Looks – the heart thrills

SMILE!

Vienna, 2 September 2020

My wife and I have been doing quite a lot of hiking in high alpine meadows this year, which of course means that we’ve been passing a lot of cows. Here is a photo I took of one such cow at one of the huts we recently stayed in.

Every time I see cows, I am struck by the same thing: they never smile (or laugh, for that matter). I am particularly aware of this lack of hilarity in cows because of the French cheese product, La Vache Qui Rit, the Laughing Cow.

For readers who may not know this product, it’s a delicious spreadable cheese that comes in wedges. Each wedge is wrapped in silver foil; the foil is removed by pulling on a red plastic thread. It’s normally given to children. That was certainly the case for me; my French grandmother routinely fed her grandchildren pieces of French baguette thickly spread with this cheese: mmmm, soo good!

But it’s not the cheese I want to talk about. It’s the round box which holds the wedges.

As readers can see, the box is covered by a picture of a cow laughing heartily (she also has a faintly gypsy-esque look, with boxes of the cheese dangling from her ears like large earrings). I would always study the picture as I munched on my cheese-smothered piece of baguette, fascinated by that laugh. Why couldn’t the cows in the field below the house laugh like that, I wondered? Or at least smile. Or the neighbour’s dog? Or the rabbits my grandmother kept in a hutch in the vegetable garden? Or the horse I would pass on my way to get milk at the nearby farm?

As one does as a child, I quickly forgot these philosophical musings. But during my recent continued meetings with cows in high alpine meadows the question has resurfaced, although since I am now considerably older and (I hope) wiser, I ask myself the question differently: why do human beings appear to be the only species who smile?

I should say at this point that my response to this question is completely based on an article by Michael Graziano, who is a Professor of Neuroscience at Princeton University, entitled The First Smile.

I should also remind readers that we are, for all of the airs and graces that we give ourselves, fundamentally great apes. We share 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees and bonobos, 98% with gorillas, and 97% with orangutans. When Charles Darwin first revealed this relationship to horrified Victorians, one wit came up with this cartoon.

One aspect that we share with all the other great apes (and indeed with all primates) is our sociability. We are intensely social animals and much of our instinctive (DNA-driven) behaviour comes from us having lived in bands on the African veld. This behaviour regulated the all-important interpersonal relations. One such relation was when someone else in the band approached you and entered your personal space. Here, I let Professor Graziano take up the tale.

“Imagine two monkeys, A and B. Monkey B steps into the personal space of Monkey A. The result? … a classic defensive reaction. Monkey A squints, protecting his eyes. His upper lip pulls up. This exposes the teeth, but only as a side-effect: in a defensive reaction, the point of the curled lip is … to bunch the facial skin upward, further padding the eyes in folds of skin. The ears flap back against the skull, protecting them from injury. The head pulls down and the shoulders pull up to protect the vulnerable throat and jugular. The head turns away from the impending object. The torso curves forward to protect the abdomen. Depending on the direction of the threat, the arms may pull across the torso to protect it, or may fly up to protect the face. The monkey snaps into a general defensive stance that shields the most vulnerable parts of his body.

Monkey B can learn a lot by watching the reaction of Monkey A. If Monkey A makes a full-blown protective response, cringe and all, it’s a pretty good sign that Monkey A is frightened. He’s uneasy. … He must view Monkey B as a threat, a social superior. On the other hand, if Monkey A reveals only a subtle response, perhaps squinting and slightly pulling back his head, it’s a good sign that Monkey A is not so frightened. He does not consider Monkey B to be a social superior or a threat.

That kind of information is very useful to members of a social group. Monkey B can learn just where he stands with respect to Monkey A. And so the stage is set for a social signal to evolve: natural selection will favour monkeys that can read the cringe reactions of their peers and adjust their behaviour accordingly. This, by the way, is perhaps the most important point of the story: the primary evolutionary pressure is on the receiver of the signal, not the sender. The story is about how we came to react to smiles.

Then again, nature is often an arms race. If Monkey B can glean useful information by watching Monkey A, then it’s useful for Monkey A to manipulate that information and influence Monkey B. Evolution therefore favours monkeys that can, in the right circumstances, pantomime a defensive reaction. It helps to convince others that you’re non-threatening. Finally we see the origin of the smile: a briefly flashed imitation of a defensive stance.

In people, the smile has been pared down to little more than its facial components — the lifting of the upper lip, the upward bunching of the cheeks, the squint. These days we use it mainly to communicate a friendly lack of aggression rather than outright subservience.

And yet we can still see the monkey gesture in us. We do sometimes smile to express subservience, and that servile smile can come with a hint of the whole-body protective stance: head pulled down, shoulders up, curved torso, hands pulled in front of the chest. Just like monkeys, we react to such signals automatically. We can’t help feeling warmer towards someone who beams [a genuine, friendly smile involving the eyes]. We can’t help feeling contemptuous of a person who makes a servile cringe, or suspicious of someone who fakes a warmth that never reaches those vulnerable eyes.”

To underline Professor Graziano’s point about the servile cringe, I insert here a picture of Uriah Heep from Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, the epitome of the servile cringer.

As for people with the fake smile which never reaches the eyes, I can think of a few people I’ve worked with over the decades who would fit that description very well – I name no names so as not to be sued for libel.

In any event, Professor Graziano’s explanation of why we smile seems to me a good one. And it turns out that chimps and monkeys have something which looks remarkably like a human smile.

So we may not be the only ones who can smile. Maybe a lot of monkeys have something like a smile.

But it is a pity that cows don’t smile. It would be so nice if they would smile at me and my wife as we cross the high alpine meadows on our hikes.

And we would definitely smile back.

P.S. Any reader who is interested in an explanation of why we laugh and cry should consult Professor Graziano’s article.

_____________________________________________
Sources for the photos of people smiling:
White woman smiling: https://dissolve.com/stock-photo/Mid-thirties-white-woman-smiling-camera-park-royalty-free-image/101-D430-47-955
African woman smiling: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mytripsmypics/8099320008/
Asian woman smiling: https://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip-7618840-young-asian-woman-smile-happy-face-portrait
Indian woman smiling: https://dear-kim.com/2012/11/29/i-did-celban-i-think-i-messed-up-with-my-writing/smiling-indian-woman/
Aboriginal woman smiling: https://www.mydr.com.au/diabetes/diabetes-in-indigenous-australians
Andean woman smiling: https://travel.mongabay.com/pix/peru/andes-Chinchero_1017_0541.html
Middle Eastern woman smiling: https://depositphotos.com/42508065/stock-photo-smiling-middle-eastern-woman.html
Southeast Asian woman smiling: https://depositphotos.com/320288532/stock-video-portrait-of-a-smiling-indonesian.html
White man smiling: https://www.shutterstock.com/it/video/clip-14867809-portrait-od-smiling-handsome-caucasian-man-using
African man smiling: https://www.gettyimages.no/detail/news-photo/happyl-smiling-nigerian-man-waiting-for-friends-at-news-photo/53043863
Asian man smiling: https://www.freepik.com/premium-photo/smiling-young-asian-man-face-close-up_1647809.htm
Indian man smiling: https://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Asia/India/South/Tamil_Nadu/Mallanginar/photo260886.htm
New Guinean man smiling: https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/handsome-papua-new-guinea-man.html
Andean man smiling: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Andean_Man.jpg
Middle Eastern man smiling: https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/saudi-arabian-man.html
Southeast Asian man smiling: https://dissolve.com/video/Portrait-smiling-Cambodian-royalty-free-stock-video-footage/001-D205-1-086

KYOTO CITY BUS DRIVERS

Kyoto, 25 October 2018

In a previous post I mentioned in passing the wonderful delivery used years ago by an anonymous Amtrak employee when announcing the departure of trains from Penn Station in New York. Here, I want to come back to this theme, the delivery of messages on public transport, but this time the place is Kyoto and the transport in question the city’s buses.

Anyone who travels around by bus in this city cannot possibly have failed to notice the rather particular cadences used by bus drivers to announce upcoming stops, to thank you when you get off the bus, and to announce I know not what else (my knowledge of Japanese being limited to literally four words).

