For the scholar of table manners, Japan has long been a source of fascination. A Portuguese visitor to Japan in the sixteenth century claimed that the Ainu people used little wooden moustache-lifters at mealtimes so as not to sully their facial hair. In fact, he had misidentified sticks designed to carry the Ainu’s prayers heavenwards. Later accounts found other things to marvel at. In nineteenth-century Japan dinner was a male affair; if women were invited, they were expected to keep to themselves, confined to one corner of the room. Spatially at least, this was not so far from medieval European practices, where noblemen would feast while women watched them from a gallery, but to a nineteenth-century observer it seemed archaic.
Visiting Japan myself, I was surprised to find that the family with whom I stayed in Hiroshima slurped enthusiastically while eating and regarded my lack of slurping as a sign of not enjoying the food they served me (which was superb). I noted, too, that the size and shape of the vessels from which I ate varied far more than in Europe. Japanese tourists in Europe have long been bemused by how little interest Europeans show in such matters. The French philosopher and literary theorist Roland Barthes applauded Japanese cuisine because none of its dishes had a centre; one was free, he sensed, to use one’s chopsticks to pluck and peck as one pleased, the approach to eating thus being fragmented rather than hierarchical.
Using chopsticks, one makes selections rather than incisions. There are seven kinds of offence possible with chopsticks in Japan. Komi-bashi involves stuffing several things into your mouth at one time. Neburi-bashi is the act of licking chopsticks, while mogi-kui consists of using the mouth to remove rice that is stuck to them. Sora-bashi is using chopsticks to put aside food you had earlier intended to eat. Utsuri-bashi is a violation of the principle that between every two bites of meat, fish or vegetables you must consume some rice. Saguri-bashi is using your chopsticks to probe your dish to see if there is any more of what you want. Hashi-namari is a hesitation over what to select with your chopsticks. The etiquette is different in China, Korea and Vietnam. But even quite competent English users of chopsticks manifest some of the bewilderment of the nineteenth-century observer who spoke of them as ‘curious implements’ and ‘little rods’.7
Part of the attraction of chopsticks, wherever they are used, is that they are more like an extension of one’s fingers than a set of miniature weapons. This removes one of the hazards of the table. (Or usually does; in Takeshi Kitano’s film Brother a character is killed when chopsticks are speared up his nose.) The implements we use at table can be turned to aggressive ends; table manners ensure that violence is kept at bay.8 In the days when it was normal to keep a knife about one’s person, no one was terribly fussy about how knives were passed at table, but once knives had become less common as personal accessories, the knife at table seemed more threatening and it became important to pass it carefully, with the point not facing the recipient.
As well as having an air of not-quite-allayed violence, eating has some sexual connotations, and there is plenty of research linking eating disorders to sexual trauma or abuse. It seems likely that in the early stages of human evolution the need for food and the urge to procreate were the two main drives that brought us into contact. Eating is our first strong experience of sensual pleasure. Accordingly, we are taught to do it in moderation. As with sex, qualms about food stem from a fear of infection or pollution. The materials from which our cutlery and dishes and drinking vessels are made have been selected because they can be kept clean and will look clean, as well as because they will impart as little unwanted flavour as possible to what we consume. An irony, though: to create food that looks clean, producers use pesticides, preservatives and colouring agents, which compromise its integrity. In the eighteenth century food was adulterated so as to look more desirable: alum and chalk were added to bread to whiten it, and tea was darkened using lead. There persists an English preference for ‘clean’ food that looks the ‘right’ colour, and it is still achieved using dodgy additives.
When we are consuming food, clean or not, we are expected to regulate our mouths. But in truth the regulation of the mouth is a fundamental of good manners: both physically and metaphorically, for we are told not to gawp, pout or yawn unguardedly, and also not to swear, spread scandal, talk too volubly or dwell on certain subjects (politics, religion). ‘Are you a Jewish?’ asks a workman carrying out a job in my home. I reply that I am not ‘a Jewish’, and he follows up with ‘Are you a gay?’ By way of explanation he adds, ‘Because when you talk you make, a lot, faces with your mouth.’
