Though it is not available online, my post about Andrew Gomez, my student who became the first female-to-male transgendered Homecoming King in the USA, is in the new issue of XY Magazine. XY in America is not to be confused with XY Online, the Australian pro-feminist site run by Michael Flood ( a site, coincidentally, where I have an article or two available). It’s nice to see Andrew’s remarkable story continue to attract attention.
It’s a busy day, and I’m trying to finish a couple of writing projects that have March 1 deadlines, so not much time to blog.
What I did want to touch on is a lighter subject: picking.
I’ve been married four times and lived with a couple of other women for extended periods. (I never did single well, evidently, from the time I was seventeen). And just about every one of the women with whom I have lived in or out of wedlock has developed a fascination with grooming me. Whether it was searching my back for acne or patrolling my beard line looking for ingrown hairs, virtually everyone with whom I’ve been in a long-term relationship has had a strong desire to explore, poke, pluck, and pop various parts of my body. I have never once felt even the remotest desire to reciprocate.
Mind you, I like my wife’s grooming. Though it’s periodically painful to have tiny hairs torn out, zits punctured and so forth, I take it as evidence of affection. It’s obviously a behavior we humans share with a wide variety of our fellow animals; everyone from primates to penguins seems to delight in removing impurities from a loved one’s skin, fur, or feathers. Despite more than twenty years studying or teaching gender and sexuality, I’ve never given much thought to the cultural or psychological implications of this behavior in humans. In my experience, at least, this sort of grooming in heterosexual relationships is rarely reciprocal — it seems to be initiated mostly by the female partner, and is submitted to with varying degrees of willingness by the male. (In the animal kingdom, it does appear to be a gender-neutral behavior, and enthusiastically mutual.)
Honestly, by the time I was in my third or fourth relationship with a woman who wanted to dig around for ingrown hairs or pimples, I began to wonder if I was uniquely in need of such grooming. Was I not washing or shaving often enough? Did I need to change my razor even more often? I remember bringing it up with my friend Joseph a decade or so ago, asking him if his long-time girlfriend ever did something similar. Joe got very excited: “Oh hell yes, she does. All the time.” We swapped “horror” stories of particularly painful “procedures” to which we had submitted at the hands of more than one woman. It was a relief to both of us to discover that this behavior on the part of our lovers was not a response to our own uniquely problematic hygiene!
It’s easy to psychoanalyze, I suppose. Digging in someone’s skin for what is dirty or stuck is a visible and tactile method of removing impurities. If there are things about one’s partner that you wish you could “root out”, it’s a good deal easier to pop that annoying zit on his shoulder or pluck that fascinating hair on his jaw than it is to transform a more deep-seated problem! The trouble with that theory is that in my (considerable) experience, my partner’s desire to groom me is not in any way linked to the health of our relationship. It’s not as if my wife only wants to poke and pluck and explore when we’re struggling. Indeed, this “grooming urge” seems fairly constant for her (and for my previous lovers and spouses). It would be too simplistic to posit that it is primarily a response to trouble in the relationship.
The wonderful psychologist David Schnarch wrote my favorite book about sex in long-term relationships, one I highly recommend to everyone: Passionate Marriage. One of his chapters talks about the hilarious, wince-inducing topic familiar to anyone who’s been in a long-term relationship: “Normal Marital Sadism.” Sometimes, Schnarch says, no matter how good our partnership is, we’re going to have urges to be cruel to each other. Mind you, he’s not talking about domestic violence; he’s talking about everything from petty remarks to sexual withholding! The trick to successful marriage, he suggests, is recognizing NMS for what it is, and not being terrified by its emergence.
NMS is a post for another day (read his book), but it seems to tie in nicely to this “grooming compulsion.” One of the purposes of relationship is for each partner to help the other grow and transform; sexual intimacy and enduring commitment can become vehicles for personal and mutual transformation. Husbands and wives must always live in that difficult tension between radical acceptance of th other and the obligation to push the other to transform. And one small, fascinating way in which some folks seem to enjoy facilitating transformation lies in picking zits off a lover’s back. There’s no denying my wife’s delight in this small aspect of “marriage maintenance”; you should hear her crows of triumph when she gets out a “difficult” ingrown hair from my goatee. She doesn’t invite me to reciprocate, and I’m fine with that. Some marriage practices ought to be radically mutual, while others can be decidedly unilateral. I’m happy to have the poking, plucking, popping be entirely in her bailiwick.