I think the Japanese already have a tendency to elongate the last syllable of the last word they pronounce, rather like the Czechs and Slovaks, but Kyoto bus drivers draw out that last syllable to an extreme. It’s as if a London bus driver were to say “Next stop: Trafalgar Squaaaaaaaaare” or “Coming up: Piccadilly Circuuuuuusssss” and “Watch your step getting off the buuuuussssss”. And it’s all said in such calm, caressing tones! As readers can see from the photo above, the bus driver wears a mic linked to the bus’s PA system, so he doesn’t have to raise his voice (it always seems to be men who drive Kyoto buses). He can just murmur quietly and breathily into his mic. My wife and I sit and listen (with some amusement, I have to say) as the driver’s litany of messages rolls out over us. We quite forget to admire the passing views, especially the tourists dressed up in kimonos and montsukis for the day.

The same cannot be said of the canned announcements on the buses, always by women. I don’t know what it is, but when Japanese women have to make public pronouncements they seem invariably to opt for a register in the higher octaves. I suppose they are adopting that childlike tone which seems to be the approved tone for women in this still very patriarchal society. I remember once meeting the wife of a Japanese colleague who spoke English to me in a high, squeaky voice but whose voice dropped an octave or so when she spoke to her husband. Those same squeaky tones emanate from Kyoto buses’ PA systems, announcing chirpily what stops will be next and various other information of public interest. Every time I hear that voice (and there seems to be only one voice used by the whole of the Kyoto bus system), I cannot help but think of the girly characters that populate Japanese cartoons, the ones with the impossibly big eyes and a suspiciously Caucasian look.

Women of Japan, arise! You have nothing to lose but the chains which tie you to ridiculous and outdated role models! Drop your voices an octave! And drive Kyoto buses, for God’s sake!

Well, having got that off my chest, let me go back to listening to the soothing tones of our bus driver. I should tape him, I’m sure playing his voice back in a loop at night as white noise would make me sleep very well.

_____________________________________________

Kyoto city bus:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Kyoto_City_Bus_200_Ka_1519.jpg
Kyoto city bus driver: https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-kyoto-bus-driver-with-white-gloves-in-japan-133175829.html
Street scene Kyoto:
https://lexiskobe.com/2016/03/04/%E3%83%AC%E3%82%AF%E3%82%B7%E3%82%B9%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A3%E3%83%91%
E3%83%B3%E3%81%AE%E7%95%99%E5%AD%A6%E7%94%9F%E3%81%8C%E3%83%A2%E3%83%87%E3%83%AB%E3%81%AB%E3%81%AA%E3%82%8A%E3%81%BE%E3%81%97%E3%81%9F/lexis-japan-kimono-kyoto-3/
Girl cartoon character: http://www.nijisenmon.com/1070592288

CURLED MUSTACHES

Milan, 4 February 2018

A Gentle Reader of my recent post on the use of orange peel in coffee sent me a link to a post about some young fellow, a barista, who makes a coffee with vanilla and orange peel in a bar on Venice Beach. The post has a picture of the barista at work, which I include here.

My other Gentle Readers will note that the barista’s mustache ends have a certain curl to them. That curl is the subject of this piece.

The fact is, I have recently begun to notice that some of the men I pass in the street who happen to sport mustaches have begun to add a curl to them. I throw in here a picture or two which I found here and there on the internet.

This new fashion in facial hair is an example of that adage “what goes around comes around” (or maybe of that other adage “there’s nothing new under the sun”). Curled mustaches have certainly not been in fashion during my lifetime – Salvador Dalì’s weird mustache definitely being an example of yet another saying: the exception that proves the rule.

They don’t seem to have been in fashion in my parents’ or grandparents’ lifetime either. If men had mustaches at all in their time, they favoured pencil-thin mustaches à la Clark Gable

or trim mustaches favoured – at least in my mind – by military types

(although there was a sub-culture of daring RAF pilots during the War who chose to grow handlebar mustaches, luxuriant mustaches discretely curled at their ends).

The mustache-beard combination was also relatively rare: men went around bare-chinned for the most part. King George V seems to have bucked the prevalent trends, at least when he was young and still Prince, growing both a luxuriant beard and giving his mustache a slight curl.

By the time he was King and needed to emanate a certain gravitas his mustache was no longer curled.

Perhaps George was copying his elder brother, Albert Victor (who died young and so never reigned), who opted to give his mustaches a more foppish curl (but shunned the beard).

I’m guessing that curled mustaches were more of a continental phenomenon, and a southern (Catholic) continental phenomenon at that. I suspect that during most of the 20th Century Englishmen felt that it was only funny little foreigners who curled their mustache – one only has to read what Agatha Christie had to say about Poirot’s mustache to get a sense of the ordinary Englishman-on-the-street’s feelings about highly curled mustaches.

Indeed, in my great-grand parents’ time it seems that only southern continentals had curled mustaches. We have Napoleon III

and even more strikingly Vittorio-Emanuele II, first king of united Italy.

I have already written about how my French great-grandfather followed his Emperor’s fashions in hair and beard, only to change to a more Prussian style when Napoleon III got the shit beaten out of him by Bismarck, whose mustache was very much in the no-nonsense style.

A quick review of even earlier Movers and Shakers – Kings, Presidents, Prime Ministers, and such like – suggests to me that apart from a few exceptions, mustaches, when grown, were not commonly curled until one gets back into the mid-17th Century, the era of D’Artagnan and the Three Musketeers, when anyone who was anyone sported a curling mustache, accompanied not by a full beard but by a goatee. The best example of the style is Cardinal Richelieu.

The face of the king he served, King Louis XIII, was similarly festooned

although even in this he was overshadowed by his Minister: who associates Louis XIII with curled mustaches?

On the other side of the Pyrenees Philip IV similarly sported a curled mustache and goatee beard (which didn’t hide his protruding Hapsburg chin)

As did Charles I across the Channel.

Clearly, curled mustaches with goatees were in.

No European King prior to this generation seems to have curled his mustaches, but it must have been in fashion earlier. Here, for instance, from England’s Elizabethan era, we have that English vice-admiral (pirate might be a better word, or buccaneer if we want to be more romantic) Sir Francis Drake.

And here we have Sir Walter Raleigh, another swashbuckling fellow (and good poet).

In fact, all of those sailor-pirate-explorer types that Elizabeth favoured tended to have upward-curving mustaches:
Sir Martin Frobisher

Sir Humphrey Gilbert

Sir Richard Grenville

Sir John Hawkins

and his son, Sir Richard Hawkins.

I presume that equally dashing lads throughout Europe curled their mustaches. Was it a fashion started by men living on the edge of respectability, the wild ones in Good Society, the ones you loved to read about but would definitely not marry your daughter off to, a fashion which then crept into more respectable circles to be finally sported by Kings and Cardinals?

Of course, I have been revoltingly Eurocentric up to now in this piece. It is time to give space to other parts of the world where curled mustaches have made their mark. And here I’m thinking principally of the Indian subcontinent, which has given us examples of some magnificently curled mustaches. Currently, the Sikhs seem to be the ones carrying forward this tradition

but in the past well curled mustaches – and rich and full beards – were common in the Indian subcontinent.

Well, I end my historical tour of the curled mustache here. I can only look on men who curl their mustaches with envy. As I reported earlier, I’ve never grown a beard and if I did it would be a mangy thing. I grew a mustache once in my life and it was a raggedly sorry affair despite my best efforts. Well, that’s life: you live with the genes your parents gave you, and I didn’t get the gene for rich, thick, curlable mustaches. Hey ho.
_______________

