Category Archives: Gestures

Who has smelly feet?

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 29, 2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

My informant KM explained that in some cultures it is very disrespectful to have the bottom of one’s foot face someone.

KM went on a trip to Egypt with seven other students in the summer of 2013 for an International Relations class at USC.  KM explained, “we were in a meeting with a very powerful woman in Egypt.  It was the nine of us asking her questions.  One of the guys on the trip was sitting next to her with his leg on his knee and his foot facing this woman.  Halfway through the interview the woman said, ‘Something smells! Who has smelly feet?!’  She didn’t say it because his feet smelled, but because she was uncomfortable with having the bottom of his feet face her.  He was really embarrassed so he readjusted his position.  The interview was kind of awkward after that.  But she was a harsh woman to begin with.  ‘Who has smelly feet?’ became a running joke on the trip.”

After the meeting, KM and her group explained what had happened to one of their tour guides.  He explained to them why she was so upset.

KM’s experience in Cairo demonstrates that facing the bottom of one’s foot to a person is so disrespectful and offensive that the woman would stop mid-meeting to correct the faux pas.  Perhaps the bottom of one’s foot is so offensive because it is the dirtiest part of the foot.

 

A Grave of Rice

Nationality: Chinese American
Age: 47
Occupation: Real Estate Broker
Residence: Danville, CA
Performance Date: 3/17/2015
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

It’s bad luck to stick chopsticks into a bowl of rice, burying the tip. Supposedly this is because the chopsticks resemble the headstone placed on a grave, and reminders death are extremely inauspicious in Chinese society.

The correct way to set a table, and to place chopsticks on a bowl of rice, is to lay them across the rim of the bowl with the tip pointing toward the center of the table. This is because it is also rude to point the tip at anyone sitting at the table, but usually the people across the table are too far away for the sign to take effect.

I was made aware of this taboo when I stuck a pair of chopsticks into a bowl of rice when I was young, and JL, my mother, caught me in the act. I was setting the table for my family at the age of 8, and was allowed to begin eating first. I stuck the chopsticks in the rice to see if it would stay secure, and my mother caught me before anyone else could see, and she said it would have been very rude for my grandparents to see, and that they would have been a lot harder on me than she was.

She had actually found out about the taboo the same way when she was a child. This is a fairly obscure taboo in Chinese dining etiquette, so most people don’t find out about it until they’ve broken it once. When etiquette is broken in a public setting, it is also rude to mention the offense except in private, between two parties who trust each other, usually parents to children.

Pickled Grudges

Nationality: Armenian American
Age: 23
Occupation: Freelance Illustrator
Residence: Glendale, CA
Performance Date: 4/28/2015

Pickle a food item, and keep it for 40 days because that’s how long a grudge should last. On the 40th day, you have to throw it away to remove the grudge.

The belief is that the pickle withers and dies in place of the relationship between the people involved, so that the grudge would not poison their connection.

LB mentioned this as an extreme of grudge-holding among her people when she jokingly told me she would hold a grudge toward me and strike when my guard was down. While she was joking about her grudge, she used this story as an example of how I should beware around her, because her people (Armenians) are supposedly infamous for holding out grudges for extreme measures of time.

LB first heard this from a friend of hers who was carrying out this practice at the time, over a perceived snub from a close friend. Because she could not act out toward the friend as they saw the wronging unevenly, and their long-term relationship is more important to her than the perceived wrong. She placed a cucumber in a jar of vinegar for 40 days, and on the 40th, the jar should be broken to release the resentment. The cucumber is used as a sacrifice in place of an important relationship.

LB’s friend’s jar actually never made it to day 40, as it broke on its own on day 35. While it was a mess to clean up, LB’s friend took it as a sign that the grudge had run its course before the time was even up.

Fire and water must never meet

Nationality: Chinese American
Age: 47
Occupation: Real Estate Broker
Residence: Danville, CA
Performance Date: 3/17/2015
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

A feng shui master once told my informant that when fire and water meet within a household, conflict would arise. By fire, he refers to stoves, fireplaces, and other sources of heat, while by water he refers to faucets and pot spouts.

A few years ago, my informant lived in a house with poorly laid out kitchen, as the sink and kitchen counter each faced the stove and fireplace. Since she had a rotating faucet, the master warned her to never directly face fire and water toward each other, because it would lead to conflict. My informant really took this to heart, but her husband always dismissed her insistence on doing things exactly the way she was told to. One of the worst fights that they had had actually sparked from my informant noticing that the faucet was pointed toward the stove, which she took it as proof that her husband didn’t care if there was conflict in the family, while her husband, who prided himself on being logical, resented how she wanted him to subscribe to superstitious rituals and actively rebelled against her wishes.

This is a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it only reaffirmed my informant’s belief in feng shui.

 

Feet / “Bad Eyes”

Nationality: Indian-American
Age: 19
Occupation: USC Student
Residence: USC
Performance Date: April 29, 2015
Primary Language: English

*Note: the informant is Indian-American and identifies with the Hindu religion. She is in touch with her Indian heritage but she was born in the U.S.

INFORMANT: “And then Hindus or Indians or whatever also have lots of like body language things, I don’t know how to say it, like, gestures. Like if we touch anything with our feet that’s not the ground, say if I touched a backpack with my foot, then you have to touch the thing and then touch your eyes and do that three times. It’s funny, I have a Persian friend who has a similar thing, but for her it’s like if my feet touch another person’s feet, then I have to interlock my pinkies. I have no idea why it’s a thing.

And then we also have this saying, where like, say I’m going to a job interview and I tell a bunch of people about it and then I don’t get the job, they’ll say it’s because someone “put bad eyes on you,” which basically means they didn’t want you to get the job or were talking badly of you and basically put bad luck on you.”

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I can’t figure out the context or reason behind the gestures, and neither could the informant, but it’s notable that her Persian friend had a relatively similar tradition. Both have to do with the feet, and not having the feet touch something, so it leads me to believe that these cultures must value one’s feet or see the feet as sacred or something not to be soiled by touching random items or the feet of another. The interlocking pinkies thing brings to mind crossing fingers in America, where someone will cross their fingers if they are lying or if they want something to happen. The saying also seems like it has variants in other cultures – I remember my mom talking about someone giving someone else the “evil eye,” which was first and foremost just a look but also held a sort of bad luck, because that person wished you ill.