One of the fundamental facts of human behaviour is our bodies’ natural expressiveness. There is a constant tension between this expressiveness and the need to regulate it, between doing what comes naturally and striving to avoid giving offence. The body is sacred but also shameful, truthful but also treacherous.
When we experience an emotion, it has what are known as somatic accompaniments. Some of these are physiological and objective: secretions in our glands, a surge of activity in the brain. Others are ‘felt’ and subjective: we are aware of our heart racing or of the sensation often referred to as ‘having butterflies’. The emotion is expressed in behaviours: some of these are involuntary but can be controlled to a degree (crying, groaning, smiling), and there are others over which we have no control whatsoever – sweating, for instance. In general, we are suspicious of physical overproductiveness: exhibitionism, extravagant gestures, logorrhoea and other sudden broadcasts of so-called nervous energy. We associate other people’s most expressive moments with the risk of physical and psychological injury. Some actions that appear really unusual may be the result of neurological disorders, but it requires less time and empathy to dismiss them as rudeness.
Table manners can seem not only a discouragement of expressiveness, but also an obstruction of enjoyment. Marek, a plasterer with whom I share a table in a diner one blustery April afternoon, explains that he doesn’t stand on ceremony when eating because ‘I don’t worry what other people think. I just want to eat.’ He pretty much inhales his lunch. ‘If I am less time eating, I am more time working’ – a sentiment many readers will find admirable and un-English. Yet delaying self-gratification can increase pleasure rather than prevent it. Instant satisfaction is disappointing. People complain about waiting, but, when we wait for something we really want, the delay can be delicious. What frustrates us is having to wait to complete some piffling intermediate transaction – checking in at the airport, perhaps – which feels as though it could be dealt with quickly yet ends up forcing upon us the sensation that time, rather than being an element through which we pass, is something to be endured.
Part of the point of table manners is to make us wait. They have an equalizing effect, defusing the risk of unseemly competition. We judge people on their table manners because we understand these manners as an index of their selfishness, potential for violence, tolerance of ugliness, and wider personal hygiene. In an adult, bad table manners suggest childishness: a lack of education, a chaotic or overindulgent upbringing, even the likelihood of a guzzling or ham-fisted approach to sex. Table manners are a means of managing disgust; they keep us from thinking about what the philosopher Colin McGinn calls ‘the unseemly reality of digestion’. Someone who gapes while eating reminds us that there is a ‘mass of organic pulp on the brink of descent into the bilious hell of the stomach’. The art of dining ‘keeps the underlying process as hidden as possible, so that it can be publicly performed’.9
English table manners, though once disparaged as slovenly (by the linguist John Florio, for instance, in the reign of Elizabeth I), have the reputation of being meticulous. The care we are believed to take over how we put food into our bodies is matched by a concern about how the resulting waste products are expelled. The English have tended to swing between abhorrence of bodily functions and a delight in them. Both are reflected in a large and inventive lavatorial vocabulary, in which something is held back yet made poetic: ‘passing water’ is
also a ‘minor function’ or ‘making room for my tea’, and a ‘bowel movement’ can be ‘night soil’ or a matter of attending to ‘the demands of nature’. It seems an eloquent detail that at the court of Henry VIII the person who carried the king’s portable loo and wiped his bottom was not a grubby underling but a high-ranking courtier: here there are notes of the proprietorial, the fastidious and the absurd, as a monarch not wanting to dirty his hands prizes the intimacy of his relationship with the man who saves him from doing so.
