Southern belle

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Cover illustration of Harper's Weekly, September 7, 1861 showing a stereotypical Southern belle

A southern belle (derived from the French belle, 'beautiful') is an archetype for a white young woman of the American Old South's upper class.

During the period, Kentuckian Sallie Ward of Louisville was the most noted belle in the South, and her portrait, which hangs in the Speed Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, is often called "The Southern Belle." A Southern belle epitomized Southern hospitality, cultivation of beauty and a flirtatious yet chaste demeanor.

The archetype continues to have a powerful aspirational draw for many people, and books like We're Just Like You, Only Prettier, The Southern Belle Primer, and The Southern Belle Handbook are plentiful. Other current terms in popular culture related to "Southern belles" include "Ya Ya Sisters," "GRITS (Girls Raised In The South)," "Sweet Potato Queens," and "Bulldozers disguised as powder puffs." Today, a Southern Belle is also another name for a debutante from the southern United States.

To detractors, the southern belle stereotype is a symbol of repressed, "corseted" young women nostalgic for a bygone era.

References

• Seidel, Kathryn Lee (1985). The Southern Belle in the American Novel. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida. ISBN 0813008115. 
• Farnham, Christie (1994). The Education of the Southern Belle. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 0814726151. 
• Flora, Joseph (2002). The Companion to Southern Literature. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 0807126926. 
• Perry, Carolyn (2002). The History of Southern Women's Literature. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 0807127531. 

External links

Look up southern belle in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• MTV's True Life episode titled "I'm a Southern Belle"