Hey, Fuck You: A Brief History of Hand Gestures

Anyone who's ever driven in traffic or attended a sporting event in Los Angeles no doubt has been given pause to marvel at the wide array of human emotions that can be expressed through simple hand gestures. From "Hello!" and "I bet you'd look good giving me a blowjob" to "Go ahead and merge, I'm in no hurry" (reportedly seen in Canada one time in the 70's), commuters and sports fans alike rarely need audible sounds to communicate. Borne of necessity in situations when words are impractical or likely to confuse the point, hand gestures have evolved over the eons to, if not an art, at least a really complex hobby. I'm reminded of the deaf man who just last week used a complex series of sign language gestures to indicate that I should go fuck myself, give myself AIDS and then die.

But one doesn't have to be a sign language prodigy to use the most versatile of signs, the raised middle finger. This can stand for anything from "Hey, fuck you!" to "Fuck ALL you guys over there!" or "Hey, fuck you and that chick sitting next to you who looks kinda like Julia Stiles!"

Sure, it's handy, but where did the middle finger come from? Assholes place the gesture's origin at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, when in the course of talking trash the French boasted that they would cut off the middle fingers of the English archers after they'd won the battle. The joke here being that archers kind of need their middle fingers if they're going to properly flip somebody the bird after shooting them, adding insult to injury in the proper etiquette of the day. Unfortunately for the French, they weren't as good at fighting as they were at boasting, and after the battle was over the victorious English soldiers stood in a line and gave the French the one-finger salute, showing off their still-intact digits. Fortunately they didn't remember the other French boasts, which included forcing the English to eat their own food and using the English flag as a diaper for their most incontinent horse, because God knows what we'd be doing in traffic today if that had been the case.

It's a great story, but like I said, that's the asshole version of history. Believe it at your own risk. Another take on this gesture has it that the bird dates back much further, all the way to dinosaur times when it likely meant, "Hey, look up there, it's the Tyrannosaurus that ate your family. Shit, we pissed him off, run!" Though I find the notion of cavemen flipping off dinosaurs hilarious, and the possibility of a Tyrannosaurus Rex returning the gesture with one of its own tiny little hands even funnier, I can't reconcile the fact that the people telling this story are, without exception, absolute dipshits.

In all likelihood, the true origin of the dirty digit was the Greek playwright Aristophanes. Known to friends and onlookers as "The Bird" for his habit of regurgitating food into the mouths of the poor, often against their will, Aristophanes was also moderately well-known for compulsively inventing hand gestures that only he knew the meaning of. While the playwright and philosopher's name came to signify an unwanted act of charity in his own day, future generations are more in debt to his habit of giving the finger to political enemies and ungrateful paupers when they passed on the street. Aristophanes got away with the inside-joke gesture for years until he slipped up and started including it in his plays around 423 B.C., after which word spread about the gesture's meaning. After receiving several black eyes and an unfortunate black ear, the playwright was forced to invent a new "fuck you" gesture, which he wisely told no one about and took to his grave, literally, as he was buried with two fingers making a "V" on his forehead.

In time the gesture spread around the world like a game of telephone, mutating as people flipped each other off at border crossings and the half-seen insult was carried to a new land. By the time it got to China, the gesture was now a raised pinky finger, a custom which remains to this day. Though according to local legend China did have the middle-finger gesture first, but somehow the Chinese figured out how to turn that into a lethal karate move known as the "Bird of Prey" and it had to be switched to the weaker pinky finger for reasons of safety.

By the time the finger made its way to Italy and the Middle East, it was a thumb. Remember that if you're ever reviewing a movie in Sicily. Two upturned fingers in Australia will get you more than an etiquette lesson stuffed up your ass. By the time the finger got to Africa it was an open palm, however this gesture's literal translation of "eat shit" makes one think twice about shaking hands with an African.

By 1976 the finger had reached nearly to the top when Vice President Nelson Rockefeller was photographed greeting New York hippies with a rather uncreative standard bird, though at the time an embarrassed Rockefeller claimed he was just announcing that he'd found his lost contact lens. The modern flipped bird has since adapted for the 21st century, morphing into show-stopping variants such as the Cell Phone, Can You Hear This?, the Blow-Up Balloon, Peel the Banana, and the ubiquitous Sit and Spin. Even politically correct variations such as the Read Between the Lines have been developed for the dextrously-challenged.

Though "the finger" is hardly the only interesting hand gesture out there, it's not a bad place to start, and in future weeks we'll manhandle the subject more completely with in depth looks at the thumbs-up, the high-five and the peace/dos-tequilas-por-favor sign. Until then, you'll just have to read between the lines.

La Di Da: The History of Alternative Energy
Few would deny we're living in troubled times: gas is really expensive, the air is polluted and you can't sleep with a hippie these days without hearing about alternative energy. Though most still tune out at the mention of windmills or crystal... (5/31/04)

The Most Embarrassing Celebrity Scandal Ever
Few things get the public juices juicing like a good celebrity scandal. Seeing the rich and famous throw up on themselves on the national stage is like an instant cure for our collective Attention Deficit Disorder, sweet candy straight to the brain.... (5/3/04)

More Fads: The 1980's
No decade since the 1950's has so boldly established itself as a fad juggernaut as did the 1980's. In comparison, the 1990's were a sad decade for fads indeed, making one wonder where the will for conspicuous time wasting had gone. Probably the best... (4/5/04)

You're So Vain:A 10-Minute History of Haiti
If reader email and misguided public graffiti is to be taken as any indication, all the hullabaloo and carryings-on in Haiti lately have left most Americans feeling like they just walked in during the middle of a bad action movie with no idea why... (3/8/04)

More Fads: The 1970's
All that writing about accidental TV nudity last column got me thinking about one thing: big hair, bare bottoms, and the Decade of the Streak. That's right, the 1970's. Actually, to be totally accurate, the 70's weren't really a historical decade,... (2/23/04)