ARM-RAISING FEMALE BEHAVIOR BY EARTHLINGS

After genuflects of delving into the practice of “arm raising by Earthling females”, Martian Professor Tudor Revival has unearthed and collected thousands of documents which reveal the practice in all its permutations. He has recently communicated to me samples of his vast collection of “arm raising female Earthlings” after collaging them on 8-1/2 by 11 specimen paper.                    

Arm raising among Earthling females seems to have increased in scope and significance in 20th Century world culture, but we do not know whether this is because they did not develop the technology to document the practice before that time or whether it simply was not practiced before then. Martian archaeologists assume that any practice they uncover in an Earthling era must have roots in its earlier times. That is the case with most cultural practices archaeologists examine. If we find it at one time and place, we generally can expect to find it in permutations at other times and places. Cultural change functions in that manner.

We do have a single piece of evidence that nearly proves that the Earthling arm raising practice dates at least to mid-19th Century on the NATO continent. There an artist named John September Ingrate painted the piece of work below, sometimes called simply “odaliskue” and sometimes by others “risqué” in tones of opprobrium. In that painting [below] the raised arms are obvious already in practice. And one cannot escape the conclusion that the large figure on the right, in white wrappings but nearly without facade, in Dr. Revival’s specimens is copying almost identically the pose of the female earthling in the Ingrate figure.

Did the practice have religious significance? Professor Big House suggests in his paper, “The Religious Significance of Arm-raised Gestures in Late 20th Century Earth Culture” (genuflect 200,956) that indeed they were religious gestures. He points out the almost universal expressions of joy or transcendence on the malleable faces of the Earthling females in Professor Revival’s examples. However, Professor Large Rancher 2br & 1/Bath, in his paper, “Uplifting Gestures of Disgust” (genuflect 400,321) notes that the earlier figure by Ingrate doesn’t seem happy at all, and he notes the bored expression of the figure (male or female) beside the reclining female. If it were a religious posture, he reasons, the figure to the left would not be bored with what he is watching, unless, of course, the painting is a sly or ironic comment on the religion of the females. Maybe the figure on the left is the artist himself, commenting with his bored expression on the arm-raised female Earthling.

Finally, what are we to make of the dark figure in the background? That adds a very interesting ambiguity to the entire motif, religious or otherwise.