Body Language of Hand To Mouth
Cue: Hand to Mouth
Synonym(s): Mouth Covering, Lip Playing, Lip Touching, Talking Through The Hand, Fingers To The Mouth.
Description: Hands that cover the mouth while speaking or wrap around the lips. Hands may also play with, or pluck the lips.
In One Sentence: Hands to the mouth signals lack of confidence and insecurity.
How To Use it: Touching the mouth with hands can make one feel more comfortable, however, this self soothing gesture is not seen as positive by others. Therefore, it should be avoided when possible.
Context: General.
Verbal Translation: “I’m timid, shy, lack self confidence. I’m going to play with my mouth or talk through my hand to hide my mouth. This will make me feel more secure because my mouth will be hidden.”
Variant: See Hidden Mouth or Mouth Conceal, Lip Picking, Lip Chewing or Chewing The Lips.
Cue In Action: Dave was on a date but it wasn’t going well as he was really nervous. He felt awkward and it showed. He spent most of the date talking through his hand and mumbling. She could barely hear what he was saying.
Meaning and/or Motivation: A gesture pattern that indicates timidity, insecurity, shyness or lack of self confidence.
Hand-to-face and hand-to-mouth are also sometimes attributed to lying body language although this is only sometimes the case. Hand-to-mouth actions are the most common target for auto touching. It might stem from the concern of giving up too much information, or letting a lie slip, or due to the need for reassurance.
Covering the mouth is a natural reaction children do when they tell a secret or inadvertently say a word they know they shouldn’t. Talking with ones hand covering the mouth “talking through the hand” or resting the hand around the mouth by wrapping the fingers around the top, are significant clues indicating insecurity.
Other times hand-to-mouth indicates female sexual tension such as when the index finger softly rubs against the lips. This is a form of pacifying due to the perceived inability to act on a sexual desire to kiss or be kissed.
Adults that are tense or anxious will play with their mouth or lip. Mouthing a pen, cigarette, piece of their own hair, and even gum when used as a comfort device, are a substitute for the mother’s breast and early childhood mouthing. Sucking, plucking, picking or chewing the lips, rubbing them with a finger or thumb are all forms of auto touching. Confident individuals would never consider using this type of security blanket, let alone be seen touching their faces out of insecurity.
Mouth covering is another way to reduce the pain of telling a lie. In this case, it is so as to “speak no evil.” Small children perform a full cover and even slap their mouths when they say something they shouldn’t. Grown adults will sometimes cup their hands to their mouths like children in effort to “jam the words back in their mouths” but usually use more subtle gestures such as talking through their hand or placing a finger softly over their lips. Subconsciously, hand-to-mouth gestures leads people to distrust others, and see them as less honest overall.
Cue Cluster: Mouth touching is often interchanged with masked arm crossing where the arm is placed across the front of the body forearm against the table. A coffee cup barrier might also be coupled where a drink is held at right angles in front of the body as a cut-off. Eye contact will also be limited, hands might touch the back of the neck, or cheeks.
Body Language Category: Auto contact or self touching, Barriers, Blocking or Shielding, Courtship displays, Low confidence body language, Low confidence hand displays, Nervous body language, Pacifying, Suspicious body language or suspicion.
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