Barista: http://sprudge.com/the-orange-vanilla-caffe-rico-at-menottis-coffee-stop-venice-beach-73092.html
Modern curled mustaches: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.vanityfair.it/amp/8465/beauty/trend-beauty/2017/05/11/barba-capelli-trend-uomo-primavera-2017
Modern curled mustaches: https://www.pinterest.com/amp/zacpeck/beards-and-mustaches/
Modern curled mustaches: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.pinterest.com/amp/captainfawcett/moustache-and-bearded-cool/
Modern curled mustaches: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.esquire.com/style/grooming/gmp2890/mustache-styles-for-men/
Modern curled mustaches: https://m.theepochtimes.com/movember-guide-to-a-sweet-mustache-styles-to-fit-your-face-and-other-tips_340938.html
Modern curled mustaches: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/275986283398395802/
Salvador Dali: http://m.theartstory.org/artist-dali-salvador.htm
Clark Gable: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.filmibeat.com/amphtml/hollywood/news/2008/gable-racism-victor-fleming-300908.html
Military man with mustache: http://thejollybuffoon.blogspot.it/2008/11/?m=1
RAF fighter pilot: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2870347/Last-One-final-surviving-Battle-Britain-pilots-dies-aged-98-leaving-incredible-archive-aerial-photographs.html
young King George V: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kinggeorgev1928.jpg
old King George V: https://www.gettyimages.it/evento/years-since-king-george-v-death-90301144#/king-george-v-of-great-britain-preparing-to-give-a-radio-broadcast-a-picture-id56650523
Prince Albert Victor: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Albert_Victor,_Duke_of_Clarence_and_Avondale
Hercule Poirot: http://serialy.bombuj.eu/serial-hercule-poirot
Napoleon III: https://fi.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_III
Vittorio-Emanuele II: https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vittorio_Emanuele_II_di_Savoia
Bismarck: http://historyworldsome.blogspot.it/2013/12/otto-von-bismarck.html?m=1
Cardinal Richelieu: https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/cardinal-richelieu-6772.php
Louis XIII: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XIII_of_France
Charles I: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/11228284/Killers-of-the-King-the-Men-who-DaredExecute-Charles-I-by-Charles-Spencer.html
Philip IV:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_IV_of_Spain
Francis Drake: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Francis-Drake
Martin Frobisher: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Frobisher
Humphrey Gilbert: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphrey_Gilbert
Richard Grenville: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Grenville
John Hawkins: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hawkins_(naval_commander)
Richard Hawkins: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hawkins
Indian Maharaja: http://dp.mariottini.free.fr/carnets/inde/maharajas-rajputs.htm
Indian Maharaja: https://no.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maharaja
Nawabs: https://no.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nawab
Bearded Sikh: http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/turban-beard.html
Bearded Sikh: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/beards/comments/676iel/some_people_say_ive_got_a_pretty_sikh_beard/

I’LL NEVER SPORT A BEARD

Milan, 1 March 2017

My wife and I went to see a small exhibition a few days ago, on cartoons drawn during the First World War. They were from Italian, Austrian, German, and French magazines and newspapers, and of course all showed the other side as stupid, nasty, brutish or all three (there were also cartoons against profiteers, censorship, international capital, and other sundry topics of interest to countries at war). All in all, they were interesting and sometimes really amusing – the short, rather stupid looking Italian king, Victor Emanuel III, was the butt of many a hilarious cartoon.

This being an Italian exhibition, many of the cartoons focused on the Italo-Austrian front, but some of the German/Austrian cartoons also lampooned the enemy on their eastern front, the Russians. As might be expected, Tsar Nicholas II came in for his share of ribbing. The jokes about him were good, but what struck me looking at the cartoons of him was the thing that always strikes me when I see pictures of him, namely his beard.

Such a great beard! The man may have been a dolt but he was well-whiskered, no doubt about it. Beards such as these were definitely in vogue at the time, as this portrait of his British cousin George V shows.

If the hirsute young fellows I see about me on the streets are any guide, beards this luxuriant are back in fashion, as attested by this photo which I recently took of an ad in the Milan subway.

Sad to relate, I cannot be part of this renewed fashion trend. My genes work against me. Were I to attempt to grow a beard, I would simply look like a mangy dog. My problem is that I have a significant number of places on my cheeks where nothing grows. I can’t even adopt that other novelty of male facial hair, an attractive stubble, like Ryan Gosling’s for instance.

After several days of not shaving, I simply look like a homeless person.

I know I could manage to grow a mustache, having had one luxuriate for a year or so on my upper lip some thirty years ago. I thought I looked a little like Clark Gable.

(My wife clearly disagreed and finally told me it was time for it to go.) I think I could also manage a goatee. So I sometimes daydream that maybe I could manage to look like my French great-grandfather, a photo of whom lorded it over my grandmother’s living room. In it, he looked just like Napoleon III, who was Emperor at the time the photo was taken.

Alas, a few years later, France’s armies were thrashed by the Prussian-led German armies and Napoleon went off into exile and death. For his part, my great-grandfather changed his look, as documented in another photo which lorded it over my grandmother’s living room. He adopted the short back-and-sides and soberer mustache of the enemy, looking very much like Kaiser Wilhelm II.

I’m sure many Frenchmen changed their look at this time. Out with the foppish Napoleon look! The French needed to stiffen themselves with some Prussian iron to beat the hated enemy the next time round!

But coming back to my possible goatee, I think realistically the best I could manage would be something like this.

Which is really pretty sad. Maybe I should just resign myself to being clean shaven for the rest of my life.

My wife would certainly agree.

_______________

Cartoon Victor Emanuel III: http://milano.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/17_febbraio_19/caricature-vignette-d64e1cca-f601-11e6-a891-35892eecc6d0.shtml
Tsar Nicholas II: http://pixelrz.com/lists/keywords/tsar-nicholas-ii-quotes/
George V: http://hotmonarchy.com/gallery/monarchs/qf_v1/
Ryan Gosling: http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/67828132/Whats-happened-to-Ryan-Goslings-beautiful-head-of-hair
Clark Gable: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark_Gable
Napoleon III: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Napoleon_III_cph.3c31393.jpg
Kaiser Wilhelm II: http://erhj.blogspot.it/2014_07_01_archive.html?m=1
Pathetic goatee: http://jefffsbeardboard.yuku.com/reply/159820/Re-21-yo-Am-I-just-screwed-Might-CP-Serum-help

BETEL CHEWING

Bangkok, 27 March 2016

I said in my last post that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In that case, I was talking about citrons. But this homey dictum is that much truer about the subject of this post, betel chewing. To explain what I mean, consider this picture of a betel chewer.

Now, if I were to meet such a fellow, I would be nervously looking for an escape route, half expecting the man to make a lunge with his pointed canines at my jugular. But in the village where he comes from, where no doubt half the population have red goo drooling from their lips, this man would be seen as a nice, friendly village elder. Perhaps a little less on the extreme side of things, if I were to meet this smiling Indian gentleman

my earlier post on teeth would come to mind and I would make a mental note that he badly needed to see a dentist rather than thinking what a lovely smile he had and what a nice man he must be. As I said, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I first came across the habit of betel chewing in Delhi. I was there for a meeting of some sort, and after it was over and I was being walked back to my hotel my colleague stopped at a betel stand such as this one

and ordered himself a betel quid to chew. He asked me if I wished to try one, but I politely declined. I watched with curiosity to see what might happen to him, but nothing untoward did. I did realize, though, that this habit explained his somewhat orange teeth.

I was reminded of this scene from long ago when I was in Myanmar recently and saw the tell-tale signs of betel chewing all around me in Yangon – the orange teeth, the betel stands, and – most revolting of all – these bright red splotches on the pavements.

Betel chewing generates a lot of saliva, which the chewers either swallow or spit out (which if not done vigorously enough no doubt leads to dribbles on the chin as in the case of the old gentleman with whom we started this post). The fact that these are spit is revolting enough, but their bright red colour further gives the impression that half the population have advanced cases of TB and are coughing their lungs out (my childhood memories have retained stories of older generations with consumption coughing hard into their handkerchiefs and seeing with horror that the handkerchiefs were stained by bright red blood from their lungs; the end was nigh for them).

For those – I hope – many readers who have no idea what is in a betel quid, allow me to elucidate. At its most basic, the betel consists of slices of the “nut” (actually fruit) of the Areca palm

wrapped in leaves of the betel vine

which have been liberally smeared beforehand with slaked lime. Depending on your fancy and which part of the world you come from, your local betel stand holder can add tobacco, spices, and various other ingredients – note the various little pots which our betel stand holder in the picture above has spread out before him.

Since I had first come across the betel chewing habit in India, and since every betel stand holder in Yangon seemed to be of Indian extraction, I sort of assumed that this was an Indian tradition which had been exported elsewhere. Not a bit of it! It’s actually the other way around. Although it’s not yet clear where the Areca palm and the betel vine originated from exactly, there is general agreement that it was in South-East Asia somewhere. But they didn’t originate in the same place. Evidence points to the betel vine and Areca nut being initially consumed separately, their use spreading out from their point of origin until they overlapped, at which point some bright spark had the idea of putting the two together. Early trade between South-East Asia and India brought betel chewing and then the plants to the subcontinent – and migration brought them out to New Guinea and the Pacific Islands, where the dreaded signs of betel chewing are to be found.

