conditions of society fashions of all sorts are more permanent than with
us; and in all communities such fashions as those here treated of are,
for obvious reasons, far less likely to be subject to the fluctuations
of caprice than those affecting the dress only, which, even in
Shakespeare’s time, changed so often that “the fashion wears out more
apparel than the man.” Alterations once made in the form of the body
cannot be discarded or modified in the lifetime of the individual, and
therefore, as fashion is intrinsically imitative, such alterations have
the strongest possible tendency to be reproduced generation after
generation.
The origins of these fashions are mostly lost in obscurity, all attempts
to solve them being little more than guesses. Some of them have become
associated with religious or superstitious observances, and so have been
spread and perpetuated; some have been vaguely thought to be hygienic in
motive; most have some relation to conventional standards of improved
personal appearance; but whatever their origin, the desire to conform to
common usage, and not to appear singular, is the prevailing motive which
leads to their continuance. They are perpetuated by imitation, which, as
Herbert Spencer says, may result from two widely divergent motives. It
may be prompted by reverence for one imitated, or it may be prompted by
the desire to assert equality with him.
Before treating of the subject in its application to the human body, it
will be well to glance, in passing, at the fact that a precisely similar
propensity has impelled man, at various ages of the world’s history, and
under various conditions of society, to interfere in the same manner
with the natural conformation of many of the animals which have come
under his influence through domestication.
The Hottentots, objecting to symmetry of growth in the horns of their
cattle, twist them while young and pliant, so that ultimately they are
made to assume various fantastic and unnatural directions. Sheep with
multiple horns are produced in some parts of Africa, by splitting with a
knife the budding horn of the young animal. Hotspur’s exclamation: “What
horse? a roan, a _crop-ear_, is it not?” points to a custom not yet
extinct in England. Docking horses’ tails--that is, cutting off about
half the length, not of the hair only, but of the actual flesh and bone,
and _nicking_, or dividing the tendons of the under side, so that the
paralysed stump is always carried in an unnatural or “cocked”
position--was common enough a generation ago, as seen in all equestrian
pictures of the period, and is still occasionally practised. In spite of
all warnings of common sense and experience, we continue, solely because
it is the fashion, to torture and deform our horses’ mouths and necks
with tight bearing-reins, which, though only temporarily keeping the
head in a constrained and unnatural, and therefore inelegant position,
produce many permanent injuries.[59] Dogs may still be seen with the
natural form of their ears and tails “improved” by mutilation.
Besides these and many other modifications of the form given by nature,
practised upon the individual animal, selective breeding through many
generations has succeeded in producing inherited structural changes,
sometimes of very remarkable character. These have generally originated
in some accidental, perhaps slight, peculiarity, which has been taken
advantage of, perpetuated, and increased. In this way the race of
bull-dogs, with their shortened upper jaws, bandy legs, and twisted
tails, have been developed. The now fashionable “dachshund” is another
instance. In this category may also be placed polled and humped cattle,
tailless cats of the Isle of Man and Singapore, lop-eared rabbits;
tailless, crested, or other strange forms of fowls, pouter, tumbler,
feather-legged, and other varieties of pigeons, and the ugly
double-tailed and prominent-eyed goldfish which delight the Chinese.
Thus the power which, when judiciously exercised, has led to the vast
improvement seen in many domestic species over their wild progenitors,
has also ministered to strange vagaries and caprices, in the production
and perpetuation of monstrous forms.
To return to man, the most convenient classification of our subject will
be one which is based upon the part of the body affected, and I will
begin with the treatment of the hair and other appendages of the skin as
the more superficial and comparatively trivial in its effects.
