounter someone new to just one of us, either I or she will have the opportunity to watch the other be charming as she introduces herself. If I am the observer, I see my friend almost as a stranger; I am going to back in time to meeting her myself, before intimacy." - Jessie