But why, some readers may be asking themselves, does anyone bother to chew betel quids in the first place? Because both plants contain mild stimulants: arecoline in the case of the Areca nut, eugenol in the case of the betel leaf. So chewing the quid gives the chewer a mild high. It joins a number of other plants which are chewed for their stimulating (in some cases very stimulating) effects: coca leaves in the Andes,

khat leaves in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian peninsula (I remember a colleague once telling me that Djibouti came to a halt on Fridays as everyone waited for the weekly supply of khat to be flown in from Ethiopia)

kola nuts in West Africa.

And then there are the plants that are smoked, those that are swallowed, those that are made into infusions and drunk … Early humans were exceedingly resourceful in figuring out how to get a high from the plants which surrounded them. I wonder, though, how they ever figured out which of the thousands of plants around them gave them highs.

Luckily, the practice of betel chewing seems to be dying out. For instance, Thailand was once a hot-spot of betel chewing, but I have never seen anyone in Bangkok, or anywhere else for that matter, chewing it. Nor have I ever seen anyone chewing betel quids in Cambodia or Laos. I say “luckily”, even though this perhaps betrays a cultural imperialism. I mean, one could argue that if people want to chew betel why shouldn’t they, as long as they don’t kill me or their family or themselves in the process, and don’t become a burden on the public purse because of it. Normally, I would indeed be tolerant of cultural diversity, but for this particular practice I draw the line: people with red mouths and teeth à la Dracula generating bright red spit marks all over pavements are beyond the civilized pale. This should be the new normal, everywhere.

_____________________

Betel chewer: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Betel.jpg (in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betel)
Indian betel chewer: http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/131025001452-betel-nut-12-horizontal-large-gallery.jpg (in http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/04/world/asia/myanmar-betel-nut-cancer/)
Betel quid seller: http://www.loupiote.com/photos_l/3699347097-man-selling-betel-quids-delhi-india.jpg (in http://www.loupiote.com/photos/3699347097.shtml)
Spit from betel chewing: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c8/Spit_from_chewing_Areca_nut_02.JPG/800px-Spit_from_chewing_Areca_nut_02.JPG (in http://tijgercoverlover.blogspot.com/2015_10_01_archive.html)
Areca nuts: http://previews.123rf.com/images/gamjai/gamjai1404/gamjai140400129/27628649-Ripe-and-Raw-Betel-Nut-Or-Areca-Nut-Palm-On-Tree-Stock-Photo.jpg (in http://www.123rf.com/stock-photo/areca_nut_palm.html)
Betel leaves: http://freepressjournal.in/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/lead-19.jpg (in http://www.freepressjournal.in/the-ubiquitous-betel-leaf/483947)
PNG betel chewer: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/6b/81/24/6b81245676a7dfacc68d282d1a908b37.jpg (in https://www.pinterest.com/WorldofBacara/betel-nut-chewing-paraphernalia/)
Coca leaf chewing: https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/QFzuYzGkifM3AVIMjeToTuZ6ggFZLzzxh9eltPXpqaGv-Ei41rXq_VzjVByqHC0DuWmLqNQsad-W4bP9p775OicO_XVLhDjLfp19m-1hbGrZnvchpVdklqA_qfma-r3oRTzLVcfIgQ (in http://cocainekillstherainforestoo.blogspot.com/2015_03_01_archive.html)
khat chewing: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Qat_man.jpg (in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khat)
kola chewing: http://igboclass.umunagbor.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Kola-.jpg (in http://igboclass.umunagbor.org/the-kola-nut-as-an-igbo-cultural-and-social-symbol/)
Indian lady smiling: http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/x/indian-lady-smiling-14122626.jpg (in http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-image-indian-lady-smiling-image2316986)

MIRROR, MIRROR, ON THE WALL

Bangkok, 28 February 2016

Every morning, I stare at myself in the mirror as I shave, a ritual which has enslaved me these past forty odd years. And I stare at myself in the mirror as I brush my hair, or brush my teeth, or – more lately – inspect that suspicious mark on my face (is it melanoma?). And I watch as the face which stares back at me grows rounder and more creased, as the hairline recedes and the temples grow greyer, as the lips thin with the loss of back teeth, as the skin begins to sag under my chin.

I grow old, the mirror remorselessly reminds me every day.

I can’t escape my reflection. It follows me everywhere I go, staring back at me from all the mirrors which we have scattered with wild abandon over our urban landscapes: the bars, the restaurants, the public toilets, the elevators, the shops, the lobbies, … My reflection even beckons to me from the smooth, shiny sheathing and coated windows of our fancy modern buildings.

It was not always so. There was a time, not so long ago in the great arc of human history, when we hardly ever saw our own faces. We saw the faces of others: our mothers, our fathers, our siblings, our tribe, our village, and the few strangers who came from the other side of the mountain and passed through. From time to time, when drinking in a still pool, we would have seen a tremulous reflection staring back at us. But it’s not easy to see one’s reflection in water. Water bodies have this infuriating habit of giving a beautiful reflection of things far away but of being blankly clear at one’s feet.

This young girl has managed to capture her watery reflection quite well

but I think this picture is more typical of what most of us see when we peer into water.

That’s why I’ve never really understood the legend of Narcissus, the beautiful boy who caught sight of his reflection in a pool, fell in love with it, and died at the pool’s edge unable to drag himself away.

What reflection could he possibly have been so enamoured with? In my experiments in the kitchen with various pots and pans of different colours, the best reflection I got was from a black frying pan

and even that reflection was, as readers can see, murky in the extreme. How could anyone, however beautiful he or she may have been, have fallen in love with this evanescent reflection? Perhaps the original teller of the tale had seen a reflection of a person in a dark pool or vase from a distance, like this photographer has

and invented the story around that.

Be that as it may, eventually our ancestors found other ways to see themselves. Obsidian, that beautiful, black, glassy material, product of volcanic activity

was used in the first attempts at non-aqueous mirrors, in Turkey. The country was famous in the pre-metallurgical era for its obsidian, which could be used to make razor-sharp arrow heads – such arrow heads have been found hundreds if not thousands of kilometres away from the mother lode in Anatolia. But large obsidian pieces could also be split open and the faces given a high polish to act as a mirror.

Obsidian may be beautiful, but it gives a dark reflection, almost as dark as the water in my frying pan. I am reminded of St. Paul’s famous phrase in his first letter to the Corinthians, “For now we see through a glass, darkly”.

The metallurgical age brought us one step closer to seeing ourselves, in polished copper or bronze mirrors, like this Egyptian copper mirror.

Copper mirrors would have given reddish reflections like those we see in highly polished copper pans, such as this

or this.

(If nothing else, both photos show the need for a uniformly flat surface for a good result …)

The Chinese especially made mirrors out of polished bronze. These would have given yellowish reflections, like this one

or this one, from a Japanese bronze mirror.

Mirrors such as these were very expensive – indeed, the Chinese turned the backs of their mirrors into admirable works of art, such as this 9th Century one from the Tang Dynasty with its admirably carved dragon.

So only the rich, the ancient world’s one-percenters, could afford to peer – curiously, vainly, or dolefully – at their reflection. The man and woman on the street still could only see their reflection in water.

It seems that it was the Egyptians who first thought of coating glass with metal to make glass mirrors, but their reflectivity was poor. As for the Romans, Pliny the Elder mentioned mirrors where gold leaf was applied to glass. I don’t know if any such mirror has survived the ravages of time, I certainly didn’t find a trace of one on the Internet. But very fancy gold-plated mirrors such as the one in this photo are now made, for high-tech applications.

I suppose a bleary-eyed Roman plutocrat staring at himself in his gold-plated glass mirror after a night of orgies would have caught such a yellowing reflection as this of his face.

It is the Venetians we have to thank – or curse – for bringing us the modern silvered mirror, which finally allowed humanity to see its own reflection in glorious, embarrassing, or painful technicolour. The glass-makers of Murano figured out a way of making flat – and clear – glass as well as depositing a thin coating of silver on the back of it (my professional self cannot but help notice that they used a silver-mercury amalgam to do this; the mercury inevitably sickened and killed off a good number of Murano mirror-makers – an interesting twist to the French saying “il faut souffrir pour être belle”, “one must suffer to be beautiful”, which here becomes “you suffer, and I admire my beauty”). Once again, it was initially the one-percenters of the European courts who enjoyed – or suffered from – a much clearer reflection of themselves. Venetian glass mirrors such as this one were worth a king’s ransom.