Here we are at once introduced to the domain of fashion in her most
potent sway. The facility with which hair lends itself to various
methods of treatment has been a temptation too great to resist in all
known conditions of civilisation. Innumerable variations of custom exist
in different parts of the world, and marked changes in at least all
more or less civilised communities have characterised successive epochs
of history. Not only the length and method of arrangement, but even the
colour of the hair, is changed in obedience to caprices of fashion. In
many of the islands of the Western Pacific the naturally jet black hair
of the natives is converted into a tawny brown by the application of
lime, obtained by burning the coral found so abundantly on their shores;
and not many years since similar means were employed for producing the
same result among the ladies of Western Europe--a fact which
considerably diminishes the value of an idea entertained by many
ethnologists, that community of custom is evidence of community of
origin or of race.
Notwithstanding the painful and laborious nature of the process, when
conducted with no better implements than flint knives, or pieces of
splintered bone or shell, the custom of keeping the head closely shaved
prevails extensively among savage nations. This, doubtless, tends to
cleanliness, and perhaps comfort, in hot countries; but the fact that it
is in many tribes practised only by the women and children shows that
these considerations are not those primarily engaged in its
perpetuation. In some cases, as among the Fijians, while the heads of
the women are commonly cropped or closely shaved, the men cultivate, at
great expense of time and attention, a luxuriant and elaborately
arranged mass of hair, exactly reversing the conditions met with in the
most highly civilised nations.
In some regions of Africa it is considered necessary to female beauty
carefully to eradicate the eyebrows, special pincers for the purpose
forming part of the appliances of the toilette; while the various
methods of shaving and cutting the beard among men of all nations are
too well known to require more than a passing notice. The treatment of
finger nails, both as to colour and form, has also been subject to
fashion; but the practical inconveniences attending the inordinate
length to which these are permitted to grow in some parts of the east of
Asia appear to have restricted the custom to a few localities. (See Fig.
13, p. 319.)
It may be objected to the introduction of this illustration here, that
such nails should not be considered deformities, but rather as natural
growth, and that to clip and mutilate them as we do is the departure
from nature’s intention. But this is not so. It is only by constant
artificial care and protection that such an extraordinary and
inconvenient length can be obtained. When the hands are subjected to the
normal amount of use, the nails break or wear away at their free ends in
a ratio equal to their growth, as with the claws or hoofs of animals in
a wild state.
[Illustration: FIG. 13.--Hand of Chinese ascetic. From Tylor’s
_Anthropology_.]
The exceedingly widespread custom of tattooing[60] the skin may also be
alluded to here, as the result of the same propensity as that which
produces the more serious deformations presently to be spoken of. The
rudest form of the art was practised by the now extinct Tasmanians and
some tribes of Australians, whose naked bodies showed linear or oval
raised scars, arranged in a definite manner on the shoulders and breast.
These were produced by gashes inflicted with sharp stones, into which
wood-ashes were rubbed, so as to allow of healing only under
unfavourable conditions, leaving permanent large and elevated
cicatrices, conspicuous from being of a lighter colour than the rest of
the skin. From this it is a considerable step in decorative art to the
elaborate and often beautiful patterns, wreaths, scrolls, spirals,
zigzags’ etc., sometimes confined to the face, and sometimes covering
the whole body from head to foot, seen in the natives of many of the
Polynesian Islands. These are permanently impressed upon the skin by
the introduction of colouring matter, generally some kind of lamp-black,
by means of an instrument made of a piece of shell cut into a number of
fine points, or a bundle of sharp needles. When the custom of the land
demands that the surface to be treated thus is a large one, the process
is not only very tedious, but entails an amount of suffering painful to
think of. When completed it answers part at least of the purpose of
dress with us, as an untattooed skin exhibited to society is looked upon
much as an unclothed one would be in more civilised communities. The
natural colour of the skin seems to have influenced the method and
extent of tattooing, as in the black races it is limited to such scars
as those spoken of above; which, variously arranged in lines or dots,
become tribal distinctions among African negroes. In Europe tattooing on
the same principle as that of the Polynesians is confined almost
exclusively to sailors, among whom it is kept up obviously by imitation
or fashion.
