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You're Turning Violet, Violet!

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For weird, but true reasons, the character Violet Beauregarde, from Roald Dahl’s  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is one of my biggest icons. The original children’s book, with its dodgy origins in Dahl’s race politics and punitive attitudes towards children, has seen some controversy, and I’m not here to defend it. Nor am I really bothered with arguing with die-hard Dahl-fans about its supposed still-relevant value, and place within the children’s literature canon. For me, all I care about is Violet- specifically, the velour-clad, curled-lip incarnation from Tim Burton’s 2005 film. The one with the severe, blonde bob and power stance.

 

When I was a kid, she was far the coolest out of the golden-ticketers: I thought Veruca Salt’s dress was hideous, and Charlie a wet-blanket. But now in my adulthood, this gum-chewing, prize-winning, ball-kicking, pre-teen, who rocks a bright pink tracksuit like she was born to, has risen to totemic status in my life. For a reason that is difficult to explain. It’s predictable for me to write about her “queer-coded” fashion, her tomboy-ish badass-ery inspiring me from a young age. But I don’t think this is true, and the real reason is far more weird. For want of a better phrase- one that I couldn’t find on the internet or make up a suitably catchy one myself- she is my mental health icon.

 

The girls a-chewing, chew at last

The chewing muscles grow so fast

Violet has a giant chin

That’s just like a violin

 

More than once, when meeting a new person, the first thing they have said to me is a comment on my jaw. Telling you this may seem like I’m trying to flex something, but, as I hope will become apparent, I’m not. Normally, blatant, blurted observation on someone’s appearance upon first impression is facilitated by the social frenemy alcohol. So, when it happens,  it’s normally in the context of a party or the pub, being introduced to each other through a mutual friend. At the tap on the shoulder, they’ll turn, drink sloshing, and their gaze will stumble over my chin. Or, perhaps, interrupted from very important fag-rolling, they’ll glance up, and double-take, the low angle accentuating my features. And then, in whatever particular intonation is suited to their character and level of drunkenness, they’ll say to me their own varied take on the phrase  “Wow, haven’t you got a strong jawline.”

 

I cringe inside, smile politely, and use whatever social skills I have to move the talk onward. I’m not ungrateful- I understand it’s meant to be complimentary. Sharp, defined bone structure is currently prized more over a certain softness, and therefore is advantageous to anyone under mainstream beauty standards. One can argue even more so for a pre-T trans person who strives towards androgyny. So i don’t have much to complain about- and really, its few and far between, so I should take these compliments whenever they come. Particularly from drunk people. But I never really know what the right response to this is. Especially as what they speak of is not genetic, not prosthetic, and definitely not the result of something pleasant.

 

Chewing, chewing all day long. chewing, 
Chewing all day long.
Chewing, chewing all day long

 

In Tim Burton’ s film, Violet’s introduction is her annihilating two full- grown karate-masters, with one fell kick and gum-pop. Violet is a high-achiever. Violet has won 263 trophies. Violet  has chosen a rare, specific, passion, and stuck with it. Violet knows that to be the best is to work hard, work persistently, work vehemently. Violet has discipline, stamina, dedication. Violet heard about the biggest competition in the world, applied herself- and switched to candy bars. Violet has chewed this piece of gum for three months solid. Violet is feeling the pressure. Violet is about to swell up.

 

It was around the time that I was developing my very first artistic career assignment, that I found gum-chewing. Alone in the project management, I’d stay up late into the night to rigidly plan and edit, going over and over the show budget, terrified I’d make a mistake and undermine my own self-appointed responsibility. I believed that this project was crucial to prove myself, to show I was capable- that I was worthy to pursue an arts career. In the morning, I’d wake up with a thudding ache across my neck and chin. A curve, throbbing like an electric pulse, sliced all along my back molars and to the base of my ears. A dependable pain upon waking that I couldn’t explain, and couldn’t tame. Until I discovered gum.

 

Of course, I knew gum existed- but it had never been a main character. A villain, if anything- my mum thought it was disgusting, and if you absent-mindedly traced your hands under the desks at my secondary school, you’d flinch at the fungal remains of what some gross rugby captain had spat out. It also had stuck to it the miserable connotations of adolescent heterosexual courting rituals- of when I was handed minty freshness for the sixth form boys I didn’t fancy, waiting for us after school.

