* Dr. Abdul Rahman bin Abdullah Al Shugair The popular memory maintains a linguistic and literary product about the parts of the body, as it places the meanings of dignity in the nose, beauty in hair, teeth and eyes, and glory in height. These meanings are subject to transformations in the culture of the era, whose meanings are derived from the body.
The body as a social phenomenon:
The body had two social functions:
The first: that the ordinary person in the traditional society used to manage his body spontaneously according to what circumstances and customs dictate to him, the most prominent of which is that the work of the house, farm and grazing depends on a male and female family member, and therefore they are constantly moving, and this positively reflected on the safety of his health from some diseases such as Obesity, cholesterol and pressure, but the building of his body is not integrated, but rather it is concentrated in some of the muscles of his body and often inconsistently, and many people in traditional society do not care about the consumer appearance, that is, the interest in wearing adornment, as much as they are interested in overcoming the pressures of economic life.
The second: that society accords a high aesthetic value to the values of height and body proportions, and considers them among the tools of social prestige. Ibn Laaboun says:
Otherwise, we will find someone he meets, Hab
Polished like a sword what to play with
Therefore, man preserves the aesthetics of his body as a social capital.
The "Encyclopedia of Sociology" indicates that body studies entered sociology late, and began with the efforts of Michel Foucault, and body studies seek to study and analyze people as people embodied in bodies, and not just individuals with values and trends, so they were interested in identifying the different cultural meanings associated with bodies. And methods of controlling them, and among the most prominent topics of body studies in sociology: health, disease, dance and sports. Finally, there has been interest in the phenomenon of beautifying parts of the body through medical intervention.
Is it correct to see the body and its parts as a social capital, whose owner invests in his body in terms of health and beauty? The popular memory in the past, and the awareness of life now confirms the existence of certain parts of the body that carry with it many social and economic values, such as: nose, hair, height, teeth, skin color and eyes.
Folk meaning of health and beauty:
People are the ones who give things their meanings, and then determine the value of the thing according to the strength of the meaning that it carries. The teeth did not have an aesthetic meaning among previous generations, except within narrow limits, and thus the value of dentistry in society decreased, and in recent years, society has given health, aesthetic and face-to-face meanings. The dental contents have increased in value socially, and because of this social transformation in seeing the teeth flourish, a huge economic market is estimated at billions of dollars annually. Hair, too, was its beauty centered on long black hair, then it became a value revolution that imposed all lengths and colors, and opened the way for a huge economic and marketing market. Hence the importance of monitoring social transformations through changing values and the vision of life across generations.
The beauty of the teeth has a great relationship with health awareness, and the semantic change of the aesthetics of things in society, and it is suitable to be an indicator of the improvement of the quality of life, and the human view of the world around him, and social transformations can be measured from the transformations in interaction with the teeth. If the body has a language, the language of the teeth represents the most important form of social communication between strangers, which leaves the initial impression of the level of health and hygiene.
Cultural shifts in health and beauty:
There is a close connection between popular culture and ordinary people's view of things, and economics. Whenever the culture of society changes towards a good or service, the value of these goods or services changes with it, as goods and services either disappear or thrive in order of importance in the popular cultural awareness.
The generation of the eighties and before represented a major transitional stage in popular culture transformations towards the body, as long black hair and wide black eyes represented the popular cultural characteristic of the meanings of beauty, and these meanings were firmly entrenched in the strength of popular proverbs and flirtatious poems.
From a health perspective, it is noted that during the eighties AD, the dominance in the popular culture of esoteric clinics, due to the society’s exposure to a major and sudden economic boom, the phenomenon of the spread of meat and rice increased in lunch and dinner, something that the generation of parents and grandparents deprived of, so it increased with it internal diseases, and its clinics increased. In hospitals, they spread as private clinics on the main streets, and after the health awareness of nutritional balance and diversity increased, and the addition of fruits and vegetables to the trip, people needed them less, and many internal clinics were closed, and their number in hospitals decreased.
The concepts of beauty expanded and many of its meanings changed in the nineties, as the phenomenon of skin aesthetics emerged, and the idea that the skin can be beautified by tightening and small operations and continuous smoothing with types of dense creams, after the specialty of dermatology was limited to treating burns and deep wounds in hospitals and emergency, and the need is still Ongoing dermatology clinics. The aesthetics of colored and short hair, colored eye lenses, and dental aesthetics entered with her.
Transformations around the body confirm that it is a cultural phenomenon that is subject to the prevailing culture around the body or one of its parts in a specific time and society. The speed of cultural transformations is subject to many factors such as the economy, follow-up to “cultural fashion”, exposure to social media, films, and celebrity simulation.
Teeth as a cultural product:
In the two thousand years and beyond, the phenomenon of dental aesthetics emerged, targeting all age groups of society, and its economic and gender classes (males and females), which allowed it to be an idea that will not disappear in the short term, and because of its connection with globalization and popular awareness, so private dental colleges appeared to meet the market need. And a series of clinics for the middle and poor classes and clinics for the elites appeared.
In this article we will analyze the life story of age and the shifts in society's attitude towards it, and it will be followed by other articles on the popular meanings of the body and its parts.