[Illustration: FIG. 14.--Australian native, with bone nose-ornament.]
The nose, the lips, and the ears have in almost all races offered great
temptations to be used as foundations for the display of ornament, some
process of boring, cutting, or alteration of form being necessary to
render them fit for the purpose. When Captain Cook, exactly one hundred
years ago, was describing the naked savages of the east coast of
Australia,[61] he says: “Their principal ornament is the bone which they
thrust through the cartilage which divides the nostrils from each other.
What perversion of taste could make them think this a decoration, or
what could prompt them, before they had worn it or seen it worn, to
suffer the pain and inconvenience that must of necessity attend it, is
perhaps beyond the power of human sagacity to determine. As this bone is
as thick as a man’s finger, and between five and six inches long, it
reaches quite across the face, and so effectually stops up both the
nostrils that they are forced to keep their mouths wide open for breath,
and snuffle so when they attempt to speak that they are scarcely
intelligible even to each other. Our seamen, with some humour, called it
their spritsail-yard; and indeed it had so ludicrous an appearance, that
till we were used to it we found it difficult to refrain from laughter.”
[Illustration:
FIG. 15.--Tortoise-shell lip ornament of the Moskito Indians. From
Dampier.
]
Eight years later, on his visit to the north-west coast of America,
Captain Cook found precisely the same custom prevailing among the
natives of Prince William’s Sound, whose mode of life was in most other
respects quite dissimilar to that of the Australians, and who belong
ethnologically to a totally different branch of the human race.
In 1681 Dampier[62] thus describes a custom which he found existing
among the natives of the Corn Islands, off the Moskito Coast, in Central
America: “They have a fashion to cut holes in the Lips of the Boys when
they are young, close to their Chin, which they keep open with little
Pegs till they are 14 or 15 years old; then they wear Beards in them,
made of Turtle or Tortoise-shell, in the form you see in the Margin.
(See Fig. 15, p. 321.) The little notch at the upper end they put in
through the Lip, where it remains between the Teeth and the Lip; the
under part hangs down over their Chin. This they commonly wear all day,
and when they sleep they take it out. They have likewise holes bored in
their Ears, both Men and Women, when young, and by continual stretching
them with great Pegs, they grow to be as big as a mill’d five Shilling
Piece. Herein they wear pieces of Wood, cut very round and smooth, so
that their Ear seems to be all wood, with a little Skin about it.”
[Illustration: FIG. 16.--Botocudo Indian. From Bigg-Wither’s _Pioneering
in South Brazil_ (1878).]
It is very remarkable that an almost exactly similar custom still
prevails among a tribe of Indians inhabiting the southern part of
Brazil--the Botocudos, so called from a Portuguese word (_botoque_),
meaning a plug or stopper. Among these people the lip-ornament consists
of a conical piece of hard and polished wood, frequently weighs a
quarter of a pound, and drags down, elongates, and everts the lower
lip, so as to expose the gums and teeth, in a manner which to our taste
is hideous, but with them is considered an essential adjunct to an
attractive and correct appearance.
In the extreme north of America, the Eskimo “pierce the lower lip under
one or both corners of the mouth, and insert in each aperture a
double-headed sleeve-button or dumb-bell-shaped labret, of bone, ivory,
shell, stone, glass, or wood. The incision when first made is about the
size of a quill, but as the aspirant for improved beauty grows older,
the size of the orifice is enlarged until it reaches the width of half
to three-quarters of an inch.”[63] These operations appear to be
practised only on the men, and are supposed to possess some significance
other than that of mere ornament. The first piercing of the lip, which
is accompanied by some solemnity as a religious feast, is performed on
approaching manhood.