 

But, it had gotten to the point that the jaw ache was lasting all day- an endless circle of pain that was refreshed at the ringing of my alarm. It was until after uni one day, sitting at the top of the bus, groaning and clutching my face, when my housemate turned to me and reached into his pocket. “Maybe it’s just seized up from all your fucking talking. Maybe you need something to loosen it?” In his palm sat a little rectangle, split open at the end, silver innards enshrining little pearls, that glowed in the grimy, smelly humidity of the Stagecoach like magic beans. Extra Sugar Free: a 10 pc packet.

 

This would be my number one vice, my go-steady, for the next year.

 

Green. I don’t fuck with blue- no peppermint bullshit. Spearmint all the way- it’s for the tasteful chewers. And It’s Extra, or nothing. You can trust me to stay faithful. I’m a dedicated consumer, a person of habit- I only ate rice krispies for breakfast for the whole of Year Four, and most of Five. I’ll be your mainstay, your loving addictive personality. I’ll pluck the 60 piece tubs like fruit off off-licence shelves, store them in my breast pocket to rattle a serenade as I walk down the street. Stock up packets in domino-stacks along my kitchen cupboard, unwrapping them carefully, thankfully, like a teenage tryst, marvel at their purity, its shining flesh, undressed in my hand.

 

There is nothing more satisfying, more utterly relaxing, than that first bite of a new piece. That shivering crunch as the hard ice splinters- shooting down teeth, mint curling up your tongue like arctic breath. It’s euphoric. It’s pleasure. It’s the signal that things are cool. They are fresh.

 

You see, gum, the motion of chewing it, provides me with a rhythm. The internal thudding generated inside my skull becomes an aligning mantra: a dependable, continuous drive that, like a metronome, gives a stabilising focus for the noise inside my head.  My thoughts have always been fleeting, non-linear, leaping and fizzing from one thing to the next. Cognitive divergency, exacerbated by anxiety, means there is no real regard for narrative or sequential order. My “internal monologue” is instead a chorus, a crowd of half-snatched voices interrupting and speaking over each other- all about different things, but still seemingly in dialogue. And when I am tired, or sad, or worried, it becomes an uncontrollable barrage of  ideas, memories and hypotheticals whizzing past as arrows, slicing at any attempts to slow or catch them. I get lost, overwhelmed. Buried. 

 

But when I chew, I find a steadfast beat, a reliable tide retreating and returning in loyal repetition. Things seem to slow down, become single file. I watch, identify, as each thought strolls past, waving. They make sense, become lucid. Like I’m suddenly back in the room. I can focus. I can breathe.

 

I discovered that concentrating on my tasks no longer felt like a battle, that excruciating, anxious time spent waiting for a bus, or walking up to a house party, felt no longer unmanageable. The conversations that used to fly over my head, as I was swept along by an interior current, continually dragging myself back to the present, were no longer indecipherable. But clear, and engaging. I was a far better conversationalist. I felt like I’d found the secret, the key to ME and my brain. Addicts often say they feel that their substance completes them- that they can finally start again with a missing piece that final allows them to be who they are. I welcomed the squelching emanating from my mouth as the soundtrack to my new life.

 

Of course, it could never be said to be a real addiction, because gum can never change the chemical make-up of your body- not even if you’re masticating  every waking moment. And it would be ridiculous to say so, and undermining those with actual, real addictions. I couldn’t tell you how many sticks I was having a day. The thing is with gum it doesn’t really have a fixed temporality. You can burn through a whole pack in less than an hour for consistently fresh, and tasteful chews. Or, you can put in your loving time with a select piece- mull and roll it over for hours and hours until it’s a dead piece of cud in your mouth, bland and claggy like blue tack. I can’t give you an exact dosage. But I can describe what it like when my obsession was at its most active.

 

Listen close, and listen hard, 
The tale of Violet Beauregarde
This dreadful girl she sees no wrong
Chewing, chewing, chewing, chewing, chewing, chewing all day long

 

I chewed as often as I could, whenever I could. I chewed when I woke up. I chewed while making breakfast. I chewed on the bus. I chewed in my lectures. I chewed in the supermarket, I chewed in the pub, I chewed in the cinema, I chewed in the bath. I chewed in the theatre. I chewed in front of the telly. I chewed when I was reading, I chewed when I was cooking, I chewed when I was cleaning. I chewed when I was with friends, when I was on dates and when I was alone. I chewed when I was writing essays. I chewed when I went out jogging. I chewed and chewed and chewed and chewed.