As for the English diet, I’m struck by its realities while sitting next to a group of smartly dressed cricket fans of both sexes at Lord’s, the spiritual home of the game. They chew with their mouths open, belying the good reputation mentioned above. Consequently I get to see their elevenses, lunch and tea at close quarters. Munch, munch, squelch, gulp. The English think of food as fuel. Copiousness is important. So is value for money. The popularity of the ‘all you can eat’ offering is a symptom of this, and it seems to throw down a challenge, inviting feats of gastronomic bravado: we’re to eat not as much as we want, but as much as possible. Related to this is an obsession with choice: a menu with a lot of different things on it is good, whereas one that promises a small number of dishes is seen as unreasonably restrictive, and the perceived appeal of a shop selling food is commonly related to the number of lines it stocks. We love a ‘buy one, get one free’ offer, even if we throw away the item that’s free – or both. So it is no surprise that at the end of the day the smartly dressed group leaves behind three half-consumed Cornish pasties, some untouched sausage rolls and a pot of unidentifiable sweet goo. Nor is it surprising that their conversation as they go is about where nearby they can pick up ‘a cheap bite’.
There are many champions and purveyors of superb English produce and cooking, much of it far from cheap. They have to work hard, because the default setting is so stodgily unambitious. Traditionally, foreigners visiting England have remarked on the natives’ consumption of meat, and it has been the quantity consumed, not the quality, that has attracted comment. Meat and especially beef, often accompanied by tangy condiments, is associated in English minds with honesty, freedom, bullish patriotism and a resistance to foreign artifice. In Henry Fielding’s novel Tom Jones (1749), the hero’s special qualities are evidenced by a meal at which ‘Three pounds at least of that flesh which formerly had contributed to the composition of an ox, was now honoured with becoming part of the individual Mr Jones.’ The comic evasiveness with which the process is presented suggests the need to draw a veil over Tom’s very English and very gluttonous performance.
8
The Clothes Show
‘When in doubt, opt for navy’
Table manners seem to invite assessment. As we observe other people at table, they are like caged specimens, trapped inside a narrow event. But people spend only some of their time eating, so their table manners are only some of the time available for evaluation. Away from the table, we can place them according to their appearance. In a variation of Lavater’s principles of physiognomy, we like to think that we can tell a lot about someone’s background from his or her face. Or perhaps we dislike thinking this, but do it all the same.
Clothes, too, enable us to place people, and clothes seem easy to ‘read’. In the early eighteenth century the third Earl of Shaftesbury, a philosopher whose central concern was politeness, drew a connection between morality and aesthetics, arguing that in our acts and achievements symmetry is crucially important, a guarantee of mental order and a sense of moral proportion. But while easy to recognize in people’s dress and possessions, symmetry was harder to see in their character. As a result, an assessment of Mr and Mrs X’s dress and possessions was often used to determine what sort of people they were.
Whether we like it or not, we do this a great deal, interpreting clothing as an extension of personality. As far as dress is concerned, good manners are a matter of conformism. The English like wearing uniforms, except school uniforms; they also like to customize them in the most tiny ways (a hint of red socks under a dark suit). Clothes that can be described as ‘extreme’ may be appropriate at a fancy-dress party or in a fetish club, but they are unsettling in the workplace and other everyday situations. Overdressing is still widely considered worse than being underdressed: the latter can suggest an innocent ignorance or confident self-containment, whereas the former is interpreted as the behaviour of parvenus and narcissists. We often hear someone condemned for wearing too much jewellery, having too deep a tan, or favouring bold colours and fabrics. ‘Her heels are too high,’ says a guest sitting next to me at a wedding, of the bride, ‘and her dress looks too expensive.’ We may sometimes make judgements about people not adorning themselves enough, but they are articulated differently. It’s rare to hear anyone say ‘Her heels aren’t high enough’ or ‘That outfit needs more jewellery’, because the disapproval will be less specifically expressed: ‘She could make a bit more of herself’, ‘He doesn’t have a clue about clothes’, ‘She’s sending out all the wrong signals.’