But the people who, among the various American tribes, have carried
these strange customs to the greatest excess are the Thlinkeets, who
inhabit the south-eastern shores of Alaska.[64] “Here it is the women
who, in piercing the nose and ears, and filling the apertures with
bones, shells, sticks, pieces of copper, nails, or attaching thereto
heavy pendants, which drag down the organs and pull the features out of
place, appear to have taxed their inventive powers to the utmost, and,
with a success unsurpassed by any nation in the world, to produce a
model of hideous beauty. This success is achieved in their wooden
lip-ornament, the crowning glory of the Thlinkeet matron, described by a
multitude of eyewitnesses. In all female free-born Thlinkeet children a
slit is made in the under lip, parallel with the mouth, and about half
an inch below it. A copper wire, or a piece of shell or wood, is
introduced into this, by which the wound is kept open and the aperture
extended. By gradually introducing larger objects the required
dimensions of the opening are produced. On attaining the age of
maturity, a block of wood is inserted, usually oval or elliptical in
shape, concave on the sides, and grooved like the wheel of a pulley on
the edge in order to keep it in place. The dimensions of the block are
from two to six inches in length, from one to four inches in width, and
about half an inch thick round the edge, and it is highly polished. Old
age has little terror in the eyes of a Thlinkeet belle; for larger
lip-blocks are introduced as years advance, and each enlargement adds to
the lady’s social status, if not to her facial charms. When the block is
withdrawn, the lip drops down upon the chin like a piece of leather,
displaying the teeth, and presenting altogether a ghastly spectacle. The
privilege of wearing this ornament is not extended to female slaves.”
In this method of adornment the North Americans are, however, rivalled,
if not eclipsed, by the negroes of the heart of Africa.
“The Bongo women (says Schweinfurth[65]) delight in distinguishing
themselves by an adornment which to our notion is nothing less than a
hideous mutilation. As soon as a woman is married, the operation
commences of extending her lower lip. This, at first only slightly
bored, is widened by inserting into the orifice plugs of wood, gradually
increasing in size, until at length the entire feature is enlarged to
five or six times its original proportions. The plugs are cylindrical in
form, not less than an inch thick, and are exactly like the pegs of bone
or wood worn by the women of Musgoo. By this means the lower lip is
extended horizontally till it projects far beyond the upper, which is
also bored and fitted with a copper plate or nail, and now and then by a
little ring, and sometimes by a bit of straw, about as thick as a
lucifer-match. Nor do they leave the nose intact; similar bits of straw
are inserted into the edges of the nostrils, and I have seen as many as
three of these on each side. A very favourite ornament for the cartilage
between the nostrils is a copper ring, just like those that are placed
in the noses of buffaloes and other beasts of burden for the purpose of
rendering them more tractable. The greatest coquettes among the ladies
wear a clasp, or clamp, at the corners of the mouth, as though they
wanted to contract the orifice, and literally to put a curb upon its
capabilities. These subsidiary ornaments are not, however, found at all
universally among the women, and it is rare to see them all at once upon
a single individual; the plug in the lower lip of the married women is
alone a _sine quâ non_, serving, as it does, for an artificial
distinction of race.”
[Illustration: FIG. 17.--Loobah woman. From Schweinfurth’s _Heart of
Africa_.]
The slightest fold or projection of the skin furnishes an excuse for
boring a hole, and inserting a plug or a ring. There are women in the
country whose bodies are pierced in some way or other in little short of
a hundred different places, and the men are often not far behind in the
profusion with which this kind of adornment is carried out.
“The whole group of the Mittoo exhibits peculiarities by which it may be
distinguished from its neighbours. The external adornment of the body,
the costume, the ornaments, the mutilations which individuals
undergo--in short, the general fashions--have all a distinctive
character of their own. The most remarkable is the revolting, because
unnatural, manner in which the women pierce and distort their lips; they
seem to vie with each other in their mutilation; and their vanity in
this respect, I believe, surpasses anything that may be found throughout
Africa. Not satisfied with piercing the lower lip, they drag out the
upper lip as well for the sake of symmetry[66].... Circular plates,
nearly as large as a crown piece, made variously of quartz, of ivory, or
of horn, are inserted into the lips that have been stretched by the
growth of years, and then often bent in a position that is all but
horizontal; and when the women want to drink they have to elevate the
upper lip with their fingers, and to pour the draught into their mouth.
