Fashioning the Body: Versions of the Citizen, the Self, and the Subject

Some introductory thoughts: I had been thinking a lot about what Elizabeth and Julia were talking about at the end of Beauty Parlor yesterday morning, about comportment and bodily control, and that’s generally what this piece is about. For this writing exercise, I got a piece about mouths from the Bazar Book of Decorum (1873). I sarcastically expanded on what the book said to include its implications. I mixed it up with some things from “low culture,” namely quotes from the movie Jawbreaker, a line from a Lil’ Kim song (which probably came from somewhere else before), some playing with a Britney Spears song title, and a discussion of an image written in something resembling the tone of a tabloid magazine (see the image here: http://www.bestweekever.tv/2006/09/14/stars-theyre-not-like-us-at-all/). For good measure, I lifted a phrase each from Mary Douglas and from The Paper Suit, and then a good portion of the writing is my own. I have to say, I’m a bit concerned that, with the Lil’ Kim and Jawbreaker quotes, I’ve taken something potentially empowering (we would have to discuss for days, probably, whether or not it could be empowering) and reinscribed it into a disempowering discourse. But I have probably over-explicated already, so here is the piece:

In the smooth face of woman, the form of the mouth has a great deal to do with its beauty or ugliness, which is why we never eat in public. Sure, food is cool and all; it tastes good, and you need it to live, but the mouth, supplied with a number of muscles quick to act at the vaguest command of the will, is very expressive of the disposition. Deal with it.

There is no art potent enough to give the beauty of symmetry which Nature may have refused to the lips. If they become unnaturally pale, more or less rouge mixed w/ beeswax will give them a deceitful and temporary gloss of nature. More extreme, less temporary, and all the more deceitful for it, is collagen. For more information, please see “Jessica Simpson’s Collagen Disaster” in the May 27th US Weekly. Don’t worry, this deceitful diva gets her comeuppance. Nothing is funnier than seeing her fish lips frown upon seeing a tabloid cover about her recent breakup at the supermarket. In this picture, captured by some of our most intrepid paparazzi, you can see right into this starlet’s shallow lakes of the interior.

But the dangers of lips don’t end at food and deceitful appearances. Whatever beauty of form and grace of proportion the human tongue may have, no one but the possessor is supposed to be cognizant of them. You know, your mouth is a cage for your tongue if you just close your teeth. We don’t want a piece of your mind, we want a piece of you.

As far as appearance (and all else) is concerned, it does not matter much what shape the male mouth may have, as, with the present style of wearing the mustache and beard, little of it can be seen. Hence this style – the words of a man come not from something as corporal, as material as a mouth, but from the disembodied spirit that is his self. Similarly, it is only fair to cover his mouth, as what he eats with it is merely a formality, a nod to the corporal self that technology has not quite yet managed to allow him to surpass. Certainly, the food he eats does not reveal anything about or have impact on his selfhood. (An exception to all of this, of course, is the gay man, whose inner self, much like that of Jessica Simpson at the check-out stand, can be read from his lips).