What Hands Say
A friend of mine got his first manicure (personal hand detailing) this past week, and was telling me all about it. I told him that I had noticed that his nails were buffed. I also told him that I had noticed his hands before, and that his nails had been uneven.
We got into a conversation about detailing, what people notice, and what people are oblivious to. Some people don’t notice their hands until they see them in a photograph.
Some people hide their hands in their pockets.
I have always noticed hands, not unlike the way some people notice legs, or eyes, or other body parts. Hands can be sexy. I notice people’s hands to get a handle (hand –le, get it?) on what people do, who or what they are in the world.
I notice if the fingers are long or short, if the skin is soft or callused, clean or dirty, strong or graceful. But as I’m thinking about it, I am also very interested in the way people communicate with their hands. How they gesture when they’re talking, how they emphasize things with hand movements.
There are people who say if you tied his hands, so-and-so couldn’t talk. I may be one of those people. Check and see if you gesture while you are on the telephone. That might be a good indicator that speech and gesture are strongly linked for you. Think about how candidates are coached before debates to use hand movements to their advantage.
Maybe some of my ‘hand fetish’ has to do with working with my hands. I enjoy making things. Painting, drawing, writing are examples of more ways that hands communicate.
Also, some hand gestures must be cultural, think about the difference between a South Asian dancer’s hand position and a ballet dancer’s, or shaking hands vs. bowing with hands together. Some gestures are instinctive (pounding a fist in frustration?) and there are male to female differences in how a person rests his/her hands on the back of a chair, for example.
Hands and Touch
“Ay, there’s the rub” – Hamlet
Back to my friend’s hand detailing. He was surprised that his manicure ended with a hand massage. According to him it was the best part of the whole experience, as he described melting into his chair. Touch is a form of communication unto itself. Hands are both public and private body parts. Some touch, like handshakes, are formal, and not intimate, even though people who are first introduced try to speck each other out by how they shake hands. I’ve practiced shaking hands before an interview. Other touches are downright taboo, unless you are close. Palpably close.
“Palm to palm do holy palmers kiss” Juliet says to Romeo.
“Let lips do what palms do” he replies.
This was one of my favorite lines when I was with a man named Palmer.
He had very good hands.
Art for the Day: the art of reading hand signals.
posted by the other Joan @ 4:58 PM
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