“Similar in shape is the decoration which is worn by the women of
Maganya; but though it is round, it is a ring and not a flat plate; it
is called ‘pelele,’ and has no object but to expand the upper lip. Some
of the Mittoo women, especially the Loobah, not content with the circle
or the ring, force a cone of polished quartz through the lips as though
they had borrowed the idea from the rhinoceros. This fashion of using
quartz belemnites of more than two inches long is in some instances
adopted by the men.”
The traveller who has been the eye-witness of such customs may well add,
“Even amongst these uncultured children of nature, human pride crops up
amongst the fetters of fashion, which, indeed, are fetters in the worst
sense of the word; for fashion in the distant wilds of Africa tortures
and harasses poor humanity as much as in the great prison of
civilisation.”
It seems, indeed, a strange phenomenon that in such different races, so
far removed in locality, customs so singular--to our ideas so revolting
and unnatural, and certainly so painful and inconvenient--should either
have been perpetuated for an enormous lapse of time, if the supposition
of a common origin be entertained, or else have developed themselves
independently.
These are, however, only extreme or exaggerated cases of the almost
universal custom of making a permanent aperture through the lobe of the
ear for the purpose of inserting some adventitious object by way of
adornment, or even for utility, as in the man of the island of Mangea,
figured in Cook’s voyages, who carries a large knife through a hole in
the lobe of the right ear. The New Zealanders of both sexes, when first
visited by Europeans, all had holes bored through their ears, and
enlarged by stretching, and which in their domestic economy answered the
purpose of our pockets. Feathers, bones, sticks, talc chisels and
bodkins, the nails and teeth of their deceased relations, the teeth of
dogs, and in fact anything which they could get that they thought
curious or valuable, were thrust through or suspended to them. The iron
nails given them by the English sailors were at once conveyed to these
miscellaneous receptacles.[67] The Zulus lately exhibited in London
carried their cigars in the same manner. Mr. Wilfred Powell informs me
that he met with a man on one of the islands near New Guinea, the holes
in whose ears had been extended to such an extent that the lobes had
been converted into great pendent rings of skin, through which he could
easily pass his arms!
Among ourselves the custom of wearing earrings still survives, even in
the highest grades of society, although it has been almost entirely
abandoned by one-half of the community, and in the other the perforation
is reduced to the smallest size compatible with the purpose of carrying
the ornament suspended from it. Nose-rings are not now the fashion in
Europe, but the extent to which they are admired in the East may be
judged of by the frequency with which they are worn by the ayahs or
female servants who so often accompany English families returning from
India.
The teeth, although allowed by the greater part of the world to retain
their natural beauty and usefulness of form, still offer a field for
artificial alterations according to fashion, which has been made use of
principally in two distinct regions of the world and by two distinct
races. It is, of course, only the front teeth, and mainly the upper
incisors, that are available for this purpose. Among various tribes of
negroes of Equatorial Africa different fashions of modifying the natural
form of these teeth prevail, specimens of which may be found in any
large collection of crania of these people. One of the simplest consists
of chipping and filing away a large triangular piece from the lower and
inner edge of each of the central incisors, so that a gap is produced in
the middle of the row in front (Fig. 18, 1). Another fashion is to shape
all the incisors into sharp points by chipping off the corners, giving a
very formidable crocodilian appearance to the jaws (2); and another is
to file out either a single or a double notch in the cutting edge of
each tooth, producing a serrated border to the whole series (3).
[Illustration: FIG. 18.--Upper front teeth altered according to fashion.
1, 2, 3, African; 4, 5, 6, Malay.]