Mexico's Miss Manners
By Marcela Valdés -- Críticas, 4/1/2001
An updated version of this article appears in our February 15, 2006 issue.
For someone who's spent 25 years mastering the art of nonverbal communication, Gaby Vargas possesses a surprising amount of verbal charm. Talking to Críticas from Guatulco, Mexico, her Spanish exudes a warmth and playfulness that makes you want to invite her over for coffee. It's the same voice that animates her latest book, El arte de convivir y la cortesía social (The Art of Living Together and Social Courtesy) [see review in the Print edition of Críticas for Spring], a guide to etiquette that often uses humor to make a point. In the chapter on family relations, for example, Vargas lays out 'the fifteen rules for being an awful mother-in-law.' The top entry? Call your son's wife by the wrong name.
Vargas's combination of sound advice and witty phrasing has already made her a hit in Mexico, where she participates in a nationally broadcast radio show and pens a weekly column for Mexico City's prestigious newspaper, Reforma. Her articles have appeared in 13 other Mexican newspapers as well as in the popular women's magazine Paula, and her first book, La imagen del éxito (The Image of Success), has sold more than 170,000 copies. Vargas's four books teach people the kinds of things they're usually afraid to ask: How exactly do you 'dress for success'? What's the difference between a salad knife and a fish knife? How do you set your dinner guests at ease? How do you achieve a good relationship with your in-laws? What's the most polite way to sleep on a plane?
But Vargas didn't begin as an etiquette maven. 'I was born into a family of seven children, a big family,' she says. 'My mom didn't have time to teach us refinements. She couldn't do more than, well, try to push us all forward.' Instruction at the dinner table rarely went beyond 'get your elbows off the table' and 'don't chew with your mouth open.' But when she married her husband, Pablo, 28 years ago, Vargas began to feel the deficiencies of such an unruly education.
'My husband had many business relations with people who were older than us,' she explains. 'I remember I felt uncomfortable at their gatherings because, suddenly, I wouldn't know which fork to use or if my conversation fit the occasion. Instead of paying attention to the conversation, I would pay attention to whether I was behaving correctly or not! I don't want readers to go through the same anxiety that I felt so many times.'
The Art of Living Together
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Vargas's new three-book series, El arte de convivir... (The Art of Living Together...) is designed to help readers through all types of social occasions. El arte de convivir en la vida cotidiana (The Art of Living Together in Everyday Life) presents the ins and outs of entertaining: how to set a table, how to hold a fork properly, how to host a cocktail party, how to behave on a weekend getaway, how to organize a wedding, etc. El arte de convivir y la cortesía social, focuses on family relations, friendships, and public spaces. El arte de convivir en el trabajo (The Art of Living Together at Work), will be published this fall.
Yet for Vargas good manners are not an end in themselves; the idea is to teach readers the proper etiquette for any situation so well that they can relax and enjoy the company of their friends, family, and colleagues. However, Vargas does believe that good manners possess a deeper importance than most people recognize.
'Though it appears trivial, knowing how to behave properly is really a way of respecting other people,' Vargas says. 'I did try, especially in this last book, to put the why, not just the little rules. There are deeper things. Like Goethe said, every courteous gesture has a profound moral base. Good relationships don't just happen on their own; they are the result of an effort on both sides, no?'
Indeed, these brief essays on the why are the most pleasurable part of El arte de convivir y la cortesía social. The heart of the book is a discussion on how to foster a gracious home life. In one essay, she uses Woody Allen's film Alice to explain why neglecting little courtesies can undermine an entire marriage. In others, she argues that people should place ethical values above utilitarian ones and describes how mothers can cope with empty-nest syndrome.
From Brides to Business
Vargas's own career began with premonitions of her own empty nest.
'I didn't plan a career,' she says. 'I finished high school and I got married. Then I realized, at 25, when I already had three children, all three in primary school, that I had a lot of time to myself. I remember I went through a bad period of insomnia, about four months. But what door do you knock on if you've never had a career? You go apply for a job, and they ask you, What can you do? Well, nothing. I mean, nothing.' Then a good family friend asked Vargas, who had always been interested in fashion, to fix her daughter up for her wedding. Soon other requests came in and it was finally decided: Gaby Vargas would be a bridal stylist.
