Wash My Mouth Out With Soap

Jane Fonda dropped the C-bomb on the Today Show Thursday, and people are freaking OUT.

People, it's a WORD. Albeit, by societal standards, a pretty bad one, but just the same ... a WORD.

As a lover of words, the notion that ANY word could be bad, strikes me as fundamentally wrong. A word, bad? Really? Who says? When you boil it down, what are words really? Sounds. When you think about it that way, doesn't it all seems rather ... absurd?

Right about now you're thinking I must be a big fat filthy toilet mouth, but if you've read the archives at all, you know I'm not much of a swearer. (This will actually be an F-bomb first in this blog.) Because I embrace the English lexicon does not mean I choose to use every word in it. (I don't find much occasion to use lachrymose or sabulous either...)

I do admit however, sometimes a good FUCK just feels good ...

Ba da bump.

Bear with me - here comes the complete and total hypocracy.

MOMMYPIE HOUSE RULES

Bad Word: Butt
Good Words: Tush, Tushy

Bad Word: Fart
Good Word: Toot

Bad Word: Hate
Good Words: Don't like

Bad Words: Shut up
Good Words: Be quiet

Word only to be said when praying or making a reference: God
All other times, substitute with: Gosh, Goodness

So, you see my dilemma. I'm philosophically at odds.

It's ingrained. In me. In everyone. In every culture. Certain words are always going to have a (sometimes illogical) stigma attached. I don't know how many times as a kid I had my mouth washed out with soap -- LAVA, even! -- for sassing. The consequences of uttering an actual swear word were ... *shiver* too frightening to imagine.

From the New York Times
(I'm off on a tangent, but this is a really interesting article):
"Researchers have also examined how words attain the status of forbidden speech and how the evolution of coarse language affects the smoother sheets of civil discourse stacked above it. They have found that what counts as taboo language in a given culture is often a mirror into that culture's fears and fixations."

(Hmmm ... Keeping this in mind, as I think about it, most of our culture's "bad" words relate to sex or bodily functions. Discuss.)

I don't much care if other people swear. (It's only annoying when it's every other word -- comparable to the irritation I feel when someone says "like" or "ah" or "you know" every other sentence.) But like most parents, I don't want my child around it. Let alone repeating it. (There's that damn hypocracy again ...)

Like the time about seven months ago MP, standing with an impish smile in the middle of Grammy's kitchen ... let it fly.

"Fuck. Fuck, Fuck, Fuck."

The sucking sound as all air left the room was deafening. I was horrified. (Turns out she heard it at preschool ... honestly!)

Hypocrite, I know. I know!

It's a conundrum.