The French one-percenters couldn’t stand the idea that they were sending so much of their wealth southwards to the misbegotten Venetians for glass mirrors. They tried mightily to worm the secrets of mirror-making out of Murano. But La Serenissima, fully appreciating the gold mine they were sitting on, passed draconian laws forbidding these secrets from leaving the lagoon. Eventually, though, the French suborned a group of Venetian mirror-makers, persuading them to bolt from the lagoon and set up shop in the St. Gobain works. Among many other things, this gave us the Hall of Mirrors at the palace at Versailles.

This hall has impassively reflected the fun and games of the French monarchy, but also two crucial moments in recent European history: the declaration of the German Empire in 1871 after the Prussians trounced the French in the Franco-Prussian War

and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 between the Allies and the new-born German democracy

that humiliating “diktat of Versailles” which Hitler used to such good effect in his rise to power.

Alas! The silvering process which the Venetians invented, and the French copied, did not last forever. With time, it would crack, it would peel, it would dull, so that reflections would become evanescent once more. How many old houses contain mirrors like this one!

Even our apartment in Milan holds a mirror where Time has inserted its bony fingers into the silvering and has started to strip pieces off.

Like my face, mirrors age. But as men have found ways of making faces last longer, so have they found ways to make silvered mirrors that last longer and reflect better. And through the genius of industrialization they have found ways to make these much better mirrors much cheaper, so that 99-percenters like me can also stare, once vainly and now despairingly, at the reflection of our crumbling selves.

I need to escape from my reflection. My wife and I could have ourselves shipwrecked on some remote islet in the Pacific Ocean. Yet even there, I fear that I would find a shard of mirror on the beach, washed up together with all the plastic bottles and other flotsam and jetsam of our consumeristic life that now fill up our oceans.

__________________________________

Reflections in a lake: http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get2/I0000WnV35_OekPk/fit=1000×750/Numa-and-Rainbow-Peaks-Reflecting-in-Bowman-Lake.jpg (in http://bretedge.photoshelter.com/image/I0000WnV35_OekPk)
Reflection in water: http://www.aheadworld.org/wp-content/gallery/reflection-in-the-water/bellareflectionwater-1.jpg (in http://www.aheadworld.org/2014/07/15/reflection-in-the-water/)
Reflection in a puddle: http://www.nambya.com/wp-content/uploads/image6.jpg (in http://www.nambya.com/gallery/photography/image-7/)
Narcissus by Caravaggio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissus_%28mythology%29#/media/File:Narcissus-Caravaggio_%281594-96%29_edited.jpg (in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissus_%28mythology%29)
Reflection in a black pan: my photo
Reflection in a bowl of water: http://inapcache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/reflections/bp12.jpg (in http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2012/02/photo_reflections.html)
Chunk of obsidian: https://www.thinglink.com/scene/504686617127026690
Obsidian mirror: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/a0/77/4e/a0774e9d5c812c328852a4850ea59899.jpg
Egyptian copper mirror: https://assets.paddle8.com/510/266/21339/21339-1380672291-Coburn-Item%2033-xl.jpg (in https://paddle8.com/work/egyptian/21339-hand-mirror)
Reflection in a copper pot: http://www.jeffclaassen.com/photos/2013/11/copper_pot_05.jpg ( in http://jeffclaassen.com/blog/2013/11/copper-pot-selfies-in-the-kitchen-after-dinner/)
Reflection in a copper pot-2: http://www.jeffclaassen.com/photos/2013/11/copper_pot_02.jpg (in http://jeffclaassen.com/blog/2013/11/copper-pot-selfies-in-the-kitchen-after-dinner/)
Reflection in a copper pan: https://40.media.tumblr.com/e295593980f36d1411e869333c84b63f/tumblr_mgbmbnhFJl1rjg7f0o1_500.jpg (in https://www.tumblr.com/search/loppapeysa)
Reflection in a Chinese bronze mirror: https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2601/3810835438_947331566d_b.jpg (in https://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisckemp/3810835438)
Reflection in a Japanese bronze mirror: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WxoUP_Y9N1A/RysHFDtbP1I/AAAAAAAAADo/smZF2ussZLo/s320/te-kagami2.JPG (in https://kgtou.wordpress.com/2007/11/02/te-kagami-hand-mirror/)
Chinese mirror – back: https://www.flickr.com/photos/asianart/405662049
Mirror coated with gold: http://www.epner.com/processes-and-products/laser-gold/
Old Venetian mirror in good shape: http://www.antiquario-dellapiana.it/esposizione-antiquariato-alba/dipinti-antichi/
Galerie des Glaces: http://www.historylines.net/history/17th_cent/versailles.html
Proclamation of the German Empire: https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galerie_des_Glaces
Signing of the Versailles Treaty with Germany: https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galerie_des_Glaces
Old Venetian mirror in bad shape: http://www.juliamarkert.com/galleria-riproduzioni-cornici-antiche-firenze/cornici-antiche-firenze/specchio-veneziano/
Reflection in Milan mirror: my photo

A STUDY OF FEET

Bangkok, 19 October 2015

One of the interesting side-effects of living in Bangkok is that I can carry out a comprehensive study of feet. The climate here is such that the wearing of open footwear is exceedingly widespread, so I can examine – surreptitiously, of course – a very large number of feet as I walk around, sit in public places, or – as was the case when I started this post – sit in buses stuck in Bangkok’s perennially dreadful traffic. Since so many foreigners come to Bangkok, the study is very cross-cultural: I study not only the feet of the Thai, but also – judging from the shards of phrases I overhear as the foreigners walk by – Australians, Europeans of all stripes, North Americans, some Latin Americans, quite a number of Middle Easterners, a sprinkling of Africans, and of course Asians from every corner of Asia. I am now ready to report back on the findings of my study.

Let us first set the benchmark against which I can compare the feet I see. This would be a foot in its natural state, that is to say a foot that is perennially shoeless. This photo, which I’ve used before, gives an excellent example. What we have here is a band of Amazonian Indians who are coming into contact with the modern world for the first time. Their astonished and somewhat fearful faces upturned towards the helicopter (I guess) are fascinating, but I would invite the reader to focus on their feet, feet which have never been shod.

As the readers will quickly agree, these feet are in the state that most human feet have been in for 99.99% of the time we have inhabited this planet.

I throw in here an older photo, taken – no doubt by some amateur anthropologist – to deliberately show a natural foot. And of course it has to be an old photo, because wearing shoes is probably now the norm rather than the exception. Finding a foot nowadays which has never been shod must indeed be hard.

Note the way the toes in the natural foot, especially the big toe, are splayed out. A minute’s thought will show that of course this is the way it should be. By spreading out like that, toes are giving the foot a wider footprint and therefore making it easier for the person on top of those feet to balance.

In this photo of a baby’s feet, the reader will notice that they naturally take this splayed form

Only later, through imprisonment in shoes, do the toes come closer together

sometimes too close together.

I am reminded of TS Eliot’s poem Animula, which tracks the evolution of a person’s soul from birth to adulthood, but which actually describes very well the fate of our feet: “‘Issues from the hand of God, the simple soul’ …Issues from the hand of time, the simple soul … misshapen, lame, unable to fare forward …”.

But back to the matter in hand. Having set the benchmark, I can now report the results of my pseudo-sociological field experiment in the streets and other public spaces of Bangkok.

Generally speaking, the feet of Thai people look in considerably better shape than those of foreigners from “civilized” countries. A good number have quite splayed toes, fruit no doubt of hardly ever wearing shoes at home. In fact, it’s quite common to see their little toes falling off their flip-flops or sandals. Clearly, the basic “chassis design”, if I can put it that way, adopted by shoe manufacturers simply ignores the natural form of the foot with splayed toes. Shoe manufacturers take as their starting point an already somewhat malformed foot. Well they would, wouldn’t they? After all, it is their products which have malformed out feet in the first place. Other Thais have moderately straightened toes, fruit of some level of constriction by shoes.

I detect a social element here. It is clear from their dress and occupation that the Thai owners of feet whose toes are splayed come from the poorer strata of society, while those with feet with straight toes come from the richer ones. And I also detect a gender element. Young Thai women show more evidence of constricted toes than do the men. I will come back to this in a minute.

