Special In-Depth Review: The Cheeky Manifesto

As an apology for the lack of reviews of late, I have now written a rather long and in-depth review of The Cheeky Manifesto by The Cheeky Girls. I hope you all enjoy it.


When The Cheeky Girls released their first single, The Cheeky Song (Touch My Bum), many people dismissed it as throwaway manufactured pop. Moreover, the fact that two identical twin sisters were singing a song written by their mother imploring the listener to fondle their rear end, made it seem all the more sinister.

Yet, at the same time, postmodernist disassociationist writers saw the Cheeky Song for what it really was: a richly layered philosophical treatise, written in the only language that the modern Westerner understands, pop music. Now the Cheeky Girls have put their political thoughts onto paper, and the results are stark, clear, and brilliant.

The most important part of the Cheeky Girls’ philosophy is that of identity. They remove any semblance of solipsism or existential doubt by the forceful definition of what they believe to be the limits of their physicality. ‘We are the Cheeky Girls/You are the Cheeky Boys’ they say, drawing a line in the sand between what constitutes ‘themselves’ and ‘the other’. Delving deeper, their language indicates a belief in a plurality of matter; ‘You are the Cheeky Boys’ [emphasis mine] shows that the Cheeky Girls consider all that lies without themselves to be more than a single substance. By saying this so early in their writing they distance themselves – the writers – from their readers, while at the same time making us aware that we are all as one, all cheeky.

The next part of the Cheeky Manifesto is pure genius. To quote: ‘We are the Cheeky Girls/You are the Cheeky Boys’. It is nothing more than the previous line repeated, but contains no mere repetition of meaning, but so much more! By phrasing their previous thoughts in exactly the same way but at a later time, they prove that their views persist through the fourth dimension! The truth of the separation of Cheeky Girls (them) and Cheeky Boys (us) continues through time; it is not a mere momentary thing!

Having proved the persistence of their beliefs through time, the Cheeky Girls get into the meat and potatoes of their philosophy. Again, to quote: ‘Come and smile/Don’t be shy/Touch my bum/This is life’. How much wisdom of the world is contained in this four line stanza! How many philosophers would have given their lives just to utter such profound a truth in so few words! Such breathless veracity!

It is best to take the lines one by one, such is the depth of meaning contained within. Firstly, ‘Come and smile’, deceptively simple in its message of hope. But, this being a Cheeky Girls writing, there is far more than meets the eye. The ‘smile’, as the Cheeky Girls mean it, has layers of meaning that peel away like an onion. Firstly, there is the meaning inherent in the smile, happiness and contentment. Next, consider its physical shape. A downward gradient, evening out and then rising, symmetrically beautiful and mathematically useful. The ‘smile’ for the Cheeky Girls represents mathematical purity; the arc, the arch, the bridge, the valley, the mountain, the parabolic certainty of circadian rhythms…all are welcomed and thrust upon our consciousness by this word. Finally, the smile sits on one’s face, like a harlot. The Cheeky Girls are asking us to consider and appreciate the purity of mathematical form, but not to trust it, as we would in the case of a harlot sitting on our face.

This brings us to the next line. ‘Don’t be shy’. To be shy is to be somewhat afraid in the face of new things. What new things can we possibly be facing? The truth. The Cheeky Girls are showing us the Truth, and they want us to be brave, to stand eye to eye with it and stare it down, like two metaphysical boxers about to exchange epistemological blows in the ring of knowledge. For only then will we overcome our ignorance in the face of certainty.

Next, the line ‘Touch my bum’. For the uneducated layman – and there are many – this is nothing more than a vulgar invitation to caress the Cheeky Girls’ posteriors. But for those acquainted with the history of philosophical thought, the line harkens back to centuries’ worth of profound thinking. The Cheeky Girls’ bums have both the mathematical attractiveness of a smile (indeed, isn’t a bum two smiles?), and also a huge amount of symbolism.

For example, the Cheeky Girls’ bums, resembling peaches as they do, can be seen as the fruit from the tree of knowledge. By tasting this fruit (by ‘touching the bum’) we can learn truth. Moreover, the fruit provided by the Cheeky Girls comes in pairs (pairs of pairs!), which is more than can be said for the mythical pomegranate of Genesis. The truth of the Cheeky Girls’ bums (an a posteriori truth, as Kant would have referred to it) is both mathematically true as well as corresponding to Tarski’s T-Scheme of Truth.

And this brings us to the final line in the Cheeky Girls’ Cheeky Manifesto: ‘This is Life’. And what is this, this ‘this’ that is life? The truth. The truth of the mathematical beauty inherent in a smile, the truth facing you when you jettison your shyness, and the truth of the Cheeky arses. These truths, and all truths like them, they are life.

And there you have it: The Cheeky Manifesto, the Cheeky Girls’ Cheeky Song in philosophical tract form, has solved the meaning of life. It took a pair of politician-seducing Transylvanian twins in hotpants to do it, but at last the meaning of life has been found.

God help us all.