Your stories or comments are welcome.
I had one boyfriend who liked to do that (popping zits and so forth), but he was a sadist. (I mean that in the straight-up sense, not that he was a jerk or anything like that.)
I definitely do this whenever the boyfriends will let me.
I will contribute a non-judgmental “ewwwww”. My best friend has described me as having a “strong sense of bodily integrity”. I wouldn’t want someone poking around on me, and would be totally grossed out doing that to my boyfriend. Ewwww.
Huh, I’ve never done that to a boyfriend. But I’ve really, really wanted to. Glad to know I’m not a freak.
another “eww” here.
i’m a lesbian and i have never had a desire to do this to my partner and never had a girlfriend want to do it to me. thank god.
Joining in the “ew” crowd. I am female and while I’ve yet to have a relationship close enough for this to be even vaguely appropriate, I cannot imagine myself doing this. Just the idea of popping someone else’s zits is repulsive to me. (My own, no problem, but someone else’s?) I think the limit of my involvement with a partner’s grooming would be pointing out if he missed a spot shaving–and not that I want to fix it myself! The zits would irritate me aesthetically, but I would more likely avoid them entirely.
Of course, my thoughts in the past about whether or not I’d be interested in a career in medicine were always tempered by the fact that then I’d have to touch strangers who are potentially hairy, greasy, dirty, or much more, and that would just be the healthy ones!
Hi Hugo, your wife and exes aren’t alone:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070602015012AARuSEa
And I am not alone either, I guess! It’s weird, but something can be disgusting and fascinating at the same time. (Like a horror movie?) I’ve only had one boyfriend whom I was close enough to to ask to pop his zits, and he was freaked, but I often feel that “compulsion” you write about.
I know it’s gross, but its amazingly interesting.
Ha, my girlfriend sort of does this. I’ve never had any desire to reciprocate, but I always imagined that it’s basically a form of childlike exploration. People so rarely have the opportunity to really explore bodies other than their own, many people take full advantage of the opportunity when it arises.
“Exploring” a partner’s body without permission seems pretty invasive. We only this by invitation, as in: Would you see what’s on my back? Do I have a tick there?
As for Schnarch’s book. It’s good, but I (and especially my wife) like Robert Masters infinitely more even though it’s less sexually juicy:
http://www.amazon.com/Transformation-Through-Intimacy-Journey-Monogamy/dp/0973752653/
I often wondered just how common the back-acne picking thing could really be in American women. Until I was babysitting my nephew, and at the end of it, I went to change my shirt and my sister just goes “oh let me get that,” and picks a zit before I can move or say anything, and damn, it really does frickin’ hurt!
I don’t hear about people doing this to each other in other countries. America: wtf.
Ewwww, does this ever bring back memories best left unstirred. When I was a kid, clear up till late teens, my mom had such a ball picking at my face and back. She never listened to me beg her to stop it. Dad knew all about it but didn’t stop her. And he let her do it to him too. One day I just plain passed out in mid-session–from fear and rage–and she finally found some other amusement. I wasn’t one of those people who go around fainting all the time either. But it has taken her a few decades to realize that what she did was really wrong. It belongs between consenting adults. The last thing I needed was for someone at home to find anything wrong with my looks, and do things I’d never heard of any other kid having done to them.
She tried to defend it by comparing it to grooming among apes and so on, but I pointed out that there it was mutual and didn’t hurt. (She never offered to let me have some sport with HER skin.)
I guess it’s a form of comfort to hear that other folks have this done to them. But it sounds kind of unhealthy unless the person it’s done to specifically asks for it. I think a compulsion to pick at someone else sounds kind of sick, and I think Hugo may have nailed it when suggesting that it’s a dodge for issues not so easily rooted out. Women, deprived of power in other areas, have what power they do posess go rotten like that (an insanity born of powerlessness), and hurt their own kids and men. But it is also a symptom of a long tradition of regarding 1) the body as evil and corrupt, 2) the individual as imperfect and in constant need of alteration. A whole industry, cosmetic surgery and so on, thrives off this theme, and while so many people pour their energies into it, so many other evils go unopposed.
I know only one thing. I’m with Roadrunner on bodily integrity. Any idiot ever tries that stuff on me again, I’ll make an idiot-shaped hole in the wall.