As for the feet of the foreigners, those of people from more developed, richer, more “civilized” countries show toes much more tightly squeezed together

along with more extreme signs of foot distress: bunions

hammer toes

calluses and corns.

Like in the case of the Thai, women’s feet seem more malformed than men’s. Which gets us of course to the cause of all these foot problems: canons of accepted (feminine) beauty.

Let’s face it, for hundreds if not thousands of years, there has been this insidious idea that those members of society who are more civilized, more refined – and richer – have delicate (for women) or well proportioned (for men) limbs and features. Hands, of course, have always been a particular object of this odious social creed, because having big hands, and especially having big fingers, meant that you were poor and so did a lot of manual labour.

If you were rich, on the other hand, you could pay people to do your manual labour for you, leaving your hands and fingers slim.

With feet, it must have been a little different. Like grand clothes, the fact that you wore shoes showed that you had money to burn, not like that bum on the street who had to run around in his bare feet all day. And of course, slim, petite, shoes (that is to say, narrow, horribly constricting, shoes) showed (or pretended to show, since your feet were actually squashed into the shoe) that you had slim, petite, feet, not broad feet like that bum on the street etc.

This last pair of shoes, with their modest heels, allows me to segue smoothly into that terrible habit of wearing high-heeled shoes. As we all know, it’s mostly women who wear them, but men do too, depending on the state of fashion. I am ready to reveal at this time that when I was young and foolish I went through a phase of wearing platform boots, one black pair and one brown, which looked like this.

Apart from feeling pretty cool as I walked around Uni, I found a most satisfying side-effect to be that I was taller. No doubt that’s one reason why women do this to their feet

which when you strip away the shoe looks like this.

Modest heels I could understand. I mean, I fell for them. But why subject yourself to the pain of excessively high heels, not only a pain that comes today but also a pain that dogs you for years to come? Because men still rule the world, and they like to see the accentuated swish in a woman’s gait caused by walking in high heels, or maybe they like the fact that her legs look longer, or that her feet look smaller, or her toes shorter, when wearing heels. Or maybe it makes women take smaller steps, to avoid falling over (my wife still remembers her father exhorting her to take small steps, because that was more ladylike and refined). Or maybe because it makes men feel strong to see women tottering around on heels, not able to walk very far before complaining of sore feet and needing help.

Fanciful? Perhaps. But consider this. For nearly one thousand years, from early in the Song dynasty, about 1000 AD, to the early 20^th Century, many Chinese women were subjected to the unbearably painful process of foot binding. To appreciate the full horror of this practice, let me give the readers a quick summary of what girls were subjected to. The process was started when girls were between the ages of 4 and 9, that is, before the arches of their feet had had a chance to develop fully. First, after softening the feet and cutting back the toenails, the toes of each foot were curled under and then pressed with great force into the sole of the foot until – the – toes – broke. But it didn’t finish there. While the broken toes were held tightly against the sole of the foot, the arch of the foot was also broken so that the foot could be drawn down straight with the leg. So you basically smashed the little girl’s feet. Then you started the binding. The idea was to pull the ball of the foot ever closer to the heel, causing the broken foot to fold at the arch, and pressing the toes underneath the sole.

As the readers can imagine, a girl’s broken feet required a great deal of care and attention if she was not to die from this process; it is estimated that 10% of girls died from gangrene and other infections due to foot binding. So their feet were regularly unbound, they were washed, the toes unfolded and checked for injury, and the nails carefully trimmed. The broken feet were also kneaded to soften them and the soles of the girl’s feet beaten to make the joints and broken bones more flexible. Then the poor girl’s broken toes were folded back under and the feet rebound. Every time the feet were rebound, the bindings were pulled even tighter. The ideal was to end up with a “foot” no more than 10 cm long.

The Chinese are nothing if not eminently practical. Recognizing that mothers might well be too sympathetic to their daughters’ pain, it was generally an older female member of the family or a professional foot binder who carried all this out. Oh, and the process was usually started during the winter time since girls’ feet were more likely to be numb from the cold, and therefore the pain would not be as extreme. How nice of them.

This was the result:

Of course, no-one except the persons caring for the feet ever saw this. What they saw was this, these oh-so dainty little shoes.

And why were Chinese women subjected to this horrible procedure for a thousand years? For beauty, of course. Men ruled China (they still do), and crazy as it might sound to the modern reader, men considered bound feet to enhance a woman’s beauty by making her movements more dainty and “ladylike”. As readers can imagine, it was difficult to walk on broken feet. Women with bound feet tended to walk predominantly on their heels. As a result, they walked with a cautious, unsteady gait, taking tiny, swaying steps. And, of course, that most important thing where women were concerned, well bound feet helped her parents contract a good marriage for her. It could also be that it was found to be an effective way of forcing women to be housebound and completely reliant on men. In this view, traditional societies forbid women from leaving the house; the Chinese simply broke their feet.

So what is the moral of all this? Look after your feet! Stop obsessing about narrow, dainty feet. Celebrate splayed toes. Go to the office in flip-flops and take off your shoes the moment you sit at your desk (which is what most Thais do). Put on sandals until the dead of winter; our feet can tolerate quite a lot of cold. Throw away all your high-heeled shoes. And if a man ever asks you to wear high heels, cut him mercilessly out of your life; he is clearly a swine.

_____________________

Amazonian Indian feet: http://birthdayshoes.com/media/blogs/bdayshoes/2013_Photos/.evocache/human_feet_look_like_if_you_never_wear_shoes.jpg/fit-640×540.jpg?mtime=1386261566 (in http://birthdayshoes.com/what-a-natural-human-foot-looks-like-if-you-never-wear-shoes)
Natural human feet: http://origin.ih.constantcontact.com/fs096/1102283092773/img/101.jpg?a=1102864935304 (in http://www.sukiebaxter.com/could-your-feet-be-the-source-of-that-pain-in-your-neck)
Baby feet: http://naturalrunningcenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Screen-shot-2012-02-26-at-5.30.11-PM.png (in http://naturalrunningcenter.com/2012/02/27/enhancing-natural-pronation-control-feet-designed-that/
Feet with toes close: http://www.guide2health.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/bare-feet.jpg (in http://www.guide2health.net/2012/08/life-long-immunity-to-disease/bare-feet/)
Feet with toes too close: http://i.imgur.com/aURQcnm.jpg (in http://www.inquisitr.com/931111/lebron-james-feet-picture-of-stars-messed-up-toes-goes-viral/)
Thai girl’s feet: http://www.zeefashionstore.com/ProductImage/18391/1.jpg (in http://www.zeefashionstore.com/womenshoes.php?brand=79&section=6)
White feet in flip-flops: http://blog.diagnosticfootspecialists.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/flip-flops.jpg (in http://blog.diagnosticfootspecialists.com/)
Bunions: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Hallux_Valgus-Aspect_pr%C3%A9_op_d%C3%A9charge.JPG (in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunion)
Hammer toes: http://images.medicinenet.com/images/slideshow/diabetes_foot_problems_s13_hammertoes.jpg (in http://www.medicinenet.com/image-collection/hammertoes_picture/picture.htm)
Working hands: https://scpeanutgallery.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/working-hands.jpg (in http://scpeanutgallery.com/2015/02/04/morning-prayer-4-feb-heb-124-7-11-15-mk-61-6-get-a-grip/)
Slim hands: http://hoocher.com/Agnolo_Bronzino/Portrait_of_Lucrezia_Panciatichi_ca_1540.jpg (in http://hoocher.com/Agnolo_Bronzino/Agnolo_Bronzino.htm)
Woman’s shoes 1770: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Woman’s_silk_brocade_shoes_1770s.jpg (in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1775%E2%80%9395_in_Western_fashion)
Platform boots: http://img3.etsystatic.com/000/0/5381238/il_fullxfull.291560419.jpg (in http://galleryhip.com/platform-shoes-for-men.html)
High heels: http://www.glamour.com/images/fashion/2013/08/heels-w724.jpg (in http://www.glamour.com/fashion/blogs/dressed/2013/08/check-out-this-3d-scan-of-what)
Women in high heel position: http://www.tellwut.com/uploads/media/image/12607e1398914701o270.jpg (in http://katherincruikshank.blogas.lt/tag/hammer-toes)
Crushed bound foot: http://www.buzzfeed.com/hayleycampbell/lotus-feet#.vj027qN6E (in http://www.buzzfeed.com/hayleycampbell/lotus-feet#.eegdQJg3y0)
Chinese lady with bound feet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_binding#/media/File:A_HIGH_CASTE_LADYS_DAINTY_LILY_FEET.jpg (in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_binding#Variation_in_practice)
Lotus shoes: http://www.top5ives.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Lotus-Shoes.jpg (in http://www.top5ives.com/top-5-most-weird-shoes-in-history/)

SNIFFING AT MY INHALER

Bangkok, 20 June 2015

The Thais are a handsome race, no doubt about it. They seem to be genetically predisposed to having a gracile body structure, which leads to a race of naturally slim and slender people. Of course, there are Thais who have had a hard life, especially in rural areas, and whose bodies and faces have been marked by it. And given the popularity of fast food and of snacking on processed foods, obesity is on the rise as it is everywhere in the world. But overall, the Thais are pleasing to the eye.

