Miss Manners: My friend has a large nude painting of herself on display

[ermingarden]

Dear Miss Manners: Some good friends of ours, a husband and wife, have a painting of the wife in their living room. The painting is a nude from her much younger days. It is not erotic, but it is very large and very explicit and detailed. She is looking at the viewer with a direct challenge.

When we visit, we are always taken to this room. I’ve asked to go to another room or to the garden, but my hostess says she loves to entertain in that room because of the sea view, which it does have.

It does not seem there is any polite way to avoid the giant nude, short of not visiting at all. Can you think of a way?

Many social situations require one to ignore the obvious; this is called tact. Miss Manners would have thought this was one of the less unpleasant of such situations, as you will be able to have a good snicker about it in the car on the way home.

Comments

[ermingarden]

One thing I appreciate about Miss Manners is that she has a good sense for situations in which, yes, someone else is behaving badly, but there is really nothing the LW can do about it that won't cause more problems than it solves. Sometimes "laugh as soon as you're out of earshot" really is the best option.

I unconsciously assumed at first that either the husband or the wife is an artist and painted the picture, but looking at the letter again, that's not in there – which makes the whole situation substantially weirder. (A couple who are friends with my mother have a photograph of the wife in the living room that, while not this extreme, is still rather more intimate than one would prefer for the setting – but the wife studied photography, and I believe it's her own work.)