Loose Lips	Loose Lips Archive

When Miss Poubelle was a teenager, one of the few entertainments available in her small southern town was driving down to the river and getting drunk. After a few cans of Miller, some teenage boys would often feel emboldened to drive back into town, mooning any cars that they passed.

Mooning, of course, is exposing the buttocks, usually with the intended effect of shocking or insulting those who see the display. The origin of the word is not difficult to understand-- there's visual metaphor that the exposed buttocks are round and (perhaps) shining like the moon.

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The Oxford English Dictionary traces the verb to moon only back to an improbably recent 1968, when it was recorded as slang from South Dakota. But the noun moon referring to the butt goes back much further. The first recorded usage is from 1756 in a quote "But his Moon shall never be covered by me." It is odd that the citation record then jumps forward nearly one hundred and seventy years, with the next usage in James Joyce's Ulysses in 1922! If the word was in common usage in the 19th century, it is surprising that no one has discovered any record of it.

The lack of early instances of the verb to moon might suggest that it is a recent invention, but it seems to Miss Poubelle that the widespread practice of mooning all around the English-speaking world may argue for an older origin. A quick web search shows that mooning incidents have been reported in Canada, England, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, as well as in the United States. There was no indication in any of these reports that the practice was known by any name other than mooning. But it is hard to believe that the word (or the practice) was invented in South Dakota in 1968 and has managed to spread to every corner of the world since then!

Of course, mooning is not restricted to English-speaking countries. In 2001, more than 1,000 Europeans mooned the U.S. president George W. Bush during a trip to Sweden to protest his policies. Most were Swedes, Danes, and Germans, showing that mooning is well-known there.

And there is a traditional form of insult among the indigenous Maori people of New Zealand which is known as whakapohane. Whakapohane most frequently seems to involve baring the buttocks to enemies. In a particularly notable instance of whakapohane, the Maori activist Dun Mihaka bared his ass to visiting British royalty in 1983.

Nevertheless, there does seem to be a particularly affinity between English speakers and mooning. Greek authorities arrested more than 300 tourists during the summer of 2002 for mooning incidents. The great majority were British. Corfu police chief, captain Spyros Skoularikis said: "For some strange reason we have very few mooning incidents among other nationalities. Maybe it's a question for sociologists and psychologists to take up."

Having spent some time with British tourists in Greece, Miss Poubelle can attest to the fact that they frequently drink astonishing amounts of alcohol. From reading news reports of mooning incidents, it quickly becomes clear that the prototypical mooner is drunk male between 16 and 30. The Southern boys of Miss Poubelle's childhood fit that profile, as well.

Furthermore, mooners rarely seem to carry out their performance while alone. Instead, they are usually with a bunch of other (drunk, young, male) people who encourage them. Since young Brits on holiday are frequently drunk, male, and in large groups, mooning is perhaps to be expected!

Miss Poubelle suspects that the prevalence of mooning across the English-speaking world shows that the practice, and probably the word, are quite old. The English were likely mooning each other hundreds of years ago, and the practice was spread to all their colonies around the world. Miss Poubelle has so far been unable to discover much about mooning in other languages and cultures (apart from the Maori whakapohane). Would some kind readers of The Guide care to enlighten her? She'll share interesting tidbits in a future column.