It's arguable that lips are one of the key defining features of the human being. For whilst most other mammals possess them, only we have lips that are permanently on display thanks to an outward curling of the interior mucous membranes.
Thus Deleuze and Guattari are right to suggest that just as the human mouth is a deterritorialization of the animal snout, the lips are a subsequent deterritorialization of the mouth, designed - amongst other things - to reterritorialize (and to suckle) on the maternal breast.
Later, of course, the lips will play an important part in the act of eating solid foods - and in speech; again, one of the defining characteristics of man is the fact that he stuffs his mouth with words as well as sausage rolls.
Finally, due to an overabundance of nerve endings, the lips are extremely sensitive and therefore play a significant role in sexual acts, such as kissing; described by D. H. Lawrence as the primary sensual connection.
Lips, then, are crucial to our survival and to our pleasure.
I have to admit, however, that the pale, thin lips of modern women that offer the delicate spiritual kisses of those who act exclusively from the upper plane of consciousness, don't really excite my interest unless they have been cosmetically enhanced with that fabulous mix of oils, waxes, pigments and emollients known as lipstick ...
Lipstick gives back to even the meanest and most refined of mouths a certain savage beauty.
Thus Deleuze and Guattari are right to suggest that just as the human mouth is a deterritorialization of the animal snout, the lips are a subsequent deterritorialization of the mouth, designed - amongst other things - to reterritorialize (and to suckle) on the maternal breast.
Later, of course, the lips will play an important part in the act of eating solid foods - and in speech; again, one of the defining characteristics of man is the fact that he stuffs his mouth with words as well as sausage rolls.
Finally, due to an overabundance of nerve endings, the lips are extremely sensitive and therefore play a significant role in sexual acts, such as kissing; described by D. H. Lawrence as the primary sensual connection.
Lips, then, are crucial to our survival and to our pleasure.
I have to admit, however, that the pale, thin lips of modern women that offer the delicate spiritual kisses of those who act exclusively from the upper plane of consciousness, don't really excite my interest unless they have been cosmetically enhanced with that fabulous mix of oils, waxes, pigments and emollients known as lipstick ...
Lipstick gives back to even the meanest and most refined of mouths a certain savage beauty.
Notes
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (University of Minnesota Press, 1987): see '10,000 BC: The Geology of Morals (Who Does the Earth Think It Is?)'.
D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 2004): see 'The Five Senses'.
Click here for a related post to this one in which I expand upon my love of lipstick (with reference to the work of Baudelaire and to the case of Cleopatra).
Lipstick works on the screen, such as a Robert Palmer video. But I'm not a fan. Any kind of make-up seems odd, an artifice. I feel like I'm kissing a painted clown. I can't take a woman seriously in make-up - too much of a mask perhaps? I'd take a freckle or a dry cracked lip any day. I do like lippy women though...
ReplyDeleteThanks J - though I find these remarks a little troubling tbh; aren't you worried that in positing an ideal of feminine beauty tied to the myth of natural purity you veer towards a fascist aesthetic? Hitler didn't much like lipstick either ...
ReplyDeleteDon't be silly S. I'm vegan; Hitler was vegetarian; me Nazi-ish too? James's comments are if anything liberating. If one is a woman interested in being kissed by a man, so much less hassle and expense to be told that lipstick's a turnoff than the reverse. Also v much easier the morning after not to feel the need to leap out of bed and recreate the look of the night before.
ReplyDeleteIt is not in aesthetic realms that the urgent lessons of Naziism for today are to be learned, but - groupthink, feeling terrified to stand up for politically-unpopular ethnicities (such as Palestinians), being manipulated into supporting all kinds of horrors out of fear of Russia-the-bogeyman, obeying the imperative to be politically pure according to whatever the standards of a time and place are whatever their internal contradictions, etc. Your blog doesn't do these things, for which it is to be praised - but it shouldn't fall into the trap of denouncing all of the good or innocent impulses (sexual or otherwise), that the Nazis leveraged in an evil cause, as themselves Nazi, is an absurdity, and an insult to those thus accused.
For my reply, see the new post on the politics of lipstick:
Deletehttps://torpedotheark.blogspot.com/2019/07/on-politics-of-lipstick.html
Well done for exposing and refuting that non-sequitur. It is also quite illogical to label everything associated with Hitler/Nazism is axiomatically absolutely evil.
ReplyDeleteAnd, incidentally, there is nothing of the 'myth' about 'natural purity'.
According to author of The Naked Ape/The Human Zoo/Manwatching etc., Dr. Desmond Morris, the purpose of particularly red lipstick is to make the lips resemble labia engorged during sexual arousal. And the gloss indicative of vaginal secretions.
Similarly, with collagen lip injections, which often exaggerate this state to a farcical, disfiguringly ugly degree.
Of course, some folk resent Desmond likening us to apes. But the likeness is inescapable.
An effort is needed to disillusion those queuing for implants in lips that there is anything empowering about this. . .and to warn of serious adverse consequences and side-effects. . .also to suggest that resort to such surgery is born of insecurity amounting to desperation - that women who are strong and confident would never entertain such nonsense.
For my reply, see the new post on the politics of lipstick:
Deletehttps://torpedotheark.blogspot.com/2019/07/on-politics-of-lipstick.html