So it is really very unfortunate that many Thais have this strange habit of going around with an inhaler up their nose, which obviously detracts from their natural comeliness.

Normally you just see them holding the inhaler to the nose and sniffing away as if they were snorting cocaine or some other such substance, but in extreme cases they will jam the inhaler in their nostrils and walk about with it dangling from their noses.

(I have even heard of cases of Thais with two inhalers jammed up their noses! But perhaps this is an urban legend)

Quite why they do it is not clear to me. No doubt it has something to do with warding off noxious smells, which indeed can sometimes be a problem in Thailand where open drains are still the rule rather than the exception. But the street smells can be strong even in the absence of open drains: cooking smells, for instance, can be penetrating, which may explain this lady’s use of an inhaler

Or it could be a way of keeping alert when required, as this photo of an examination room suggests

(the boy with the inhaler is towards the back left and is busily writing while the poor fellow in the front looks like he could do with an inhaler)

But various sites darkly suggest that one can become hooked and simply sniff for the artificial pleasure of it all. Bent on making a scientific examination of the issue, I purchased an inhaler at my local 7-11 – the cheapest, I’m not that dedicated –

and carried out a series of sniff tests …

… Ah yes! That eucalyptus smell that I remember soooo well from the Vicks inhalers that our mothers used to hand us young children when we had a cold

and which, together with Vicks vapo rub for our chests and Vicks cough drops for our scratchy throats were used by several generations of anxious mothers for their coughing and sniffling brood.

Yes, yes, one or two sniffs and you could feel the stuffiness in your nose magically disappearing, and the late November fogs lifting – only for stuffiness and fog to reappear after a while – to be chased away again with another sniff or two – and so the cycle went on endlessly, until Spring arrived …

… But behind the astringent, aseptic quality of the eucalyptus there lies a softer smell of mint and peppermint … of the Polo mints of my youth!

“the mint with the hole”, as the ad tag line had it

a taste which has me instinctively grasping out at one of the mint sweets that hotels in this part of the world so thoughtfully place on the check-in counter for incoming guests.

Memories, memories … I suppose I could end up walking down Bangkok’s streets, dreamily sniffing on my inhaler, letting visions of my – really quite pleasant – life unfold before me. Is that what Thailand is, a nation of dreamers? Or are these inhalers just a modern version of the pomander, that ball made of perfumes held in a perforated case, which the rich of the European Middle Ages hung around their necks to ward off the frequent bad smells around them or in the pious hope that it would protect them against the plague?

I will let my gentle readers decide.

________________

Cool Thai couple: http://garbagelapsap.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/GARBAGELAPSAP_STREETSTYLE_BANGKOK_FASHION.jpg (in http://www.elarmarioaj.com/2013_04_01_archive.html)
Women with inhalers: https://jayinthailand.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/960f.jpeg (in https://jayinthailand.wordpress.com/)
Man with inhaler in nose: http://www.mymuaythai.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/inhaler.jpg?7503ae (in http://www.mymuaythai.com/archives/poy-sian-mark-ii/)
Man with inhaler in nose-2: http://pinoyajarn.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/2-Vicks-Inhaler.png (in http://pinoyajarn.com/blog/category/living-in-thailand/)
Woman vendor with sniffing stick: https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4048/4179283228_1a7755aca7_b.jpg (in https://www.flickr.com/photos/adrianbangkok/4179283228/)
Kid with inhaler in nose: https://theheartthrills.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/12926-photo2b1-721216.jpg (in http://nakhontuba.blogspot.com/2011_09_01_archive.html)
Inhaler: http://static07.st-sm.com/07SM/1813-thickbox_default/inhaler-nasal-siang-pure-2cc.jpg (in http://www.st-sm.com/07SM/en/pocket-inhaler/420-inhaler-nasal-siang-pure-2cc-8850109011412.html)
Vicks inhaler: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/26/4c/26/264c2634676f95bb2998ba2b0f4b208e.jpg (in https://www.pinterest.com/lhollifield123/the-doctor-said/)
Vicks ad: https://img1.etsystatic.com/047/2/9430690/il_570xN.668385061_prsm.jpg (in https://www.etsy.com/listing/207428148/1945-vicks-vaporub-ad-vicks-inhaler)
Polo sweets: http://oi55.tinypic.com/2cffhar.jpg (in http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2cffhar&s=7#.VYTky1Ipq-t)
Polo mint ad: http://images.esellerpro.com/2486/I/514/4/polo-mints-postcard.jpg (in http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NEW-POLO-MINTS-POSTCARD-RETRO-VINTAGE-OPIE-OFFICIAL-IMAGE-MINT-WITH-THE-HOLE-/281202056658)
Pomander: http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/thumbnail/342661/1/Portrait-Of-Jan-Gerritz.-Van-Egmond-Van-De-Dijenborgh,-Bust-Length-Wearing-A-Black-Fur-Trimmed-Coat,-Holding-A-Pomander,-Seen-Within-An-Arched-Decorated-Embrasure,-A-Landscape-Beyond.jpg (in http://eighteenthcenturylit.pbworks.com/w/page/70599154/Smelling%20Salts)

PAINTED CHEEKS

Bangkok, 5 April 2015

Picking up on the theme of my last post, the application of cosmetics to certain parts of the face (eyebrows in that case), I feel that I should also comment on one fashion statement which I have come across in this part of the world and which, contrary to the fashion of strong eyebrows that seems to be sweeping the world, I hardly see being adopted any time soon away from its place of birth. The part of the world in question is Myanmar, and the fashion statement in question is the daubing by women (but not only) of their cheeks with a beige-coloured paste.
It really is something that foreigners cannot fail to notice the moment they arrive in Myanmar, and indeed the internet is full of comments along the lines of “what on earth is that stuff on the women’s faces?” The last time my wife and I were in the country, I finally got around to asking what this stuff was exactly. Thanatka, I was told (or thanat-ka, or thanaka, or thanakha; transliteration of Burmese words into English is quite approximate, rather like Shakespeare spelling his own name in three or four different ways – but I digress). Our hotel had a little exhibition on thanatka in the lobby, which frankly didn’t explain anything at all. Time to scour the internet, and as is normally the case Wikipedia threw up some useful material.

First, the why: why are women (and children to some degree) putting thanatka on? The answer seems to be primarily for beauty, rather like Amerindians paint their faces as decoration.
Indeed, while the photo which starts this post has the lady in question just giving herself a brushstroke’s worth of thanatka on each cheek, others seem far more creative. Painted leaves seem popular (although I wonder if this is simply catering to the tourist trade?)
while simple whorls
or circles also appear frequently in the cannon.
It seems that thanatka is not only about beauty. It is also said to provide protection from sunburn. But then I would have thought that application to the whole face would be more appropriate, the way I slathered sunscreen on every piece of my exposed skin during our recent trip to Myanmar. Claims are also made that it removes acne, and there are “before and after” photos to that effect on the net – although, rather strangely, of white people only. It is also claimed to have anti-fungal properties, although luckily there are no “before and after” pictures of that.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, they say, and I have to assume that Myanmar men find this wash of beige on their women’s cheeks attractive. After all, Myanmar women have been pasting themselves in this way for at least 700 years. Personally, though, I find it difficult to see anything beautiful in the habit. Every time I see one of these ladies, my instinctive reaction is to think “Ooh, they need to wash their faces”. Of course, it’s not as if European women don’t paint (or powder) their faces. Rouging one’s cheeks is a fashion that goes back centuries, as attested by all those portrait paintings hanging in various museums of Europe of aristocratic ladies or royal mistresses (or both) with nicely rouged cheeks. For instance, this slightly racy painting of Nell Gwynn, mistress to Charles II of England, shows her with lovely red cheeks (and strong eyebrows, I am pleased to see, given my last post!)
(as I mentioned in an earlier post, there was a time when European aristocratic men also liberally rouged their cheeks)

The fashion statement has continued. For instance, I still remember from my youth those little powder cases which every woman had in their handbag, and which they would whip out from time to time to rouge their cheeks or generally give their face a powdering over.
And as far as I can make out, the fashion still goes strong. Women with cosmetically highlighted cheeks are a dime a dozen on any street in the world (except Myanmar …), although the powder case has given way to other delivery mechanisms.

