Mewing

Jay Leno's prominent mandible was retrospectively attributed to clandestine mewing sessions.

“To mew is to sculpt oneself not from marble, but from the very breath of elegance... and kitty litter.”

– Oscar Wilde on mewing

Mewing is a form of oral posture invented in 1974 by British "orthodontists" (a sophisticated locution for "closeted furries") Mike and John Mew when an attempt to mimic the feline kind's distinctive "mew" unexpectedly culminated in a dramatic tightening of their midfaces and the spontaneous emergence of chiselled jawlines. Inspired, or perchance alarmed by the biomechanics of high-pitched feline vocalisation, i.e. with a raised larynx, closed mouth and subtle diaphragmatic control, the Mews' discovery ultimately took on a near-mystical status among its adherents, who claimed it could alter craniofacial structure, widen palates, and confer a kind of primal magnetism previously thought to be the exclusive domain of genetics.

Amongst these fervent believers was Barry Mogg, a charismatic and notorious figure who swiftly rose to prominence as the leading evangelist of the practice, preaching its jaw-sculpting gospel with cult-like zeal to the Looksmaxxer youth counterculture of which his acolytes considered (and continue to consider) him the Messiah.

Origins

Born on 7 September 1928, John R. C. (Remote Control) Mew's family bloodline consisted entirely of closeted furries, many of whom held distinguished posts in Victorian dentistry, zoology, and amateur theatre. Raised in a household where orthodontic moulds were kept alongside catnip sachets and dental drills hummed alongside VHS recordings of Cool Cat Saves the Kids, it was only natural that John developed an early fascination with the intersection of craniofacial structure and feline grace, hereditary characteristics that John would eventually bequeath to his son Michael upon his wife's unanticipated decision to give birth during a local production of Cats. Reportedly, the child was born mid-encore of "Memory", and emerged already exhibiting a high palatal arch and a pronounced gag reflex, signs described as "What the fuck?" by a random lady in the audience whom John promptly declared "the midwife".

John Remote Control Mew's prom outfit, c. 1946

Michael would go on to become both the protégé and heir to John's orthodontic vision, carrying forward the family's tradition of speculative anatomy and vaguely uncanny elegance. Together, they would redefine the limits of oral posture and tongue placement, driven by a shared creed: that a properly supported jawbone was not merely dental, but destiny, especially if one aspired (as they did) to the silent poise and predatory magnetism of the domestic cat. Needless to say, this creed would culminate in their most famous contribution to the field: Mewing. A discipline of tongue posture and facial tension so exacting it was said to evoke not just an unmistakable air of superiority and the uncontrollable urge to elbow rivals in the Adam's apple but also sharper bone structure. It was because of this that John's now-divorced wife would end up filing a restraining order against him in November 1977 for purportedly body-slamming her pet great white shark.

Barry Mogg posing for the April 1985 release of Vogue.

Rise of the Looksmaxxers

A subversive movement comprised of jawline-obsessed rebels who rejected society's norms in favour of immaculately sculpted cheekbones calling themselves the Looksmaxxers emerged from the shadows of Thatcherite austerity and synth-pop excess during the neon-drenched, shoulder-padded chaos of 1982. Spearheaded by the enigmatic Barry Mogg, a leather-clad visionary with a mullet more profound than Billy Ray Cyrus, the Looksmaxxers - a shadowy, albeit progressively ubiquitous network of appearance-obsessed disciples who rejected mainstream norms in favour of rigorous facial rituals and ascetic discipline - transformed personal grooming into a revolutionary act, blending orthodontic zeal with the primal allure of a housecat on the prowl.

It all began when Barry Mogg, then a disgraced orthodontic assistant and part-time David Bowie impersonator, had an epiphany during a particularly aggressive performance of "Cat Scratch Fever". Fresh off a failed audition for the Cats 2 (Because One Was Not Enough) musical, Mogg encountered none other than Dr. John Mew and his son Michael "Mike" Mew, whose newly minted theory of mewing promised to chisel jaws and widen palates through sheer oral discipline. Mogg, whose own jawline was described by contemporary and physicist Hugh Jass as "defying Euclidean geometry, akin to tesseract, changing shape arbitrarily depending with the observer's perspective", saw more in mewing than a mere dental quirk.

