Thus, in regard to the nauseating lip
"ornaments" of the Thlinkeets just referred to, the testimony
collected by Bancroft indicates unmistakably that they are approved
of, perpetuated, and aggravated for two reasons--both
non-esthetic--namely, as indications of rank, and from the necessity
of conforming to fashion. Ladies of distinction, we read, increase the
size of their lip plug. Langsdorff even saw women "of very high rank"
with this "ornament" full five inches long and three broad; Dixon says
the mutilation is always in proportion to the person's wealth; and
Mayne relates, in his book on the British Columbia Indians, that "a
woman's rank among women is settled according to the size of her
wooden lip."
INDIFFERENCE TO DIRT
That savages can have no sense of personal beauty is further proved by
their habitual indifference to personal cleanliness, the most
elementary and imperative of esthetic requirements. When we read in
McLean (II., 153) that some Eskimo girls "might pass as pretty if
divested of their filth;" or in Cranz (I., 134) that "it is almost
sickening to view their hands and faces smeared with grease ... and
their filthy clothes swarming with vermin;" and when we further read
in Kotzebue (II., 56) regarding the Kalush that his "filthy
countrywomen with their lip-trough ... often awaken in him the most
vehement passion," we realize vividly that that passion is a coarse
appetite which exists quite apart from, and independently of, anything
that might be considered beautiful or ugly.
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