Teeth in ancient history:
The teeth have a long history rooted in the memory of all ancient civilizations, and archaeological research has revealed the uses of teeth in cosmetics and treatment, as well as magic thousands of years ago in the Sumerian, Assyrian, Pharaonic, Greek, Indian and Arab civilizations. For mankind, for maintaining its shape and not being eroded over the centuries, and teeth are now one of the indicators of social transformations and the globalization of society.
Sociologists and anthropologists have been interested in teeth, as a social phenomenon that has an impact in shaping self-identity and a direct impact on leaving a mental image of others. Among the social literature on teeth is the book “Dental Anthropology: Human Teeth from a Biocultural View” (2009) by Mustafa Awad Ibrahim.
Teeth in health and disease values:
The teeth in the popular memory had a practical and not an aesthetic function, especially for males, that is, they are used for the purposes of eating, drinking and cutting light things, and they are sometimes used as a weapon for biting in cases of quarrel, and this is why the term molar is frequently used before the term tooth is common to express all teeth, and it is said in proverbs The popular saying is “there is nothing but the wedding, and there is no pain except the toothache,” because the pain of decay or the removal of a tooth is not anesthetized in it, and it is said “so-and-so,” for those who eat greedily. It seems that replacing the term from a molar to a tooth is due to aesthetic reasons, due to the association of the term molar with traditional society and oral diseases and the lack of care for it, while the term tooth is light in pronunciation and does not have a prior mental image, so it is easy to accept dental clinics and their cosmetic initiatives, in addition to the fact that molars are part of every , while the teeth are called the group consisting of molars, premolars, and canines.
Despite the fact that the teeth fall into the aesthetics of the mental image, there are no techniques for cleaning them other than toothpicks and water, and if the teeth are exposed to mild pain, they are treated by placing a few crushed cloves (called Al-Owaidi and the nail) on the place of pain as a natural anesthetic, and it is taken off in advanced cases. Due to the lack of any social value for teeth among the popular classes, diseases of the teeth and gums such as caries and bleeding gums have spread, and tooth extraction has increased and left their place empty.
Tooth extractions in our society have stories to tell. If they are to be carried out at home to remove the milk teeth of children whose fall is delayed, the therapist, often the father, ties the tooth with a fine thread and connects the second end to the door handle, then closes the door forcefully, attracting the tooth with him. The dentist usually has iron tools similar to pliers designed to grip the tooth forcefully and then pull it out. Of course, most tooth extractions take place on the street, and do not ask about sterilization and anesthesia, so a tooth crooked generation came out.
Dental aesthetics in folklore:
In the stage of modernity in the Kingdom, the society began to look at the aesthetics of the teeth, and that they are part of the human personality. Gold and platinum teeth became signs of beauty in society, indicating the elegance of its owner and his financial ability. It seems that the gold tooth protected the gums from infections more than any other element. And not just aesthetically.
The golden age was famous among girls with brown skin, as one of the determinants of body aesthetics. It was mentioned in an old song by the Bahraini artist, Mohammed Rashid Al-Rifai, in which he says:
Brown with a golden tooth salted
Its demise if I see it amuses me
Teeth are among the most prominent aspects of a woman's beauty, whose whiteness and matrix the Arab poet, ancient and modern, flirts with.
The dictionary of the heritage dental clinic:
Due to the limitations of dental diseases in the generation of parents and grandparents, the dictionary of the dictionary was also limited, and it was collected from some popular heritage books such as the book “The Heritage of the Grandparents” by Al-Quwai’i, and the book “The Dictionary of Popular Words” by Al-Mana’a, a few vocabulary, but most of it is still summarized in the popular memory For the elderly and the elderly.
Among the names of dental diseases known in the folklore are the following:
"Mkhrth": meaning eroded, and it is said for the molar if the mite gnaws it, and for the wood if the termite eats it.
Among the most prominent dental clinic equipment is the "jazz" machine, called "Al-Qazz", which is iron scissors, has two shapes and is similar to pliers, one of which is used to extract the back teeth "molars" and the other to remove the front teeth, and the term jazz came in popular poetry, says Obaid Al-Rasheed. :
And if you have a tooth, you have a decayed tooth
We have jazz for you, and the tooth is dislocated
Teeth in aesthetic values:
Social values have changed towards the teeth due to economic well-being, the increase in health awareness, the high level of education and the desire to present oneself in daily life. life.
Dental Economic Market:
The practices of the medical establishment (advertisements from clinics, medical device companies and the use of celebrities to promote an attractive smile) may have contributed to pressure on owners of defective, broken, weak, pigmented, and even normal teeth, to urge them to beautify and protect their teeth. It was able to make society a huge laboratory for the restoration and repair of teeth by coating, polishing and implants, after a person was sufficient for him to live with dental fillings or removing them. It was helped by the ability of the media to press propaganda and present celebrities and the upper social classes as the ideal model that the teeth should be, and then form a strong medical discourse that proves that the teeth are part of human identity and one of the most important complements to body aesthetics, until this opinion turned into An indisputable fact, which opened the way to create economic markets measured in billions of riyals annually, represented in the spread of specialized dental clinics, after they were treatment clinics within dispensaries, the opening of dental colleges, and the creation of thousands of jobs for medical and administrative cadres in every society. This contributed to the flourishing of the dental cosmetic industry and its treatment technologies.
* Sociology of Knowledge “Daily Life Studies” Publish it
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