Proclaiming himself the "Jawline Messiah", Mogg rallied disaffected youth under the iron fist of the Iron Lady, where economic doom and gloom (up in his room) ignited a thirst for self-reinvention. Wielding a megaphone crafted from melted dental retainers, he preached in abandoned roller rinks, caterwauling such words of wisdom as "If I can mew it, so can mew!" in the streets. Mogg's judicious philosophy of looksmaxxing demanded aesthetic domination through rigorous facial rituals, nasal breathing, and "mogging" - a term Mogg coined for aesthetically crushing rivals with a single smouldering glance. Over the years, the Looksmaxxers eschewed the era's garish leg warmers and teased bangs, cultivating instead chiselled, angular facial features sharp enough to be utilised as cutlery.

Cultural impact

Mewing's cultural footprint extended beyond its immediate followers. The technique's purported benefits captivated a broad audience, with practitioners claiming it could induce involuntary admiration from onlookers. A peculiar incident in 1984 saw a Norfolk fishmonger, one Ebenezer Codswallop, claim that his brief foray into mewing rendered his jawline so formidable that it caused a local tabby to abdicate its territory in a nearby alley and migrate to the Soviet Union within the succeeding hour. Either that or some foreign intelligence agents of the KGB who were quite zealous mewers kidnapped it for their own personal ends.

One notable 1986 event in Hyde Park, where Mogg led approximately 500 adherents in a synchronised mewing demonstration accompanied by orchestral music courtesy of his close friend Wolfgang Amadeus Mewzart (a self-proclaimed "purr-cussionist" who conducted the ensemble wearing cat ears), was misreported by the Daily Mail as a novel form of public calisthenics.

Could this image perhaps be a glimpse of the once immaculately proportioned Barry Mogg going about his day-to-day business as of today - in the form of an alcoholic carouser fallen from his former splendour?

Down with Mogg

Mewing's propagation was not without contention. Barry Mogg's fervent advocacy drew scrutiny, particularly following a 1987 incident where he was accused of "aesthetic provocation" after his jawline reportedly demoralised a rival faction outside a nightlife venue in Birmingham. His television programme, Transcendental Contours, featuring protracted segments of silent mewing interspersed with philosophical musings, attracted a modest but dedicated viewership until the Network 21 pirate station that had his transmission put on the airwaves for all of London to see was raided by local authorities on 3 April, not due to their lack of a broadcasting license, but rather because they (presumably out of envy for the amount of clout he was receiving) denounced Barry Mogg as a "propagator of mandibular misinformation".

Mogg's influence waned in the wake of his disappearance the following year during a retreat in the Scottish Highlands, where he was last documented attempting to align his palate with the lunar cycle. His final missive, inscribed on a discarded dental chart, read, "The jawline endures". Unsubstantiated rumours suggest Mogg changed his surname to Henderson via a deed poll dated 21 October 1995 and was subsequently seen frequenting rough pubs, where his once-chiseled mandible was allegedly compromised by a beer belly and baldness, though such claims remain speculative.

Cultural decline

The fervour surrounded mewing subsided with the onset of the 1990s, as cultural priorities shifted toward less structured expressions of identity. Detractors, including prominent orthodontic authorities, dismissed mewing as pseudoscience, citing its lack of empirical validation and the Mews' apparent monomania towards feline physiology. Michael Mew, son of the initiator of mewing, was thus promptly expelled from the British Orthodontic Society and faced a misconduct hearing for, in their words, "posing harm" to child patients by encouraging to emulate the oral posture of a Siamese cat during critical developmental years, a practice deemed "Bat Fuck Insane" by the presiding council.

John Remote Control Mew ultimately passed away on 25 June 2025 in Braylsham Castle, a moated fortress (and drug house) he constructed in Sussex from between 1993 and 1999 and had since rented out as a luxury accommodation with all the money he had received from clandestine catnip futures trading. The whereabouts of his son Michael remain a mystery to the City of London Police, though a 2008 sighting reported by Twitter user @chris_peacock described him scurrying from a cardboard box in the middle of a London street, clutching a tattered script of Cats.

See also

• Involuntary celibacy
• HowTo:Get Laid