Using Gainsborough's Woman in Blue (1770-1780)
to show meaning in mouche placement
I've always been a fan of beauty spots - though preferably of the artificial variety that the French call mouches and which fashionable women (and dandyish men) in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries loved to apply to their faces (much to the scorn of satirists and the anger of moralists).
Natural marks can, of course, also be considered an attractive feature but, for me, as a matter of personal taste, I choose flies over moles, and silk or velvet cut into fanciful shapes over clusters of pigmented skin cells [1].
Whilst some used them simply to disguise (or divert attention from) smallpox scars or syphillis sores, other (more sophisticated and stylish) individuals recognised them as empty or free-floating signifiers that allowed for the playing of a seductive game; they had no function and carried no fixed meaning as such; they made a face enigmatic and mysterious and opened up a symbolic form of cultural interaction.
As Byung-Chul Han notes:
"The face itself became a stage on which various characters were represented with the help of beauty spots. If they were placed at the corner of the eye, they meant passion. Placed on the lower lip, they indicated the frankness of the wearer. The face understood as a stage is utterly remote from that face we find presented today on Facebook." [2]
Some commentators think that the contemporary equivalent is a tattoo or piercing, but I'm sceptical of this and agree with Han that the tattoo, in today's society of authenticity, is just another expression of "narcissistic introspection, a permanent occupation with one's own psychology" [3].
In other words, having ink done is all about self-exposure and self-exploitation; an obscene display of the flesh in line with a pornified culture:
"Within a ritual context, they symbolize the alliance between individual and community. In the nineteenth century, when tattoos were very popular, especially among the upper classes, the body was still a surface onto which yearnings and dreams were projected. Today, tattoos lack any symbolic power. All they do is point to the uniqueness of the bearer. The body is neither a ritual stage nor a surface of projection; rather, it is an advertising space. The neoliberal hell of the same is populated with tattooed clones." [4]
Notes
[1] Beauty marks came in a variety of designs; not just spots, but also stars, crescents, diamonds, and hearts, for example. They were usually black in colour, as this emphasised the whiteness of the skin, but could also be made in colours to match the wearer's eyes or outfit.
The most common materials used were velvet and silk, but the poor who sought to imitate the wealthier and more fashionable members of society might use paper or mouse skin to create their patches. Whatever the material, a simple glue was used to adhere them to the skin, which made both application and removal quick and easy. Some would keep their collection of marks in a small decorated box that the French termed une boîte à mouches.
[2] Byung-Chul Han, The Disappearance of Rituals, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2020), p. 19.
See also The Transparency Society, trans. Erik Butler, (Stanford University Press, 2015), where Byung-Chul Han writes of how the naked face that is exhibited pornographically without any mystery, hides nothing and expresses nothing; it becomes transparent, as it were, and lacks all seductive allure.
Han also expands in the above work on his idea of the world of the 18th-century as a theatrum mundi in which communication and cultural exchange occurs via ritual forms, signs, and appearances. No one (apart from religious fanatics and readers of Rousseau) was interested in transparency of soul and revealing their innermost selves; they wanted to play with masks and retain their secrets. In a key passage, he writes:
"The world of the eighteenth century was still a theatre. It was full of scenes, masks, and figures. Fashion itself was theatrical. [...] Ladies' hairstyles (pouf) were shaped into scenes that portrayed either historical events (pouf à la circonstance) or feelings (pouf au sentiment). [...] Both men and women painted parts of their faces with red makeup. The face itself became a stage on which one lent expression to character traits with the help of beauty marks (mouches). [...] The body was a site of scenic representation, too. However, it was not a matter of giving unfalsified expression to the hidden 'inside' (l'intérieur), much less to the 'heart'. Instead, the point was to toy with appearances, to play with scenic illusions. The body was a doll without a soul to be dressed, decorated, and invested with signs and meanings." [43]
[3] Byung-Chul Han, The Disappearance of Rituals, p. 18.
[4] Ibid., p. 21.
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