Where clothes are concerned, the word appropriate usually means ‘appropriately modest’: we are expected to avoid both coquetry and austerity. For most people, sartorial conspicuousness causes embarrassment rather than boosting self-esteem; if you appear to enjoy conspicuousness, you are condemned in much the same terms as you would be for talking too loud, and the censure may come with an extra shot of moral indignation. When I was at university I sometimes wore a pair of plum-coloured suede loafers. These provoked a lot of comment, much of it hostile: ‘Why are you wearing women’s shoes?’, ‘Are you a faggot or something?’ The most extreme reaction was that of a man who stopped his car on a busy street to confront me, saying, ‘It’s people like you who are bringing this country to her knees.’
It was my choice of colour that caused offence. The colour of a person’s attire has long had a role as an indicator of status. In imperial China only the emperor’s heir could wear apricot yellow; the other sons wore orange. Purple has traditionally been a colour for emperors and popes. Bold colour has also been a way of marking bold character. The intrepid eighteenth-century politician Charles James Fox was noted for his blue hair powder and red-heeled shoes. But such boldness has tended to be associated with mere ostentation. Erasmus thought that striped or multicoloured clothes made one look like either a charlatan or a monkey. Even today, in an age of sartorial freedom, wearing certain colours (gold, bright red, bright pink) or only clothes of one colour (brilliant white, jet black) is interpreted as contentious or belligerent, and superfluity in dress is associated not just with vanity, but with depravity.
Footwear provokes especially strong reactions. Fundamentally, it exists to protect us. But it does much more than that. According to the designer Christian Louboutin, whose shoes are known for their lacquered red soles, ‘The shoe is very much an X-ray of social comportment.’1 Wearing the wrong thing on one’s feet can seem the most grotesque of faux pas. The symbolism of shoes is social – our footwear says something about what we do – yet is also sexual.
The Cinderella story illustrates the erotic potential of footwear. The foot slipping snugly into the shoe evokes an image of other intimate conjunctions. The story’s most famous version is the one used in the 1950 Walt Disney film, in which the slipper is made of glass, Cinderella’s slipper thus being a symbol of her fragile and irreparable virginity. Vulnerability is central to the sexual experience of the foot. Either the foot is a soft plaything, to be nuzzled and caressed, or it is armoured (with a stiletto, for instance) and becomes a weapon, suitable for use in trampling or penetration. Feet can telegraph sexual attraction. Their flexibility is essential to the sensuality of the human gait: every person’s footsteps sound slightly different, and we know our lover by his or her approach. The shoe at once embellishes and conceals the foot; the effect can be beguiling, though the widespread and understandable preference for comfy footwear means it often isn’t.
In his classic work The Ps
ychology of Clothes, J. C. Flügel observes the ways in which clothes arouse sexual interest and even tacitly symbolize the sexual organs. Clothing enables us to augment ourselves, as for instance when a skirt ‘adds to the human form certain qualities with which nature has failed to endow it’ and enables the wearer to create ‘an impression of bodily power and grace which could not possibly be achieved by the naked body, beautiful as this may sometimes be’. Reflecting on the changing nature of fashion (this in 1930), Flügel notes that even the most outré outfit offends us less than the sight in public of the naked body. Successive trends are ‘minor disturbances and readjustments of the equilibrium’; they amount to changes in the relative moral and aesthetic weight we give to modesty and display.2
It is tempting to see scanty or revealing dress (be it a bikini, a skirt that’s little more than a belt, a low-cut top, or underpants that seem to accentuate a man’s assets) as a mark of moral laxity. But it can also be interpreted as a sign of a society that has developed a great deal of confidence about its powers of self-restraint. Either way, it indicates that clothes are no longer, as they once were, mainly a form of covering, for purposes of protection and modesty.
Fashion is an extension of social and sexual competition. For precisely this reason, it is perpetually in a state of ‘double movement’: ‘one from the lower social ranks in the direction of those who stand higher in the scale, and another from these latter away from their own former position, which has now become … untenable’.3 This commentary by Flügel may be couched in language that now seems too class-ridden, but fashion is undoubtedly always in retreat from its own success. The moment something is actually ‘in fashion’, it is likely to seem abominable to the people who started the fashion.
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