 

I’d go to bed, and only realise I was still chewing when the slowing rhythm startled me out of slumber, like a baby whose mother stops rocking its crib. I’d go to shower, and grind doggedly through the stream, spitting out mouthfuls of water until I was satisfactorily clean. I’d go to drink, and confuse myself, the natural mechanism of swallowing feeling alien against the machinery of my tongue and teeth, spluttering hot coffee in a rejection of its textural simplicity.  I’d go to eat, but my jaw would prove exhausted, incapable of opening wide enough for anything that would actually nourish me.

 

One morning, I woke up late for uni and, running out the door, I snatched a breakfast bar. The fresh piece of gum I had only threw in my mouth five minutes ago needed to be removed, and through early-morning brain-fog still entangled in sleep, I remembered  Violet Bereugarde’s method of sticking pieces behind her ear at meal times for “safe-keeping”. Fumbling my door keys, I pasted it to the skin behind my left lobe, meaning to revive it before I reached the queue for the bus.

 

In my very serious, very intellectual Gender Studies lecture, where all the coolest English Literature students sat nursing espressos and in their urban outfitter flares, I felt a tap on my shoulder. My friend’s face leaned conspiratorially down from the row behind. “What is that in your hair?”

 

My hand scrabbled to the nape of my neck, and blanched at the leech that cloyed there. I pulled, tearing out baby hairs, and stared at it in my fingers- furry and wrinkled like something squeezed from a tumour. Regurgitated and porous.

 

There was nothing I could do but feign bemusement, and laugh along with my friend and the rest of her row, whispering “I have no idea how the fuck that got there, I hope no one stuck it to me on purpose!”.

 

The cud in my mouth lay flat on my tongue for the rest of the lecture, lifeless and rancid.

 

On the eve of my said project’s first performance, a photo was taken of the cast and I outside the pub. My lower face jutted out in a shark-like grin, hideous and pronounced like a carboard cut-out.

 

For years and years she chews away
Her jaw gets stronger every day.
And with one great tremendous chew
They bite the poor girls tongue in two

 

Have you ever woken in the middle of the night to a crack inside your mouth? I have.

 

Bruxism is the medical term for the involuntary clenching and grinding of teeth, normally while asleep. When awake, the average force that can be exerted when gritting you teeth is 150 pounds per square inch. Have a go now. Pretty tough, right? Now, when you are unconscious, that same pressure can multiply to up to 900 pounds per-square inch. That six times as much. Now, imagine that for at least five hours every night.

 

My personal reoccurring nightmare is the cliché of my teeth falling out in public- apparently indicative of certain insecurity or worry. Imagine waking from such a dream- to find yourself actually spitting out fragments onto your pillow.

 

It is more than quite stressful. Which is ironic, as the main cause of bruxism tends to be stress. All the anxiety goes to straight to your jaw, in an avalanche of oral fixation- tightening, like a clam defending itself from predators. Dentists will tell me that I have the most interesting tongue shape. It’s crenelated round the edges, frilled like a mushroom,  from the constant night time sculpting of my mandible and maxilla.  It’s a fun party piece- people often can’t really believe that it’s not the result of some tattooist’s knife. But, as I say to them, with a nickname like Lizard, it would be a missed opportunity if I chose that modification over a reptile slit.

 

Besides teeth breakage and tongue deformity, other fun problems that can result from bruxism can be headaches, sleep disruptions, ear aches and a condition called temporomandibular disorder- or TMD- a deep, crunching pain along the jaw, normally upon waking. Persistent tension results in the facial muscles seizing up, causing the surrounding areas and the jaw joint itself to spasm and lock. Nocturnal grinders will wake with their face cloaked in agony, but with no obvious injury to point the blame at.

 

Suffice to say, I wasn’t very good at dealing with it. It is said that temporary relief may be found from TMD through light ‘stretching’ of the jaw through careful, repetitive movement. The same type of movement that is not easily compared to the stringent activity of gum-chewing. The interim loosening that gum gave me, of both jaw and mind, would snap back ten-fold the next day. However, like many addictive substances, the brief numbing of body and soul it provided kept me coming back for more. I was attempting, but failing, to alleviate the physical effect of the acute stress I was experiencing- while simultaneously engaging in a self-sabotaging coping mechanism that allowed enough grounding stimulation that I could keep forcing myself through the immense task load and anxiety that was causing my mental and physical break down in the first place.

 

The term ‘Burn Out’ refers to the extreme exhaustion, and often mental collapse, that ensues after prolonged periods of stress. However, as a rather evocative title- the idea that all your resources have been drained in an all-consuming fire- it still doesn’t quite encapsulate what the experience is like for me. In the past, when things have become too much- when the expectation and the pressure starts to mount- I feel instead like I’m swelling up. It feels like all the responsibilities have worked their way under my skin, and are now engorging. They pull me tighter and thinner, mutating my flesh in excess, overspilling my careful limits and boundaries, until I’m no longer in control. Until I’m no longer myself. I never just fizzle out, delicately dwindle down to the dregs like a waning candle. I explode.

