Butts

Photo by Alex Leith

When did my kids stop having bums? I can date it precisely to when ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ became the literary touchstone in our house. (For those of you not familiar with this oeuvre, think Harry Potter meets George from Seinfeld). No longer do the nippers sit on their bottoms or give each other a kick up the backside. Now it’s all falling on your butt, getting your butt over here, or (close your eyes) showing your butt as a hilarious joke. Occasionally they may refer to wiping their ass but what happened to their arses?

Before you get the idea that this column is simply going to bemoan the mangling of the Queen’s English by upstart Americans, I’ll quickly identify myself as an admirer of H. L Mencken. Mencken’s analysis of the American language ninety years ago should have been more than enough to stop whingeing about those colonial barbarians. Incredibly though people still rant about the perversion of the mother tongue. To them I say that the Empire is gone and that we haven’t had any pretensions to being cultural top-dog since the Beatles. The divergence of languages has been around since communication began, as when ancient peoples moved to new territory their speech would eventually change into something different. If this didn’t happen we’d all still grunt instead of talk and take umbrage every time someone came up with a new word for axe.

More recently though we've had trains and planes, radio and TV and lots of other features of the modern world to mix up this process. This has led to a new thing to get steamed up about: namely that the distinctiveness of British language is under attack from Americanisms arriving on these shores by the gigabyte. It’s worth noting that the opposite view holds in some quarters and Britishisms also permeate or, depending on your point of view, pollute the American idiom.

So are our very glutes threatened by linguistic uniformity? For an answer I turned to Google’s Ngrams application which allows tracking of the frequency of word usage across a wide range of sources. From a look at the “British English” corpus 1980-2008 it’s clear that backsides are sagging, bottoms and bums are looking wobbly, but arses seem to be holding firm. Butts are steady, asses less so. Worryingly, both butts and asses are considerably more frequent in occurrence than their British counterparts. It’s hard to draw firm conclusions from that though as it might be the result of an attachment to fag butts (that’s British fags), nostalgia for water butts and a hitherto unsuspected persistence of synonyms for donkey. It also seems implausible that we will stick out our tushes any time soon and are even less likely to start using fanny-packs.

Still, it’s doubtful that these consolations will be truly enough for those who care about the British posterior. It’s clear we need more radical action to preserve our rear-ends. Perhaps threats are in order for those who continue to import transatlantic trash. It may also be time to bring out the big guns of Glaswegian slang from my youth. I hope then my kids realise that I’m making a stand for cultural distinctiveness when I say that, if they don’t shut up about butts, I’ll give them a boot in the bahookie. Sometimes that’s the only language they understand.

Parents

To say that parents cause trouble is akin to commenting on the religion of the Pope. The suggestion that parents are not always adequate has been around for centuries, though no-one has made this statement of the blindingly obvious more eloquently than Phillip Larkin . I’m struck though that Amy Chua’s recent book “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” manages to open up a whole new perspective on this (by now rather jaded) subject. In particular, for those of us who have disregarded Larkin’s advice not to have the knee-biters ourselves, Chua’s book helpfully signals open season on people who don’t share our own parenting style. The troubles with parents are clearly legion but Chua gets us to focus on the trouble with other parents.

In case you’ve been on holiday on Jupiter and missed the global phenomenon that is Amy Chua (and if you can’t be bothered reading her book) she helpfully summarises her arguments in a Wall Street Journal article. It’s a memoir of aspirational parenting taken to... well some would say extremes but I’m not here to judge (at least not for another few lines). The details are already becoming legendary: children compelled to practice piano and violin for hours on end, forbidden to come second in any subject, not allowed play-dates and even called “garbage” when disrespectful. All of this is justified within a framework of allegedly “Chinese” parenting (Chua is Chinese-American) set up as superior to the wussy western version. A sharp intake of breath has been heard all over Europe and North-America accompanied by speculation as to why book has attracted so much attention. (My favourite is the New Yorker take-down suggesting that the book’s success reflects American fear of China’s economic rise). In a town like Lewes, where you do occasionally wonder if it’s acceptable to stop breastfeeding before your child starts university, the shock is amplified through the megaphone of middle-class, right-on guilt.

The reasons for the enormous attention seem more mundane than geo-political considerations though. I’d suggest it’s because the trouble with parents is that, when they’re not worrying that they’re wrong, they are thinking that other parents are. Are there any parents who haven’t had at least a twinge of superiority? The person down the road has kids that are too wild or too quiet. Those parents push too hard or indulge the little brats. My kids go to bed at the right time but look at their lot: black rings under their eyes! For those of us who have raised our kids during the Gina Ford wars Amy Chua is late to the party. We’ve been slugging it out over routines versus demand led parenting for years. In some ways though the battle seems more important than the path you choose. After all having children is an awesome responsibility and, sometimes overwhelmingly demanding. Most of us struggle with parenting and there is nothing that boosts confidence more than a good snipe at others. Maybe a bit of moral superiority gets us through. We all need a crutch sometimes. Even tiger mothers.

Fairies

“Mummy, am I fat?” says my daughter, all of seven, regarding herself in the bath. She doesn’t know it yet but body fascism is my wife’s darkest fear. The thought of a little girl worrying about weight evokes a response like that of a vampire facing a crucifix or Lady Gaga being asked to wear a twinset.

“No darling you’re not, and it’s a silly thing to worry about”, my wife replies with admirable (though bogus) insouciance. After a couple of minutes of intense debate the crisis is over and worries about the Messages Kids Get Today are, at least temporarily, averted.

“You promise you’re telling me the total, absolute truth Mum?”

“Of course sweetheart. I’ll never lie to you when you ask me for the truth. Cross my heart and soak my sleeve in this bubble bath”.

I slip out of the room, failing to hear the scream of a gigantic hostage to fortune being abducted right beside me.

Halfway down the stairs the other shoe drops.

“Mum, tell me the truth. Are the fairies really coming?”

Long pause…

My son is already demanding story-time and milk but I am paralysed, watching my wife trying to make her mouth move.

In the last few months the Tooth Fairy has been working overtime at our house. Though we sometimes worry about encouraging this too much (and about the hyperinflation which seems to have occurred in the market for teeth) we also can’t help but find it charming. As long ago as the 1970 the psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim pronounced fairies officially OK. Believing in magic apparently helps “master the psychological problems of growing up-overcoming narcissistic disappointments, oedipal dilemmas, sibling rivalries; becoming able to relinquish childhood dependencies; gaining a feeling of selfhood and of self-worth, and a sense of moral obligation”. Belief in magic also provides an interesting insight in to children’s’ cognitive development. And of course they grow out of it (at least up to a point). I’ve realised now though that the trouble with fairies is actually that I might not be ready for the moment when they get the push.

The question is still hanging. My wife (and this is like watching someone downing but beyond help) takes a huge gulp of air and opts for truth.

There was a lot more. Like a car accident, you don’t need to know all the details. Santa was still intact by the end of it but that was about all. She seemed sad but accepting. We were given strict instructions not to eat the Tuc biscuit left for the fairies on the kitchen table. In the morning, we heard feet hammering down the stairs, then back up again.

“Mum, Dad, it’s still there. The fairies aren’t real!” Followed, finally, by tears. And I don’t just mean from my daughter.

So what do you do when your child asks, really asks, for the truth? Perhaps close your eyes, clap, and wish with all your heart that they’d waited till they were a bit older.


John McGowan, 27th January 2011