But Vargas soon found that the stress of spending every weekend preparing brides took a toll on her family life. Vargas decided that instead of making up people on the weekends, she would teach them how to do it themselves.
That simple idea inspired Vargas's first company, Diseño Facial (Facial Design), which became the capital's most prestigious day spa, offering massages and color analysis as well as classes on image and style. At its height, Diseño Facial employed about 150 people. Ten years after Vargas launched the business, she was approached by IBM to do makeovers for its entire female staff in Mexico City. The two-year project was so popular that the company then approached Vargas about doing makeovers for its entire male staff. Vargas turned them down, deciding that she didn't know enough about male grooming.
That summer Vargas met a mentor at an image-making class in San Diego, Calif. 'For me,' she says, 'Robert Plante was really a kind of turning point in my professional career because he made me see a huge field, which was image consulting--in Mexico it didn't exist!' After more studying with Plante, she took up IBM's old offer to refurbish its male staff.
'It was a boom,' she says of the new specialty. 'We had lots of clients, from the president of the Republic to important companies. Like the saying goes, whoever hits first, hits twice.' The demand for image consulting was so high that Vargas eventually left her day spa and started a new company, Imagen Ejecutiva Impresarial (Executive Image Corp.), which did only image consulting. Not long after, she was approached about writing a newspaper column, which led to a weekly spot on a radio show where she offered advice on everything from how to dress for a job interview to the psychology of colors.
Her appearances spurred a huge audience response requesting even more advice. Still, when McGraw-Hill approached Vargas about doing a book, she was initially reluctant. 'I told them, Me? Write a book? I don't have any idea how that's done!' Nonetheless, La imagen del éxito, which gives men pointers on creating a successful business image, became a tremendous seller, as did the follow-up, Más sobre la imagen del éxito (More About the Image of Success), a book addressing the image of businesswomen.
For her present series, Vargas switched to Planeta, a publisher she feels has more experience handling her kind of books. It was Planeta editor Jesús Anaya who suggested that she try a series on etiquette and social grace. To Vargas, the suggestion seemed perfectly logical. As she reasons, 'What's the use of being well dressed if you don't know how to behave properly at the table? '
Living the Message
Now a grandmother, Vargas has ceded Imagen Ejecutiva Impresarial to her colleagues so she can dedicate herself to giving talks and finishing El arte de convivir en el trabajo, which covers workplace issues such as asking for a raise and handling sexual harassment. Yet her life is hardly less busy. Like most Mexican authors, Vargas doesn't have an agent, so she arranges all her own talks--a hefty 115 each year. Her most requested topics: 'The Image of Success,' 'The Secrets of Nonverbal Communication,' and 'Woman: Essence and Presence,' on the challenges and pleasures women face when they balance work and family.
On this subject, as her others, Vargas knows whereof she speaks. Wife, mother of three children, grandmother to two more--how does she herself balance family with work? 'I've had a tremendous amount of support from my husband. Truly. That's not just lip service,' she exclaims. 'He supported me financially when I started my first business; he supported my going to the United States to get my training, while he stayed home with our children; he helped sustain my energy when I was saying, Oh no, I won't be able to do it.' While her children were at home, she carefully scheduled work to correspond to their time at school. Now she's kept only one rule: as long as her talks are in Mexico, she'll always return home to share every evening with her husband.
'You have to keep your priorities clear,' she continues. 'If you put too much emphasis on work, you'll feel guilty. Suddenly you come home and your child looks at you with a face that says, You're never here. I know; I've lived it. Yet if you dedicate yourself only to your family and become a Supermom, you'll feel frustrated inside because you're not doing anything for your professional or personal life. So you have to find a balance that lets you feel good. It's not easy, but it's definitely possible.'
Valdes is associate editor for Críticas.
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