 

And afterwards, I am deflated, stretched out of proportion with a great void inside. One that I don’t know how to fill, except with the same pressure that was there before.

 

It makes perfect sense that Violet would be a gum chewer. She lives a highly-pressurised existence- the life of a karate champion requiring consistent attention to routine, discipline and skill. The towering presence of an over-bearing mother, offset by a trophy cabinet bursting at the seams with past achievements, means Violet has a lot to live up to. Work Ethic isn’t natural- it is maintained, and therefore easily pushed over the thin line to Work Addiction. It must feel crucial to maintain that internal drive, that thudding beat of productivity that allows you to focus, to keep succeeding. An obsessive personality, coupled with enabled perfectionism, is the ideal mixture for fixations to take hold. And nothing, nothing makes more sense to the perfectionist than turning your coping mechanism to profit.

 

And Violet takes the final piece of gum, the one she is warned against, the one she is told will wreak an awful consequence, she takes it and she chews it. She chews it and chews it, feeling the hot tomato soup, the mashed potato, the warm gravy, run down her throat in exceeds of pleasure. She chews and chews and chews until she can’t no more. Until her joy turns to disgust, as she begins to swell. She swells and swell and swells, until she can no longer move, until she is no longer recognisable. She swells until she can no longer do the karate moves that made her once so successful. She must be rolled as a giant blueberry to the juicing room to be juiced.

 

In the final chapter of the book, while Charlie zooms around the sky in a golden elevator with chocolate bulging out his pockets, the failed golden-ticketers slew out of the factory- slathered in the retributive muck of the awful foibles that Dahl so condemns. However, in the Burton film, Violet launches out of the factory doors in a somersault. Her skin is the same bright blue as her tracksuit, the joyous back flip displaying her seamless colour co-ordination. She twirls and spins, a newfound flexibility from the blueberry inflation. Violet has not lost, she has gained- her athleticism advanced, and a new look that her mother hates but she loves. Violet swelled. But she is not deflated. She is better.

 

And that is why we must try so hard,

To save Miss Violet Beauregarde

 

Nowadays, in the present, my jaw doesn’t quite jut so much anymore. There is nothing wrong with having pronounced features, and in fact can be iconic on the faces of the like of Freddie Mercury or Cara Delevigne. But, the lessening of mine is a sign that perhaps something it going a little better. Some things are a little calmer.

 

It was my dentist that recommended a hot little addition to my sultry night-time attire- a tight, form-fitting, totally transparent mouthgard. You can see the spit pooling in it and everything. I go to bed every night feeling like a sex icon, comforted in the knowledge I will not wake up in the morning with a mashed grill.

 

I now live a life as a humble ex gum-chewer. I have packed up my packets forever. Not that I fear a ‘relapse’ – throw me a stick of gum now and my jaw will almost involuntarily clamp up, shooting daggers in retribution. The TMD still simmers away: but I don’t see it as something to fight anymore, but rather as an inbuilt, mental health alarm system. When I have woken up too many days in a row feeling like my neck and chin is hot concrete, I know its time to step back a little. It is a literal pain, but I am grateful for it- as I have proved time and time again that I am not the best judge at recognising when I’m about to crash.

 

I still think about Violet. I think about her, and hurt for her in some ways. I worry that the pressure put on her at such a young age may have done lasting damage, that her passion was never truly her passion, more just a way to prove she was worthy. But other days I think about her, and I just think she’s great. I think she’s powerful, she knows what she wants, and she knows how to go after it. She knows how to turn failure into a positive- and use it to further herself in all the best ways.

 

One Halloween, I got blue tracksuit bottoms and a hoodie, and peppered my face with azure and purple eyeshadow, billowing from the centre of my nose and highlighted to shine like a fresh blueberry. I arranged the scraps of my queer under-cut into a power-bob, and set off for the party. There, my friend tugged me into the kitchen to meet the person they’d be dying to introduce me to.  Tapped on the shoulder, they swivelled round, vodka belching out the top of their red cup. Their eyes lit up. “Oh my god! That is such a cool costume! Veruca from Charlie and the chocolate factory! I love her!”.

 

“Yes,” I said, grinning shark-like. “Me too.”

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end.