But there is a difference, no? These women were and are highlighting the natural colouring of their cheeks. Myanmar women, on the other hand, are just daubing themselves. I wonder if the original idea was not simply to make the skin look paler, that universal obsession of women in all Asian countries.

Now for the what: what exactly is thanatka? It is an exceedingly natural cosmetic, made from grinding the bark, wood, or roots of a tree together with a small amount of water.
As modernism marches through the country, a Myanmar lady can go to her supermarket and buy a jar of ready-made product. But she can also still go out and buy the wood (with this particular seller advertising her wares)
as well as the stone grinder, and make it at home. No doubt the artisanal aspects of the trade will die out soon.

I finish by saluting the humble trees at the start of the chain: the thanatka tree (a species of Murraya)
with these particular individuals standing in front of some venerable temple, as well as the theethee tree (Limonia acidissima)
I just hope that in the rush to slather their faces with paste, the Myanmarians are not chopping these trees down with wild abandon, thus denuding the landscape in the process. Beauty, however defined, is not worth that.

________________________

Woman with painted cheeks: http://www.ellensenisi.com/wp-content/uploads/AN-SEA_2655.jpg (in http://www.ellensenisi.com/2014/blog/burma-post-2/)
Woman Amerindian: http://s13.postimg.org/xu96358hju/24_Matses_Woman_Painted.jpg (in http://www.forumbiodiversity.com/showthread.php/36659-White-Dominican-VS-White-Puerto-Rican/page64)
Thanatka painted leaves: https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2289/1557809911_2eafe27e17.jpg (in https://www.flickr.com/photos/peace-on-earth_org/1557809911/)
Thanatka whorls: http://www.birmanieresponsable.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/thanaka-beauté-birmanie.jpg (in http://www.birmanieresponsable.com/thanaka-beaute-birmane/)
Thanatka circles: http://davidlazarphoto.com/amp/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/19-David-Lazar-Thanaka-Circles.jpg (in http://davidlazarphoto.com/galleries/visions-of-myanmar/19-david-lazar-thanaka-circles/)
Nell Gwynn: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bw3i2CA0H8s/TqCFCy51a5I/AAAAAAAABCI/HkYzk9PmrtQ/s1600/NPG_536_883_EleanorNellGwy.jpg (in http://historicalideals.tumblr.com)
Woman with powder case: http://www.cosmeticsandskin.com/companies.images/1951-yardley.jpg (in http://www.cosmeticsandskin.com/companies/yardley.php)
Thanatka preparation: http://www.southeastasiabackpacker.com/wpsite/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Thanaka-bark.jpg?4928e4 (in http://www.southeastasiabackpacker.com/20-tips-for-travellers-to-myanmar-burma)
Thanatka wood: http://www.ecoburma.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Th1.jpg (in http://www.ecoburma.com/2013/08/photo-essay-thanaka-the-make-up-of-burma/)
Murraya tree: http://image.slidesharecdn.com/myanmar23bagan-140117021821-phpapp02/95/myanmar23-bagan-47-638.jpg?cb=1389946826 (in http://www.slideshare.net/mobile/michaelasanda/myanmar23-bagan)
Theethee tree: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limonia_acidissima#/media/File:Wood-apple_tree.JPG (in http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limonia_acidissima)

THICK EYEBROWS

Bangkok, 29 March 2015

In an earlier post, in which I wrote about a short trip my wife and I made to Dubai, I mentioned that we had visited the Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding. What I didn’t mention – because not pertinent to the subject of that post – was that our guide had exceedingly strong, straight eyebrows. I tried not to stare at her too insistently because that is rude, and I would imagine that staring at women in Muslim countries can also be a dangerous habit. But I did find it quite striking. My surreptitious peeking allowed me to conclude that this was not a gift of nature but a gift of the cosmetics industry. Something like mascara had been applied to our guide’s eyebrows. They looked something like this, although our guide wasn’t quite as glamorous as this lady.

In any event, as our guide talked about this, that, and the other, I wondered to myself if this was some sort of new fashion statement in the Middle East. After the tour was over, I was pleased to hear that my wife had also noticed it; I wasn’t imagining things, then.

Our trip completed, we went back to Beijing and I forgot about the eyebrows thing. But I was suddenly confronted again with this fashion statement the moment we arrived in Bangkok. It seemed that every young woman in the city had these exaggeratedly strong eyebrows. I’ve not found a photo on the internet and I haven’t dared to openly take a photo myself of one of these young women, but I guess that advertising on the street is a good indicator of trends. Here’s a photo that I took of billboards in one of the smarter shopping areas of a Bangkok.

What my internet searches did show up is that the Thai consider such eyebrows to be Korean eyebrows, and this photo of a Korean lady actually nicely captures what I am confronted with every day on the streets of Bangkok.

Whose eyebrows the Koreans believe these are is unknown to me – certainly not Japanese; the web-site from which I borrowed the photo above makes a distinction between Korean and Japanese eyebrows, the latter being more arched if I understood correctly. My daughter, who knows more about these things than I do, puts a famous model as the ultimate source.That sounds reasonable. In the old days, Queens and their aristocratic hangers-on were arbiters of fashion; in this more democratic age of ours, models are.

(the comment below suggests that the model Cara Delevingne is the Ultimate Source – no doubt those below the age of 30 know who this Ms. Delevingne is, and no doubt she is as rich as Queens once used to be)

Talking of Queens, my trawls through the internet also snagged a couple of sites which discussed the history of female eyebrow fashion, one starting from as far back as Nefertiti, who was Queen of Egypt three thousand years ago, and who – if this bust of her in a Berlin museum is to be believed – seems to have favoured more pronounced eyebrows.

My own recollection of female eyebrow fashion starts with a time when quite a number of women favoured instead pencil-thin eyebrows, the time in question being, I suppose, the fifties and sixties (although as this photo shows, these eyebrows were already popular several decades earlier).

My wife, I have to say, was among this group when I first met her. Luckily, I managed to dissuade her from continuing the habit, and she has spent the rest of our marriage sporting a fine set of no-nonsense eyebrows.

My wife’s abandonment of pencil-thinness coincided with a general return to thicker eyebrows, but sculpting of the eyebrow was still common. I still remember how much chatter was generated in the late seventies-early eighties by the young Brooke Shields’s thick, apparently unsculpted, eyebrows.

They caused quite some emulation for a while (any reader who is younger than 30 and therefore who probably has never heard of Brooke Shields can go the Wikipedia site on her to read more). I feel that what I am seeing now on the streets of Bangkok is really that style, helped along with a pencil or, if I am to believe the internet, some sort of felt pen. Well, styles go in and out of fashion like Swiss trains go in and out of Alpine tunnels. But I hope never to live to see pencil-thinness again.

_________________

Middle-eastern lady with drawn in eyebrows: http://machicon-akihabara.info/2017mimage-middle-eastern-eye-makeup.awp
Billboards in Bangkok: my photos
Korean eyebrows: http://www.tunwalai.com/story/19251/got7-%E2%84%ACad-mafia-%E0%B9%81%E0%B8%AB%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%8E%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%B1%E0%B8%81-%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%94%E0%B8%AA%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%9A%E0%B9%83%E0%B8%88%E0%B8%A5%E0%B8%B9%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%8A%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%A2%E0%B8%A1%E0%B8%B2%E0%B9%80%E0%B8%9F%E0%B8%B5%E0%B8%A2-mb
Queen Nefertiti: http://keywordsuggest.org/gallery/18971.html
Pencil thin eyebrows: http://anastil.blogspot.it/
Brooke Shields: https://fashionista.com/2010/10/the-power-brow-is-here-to-stay-we-round-up-the-best-and-boldest