Hilarious! :-) I used to do this to my ex ALL the time, and he’d get very angry. I try to control it with my husband because he’s a lot more physically touchy, but if something is really bothering me, he’ll let me take care of it. If I don’t, there’s no point having a conversation because I’m paying more attention to the “ungroomed” part of him than I am to what he’s saying.
On the other hand, it’s considered perfectly normal if you do this stuff to your kids.
TO my mind, this stems from our culture’s obseesion with female perfection. DO you know a single solitary women who would leave the house with a whitehead (or blackhead) anywhere on her body she can reach? Me neither. We are told a zillion times a day that it is not socially acceptable.
When you are intimate with someone, your sense of self merges with theirs to some degree (hence married couples being “one person” before the law, as in not being required to testify against each other), and I think some women expand their area of “policing” for imperfections to their partners.
When your mind has been brainwashed to POLICE POLICE POLICE POLICE it is hard to turn that inner prompt off.
(It seems utterly wrong to do this to your kid, though, unless requested. ANd wrong to do it to ANYONE who OBJECTS. My husband objects, for instance, and I leave him be. But I used to “treat” my (male) best friend’s back zits)
i went to scripps, a women’s college, and we were picking, plucking, extracting and poking each other with great abandon for four long years. also, yes, this happens in other countries. in india, uncles, aunts, cousins and grandparents—and house help—take (my) matters into their own hands without a moment’s hesitation.
My mother did it to my brother and myself when we started having pimples. I very rarely pick at my brother’s face (he asks me to pick at his back whenever I’m home, though - because he can’t reach it. He picks his own face), but I do know I’ve gone at it on my partners’ faces before. My first ex found it amusing and his blackheads drove me *insane* so I made him try out a Biore Pore Pack (which he sportively went along with).
My most recent ex also underwent my grooming, and although I asked him over and over to tell me if it hurt, he never protested. I did it less and less as he grew into the habit of washing his face properly. Zits, in my family, have more to do with lack of hygiene than physical attractiveness. Blackheads are essentially dirt. Whiteheads are packs of oil under skin. Why anyone would want to walk around with those on is somewhat beyond me.
I forgot to add, thanks Hugo for kicking this out into the daylight. I can understand grooming as an act of affection, but the idea of the body as eternally imperfect is a toxic one, and those procedures which border on unanesthetized surgery are OUT–except for consenting adults.
I hope some of you spread this link around. I hope it helps bring on the day when doing this to an unconsenting child is not considered in any way hilarious, normal or right!
In three long term relationships I never experienced or initiated NMS (but I am a compulsive groomer).
I’ve been a groomer in only one relationship. I don’t know why that one was different. Maybe I was needier somehow. *shrug* It was the only relationship where I didn’t feel a deep intellectual compatability, so perhaps I was compensating, looking for another way to bond.
Another data point: My mom used to like plucking my hair or popping my blackheads, at least when I was younger. She’d probably still do it, if I’d let her.
Hm. Nother few data points: my husband does this to me all the time. I wouldn’t say it thrills me, but he seems to enjoy it so much I put up with it. I’ve never done it except when someone asked, and then only reluctantly. My parents used to do it for each other, at each other’s request, when I was a kid and they were happily married.
I would not touch pimples (unless the other person actually requested help), but I love cleaning out the dried-up “aftermath” of, I guess, whiteheads. TMI, anyone? :) The more interesting data point here is that my SO, who is male, never used to do this until I started “cleaning him up”, and now he took up the habit so enthusiastically himself that it really annoys me - it hurts like heck when he goes about policing my upper arm, but it has grown into a full-blown obsession on his part.
I don’t get the same urge when I see the hairs sprouting on my legs, for instance, so it’s definitely not the POLICE POLICE habit in my case that other people have mentioned. It’s more to do with showing care and familiarity, almost assuming the other’s body as one’s own, in a good way (ie ultimately respecting the other person’s wishes).
Oh yes, and we are not from the US, either. I suspect that US culture is more likely to influence people towards feeling revolted at the thought of picking and plopping others than to encourage them to engage in this. Physical impurities and imperfections are not as big a deal elsewhere - they aren’t as likely to be equated with lack of hygiene in general (gleaming white theeth for instance are likely to be thought of as weird and unnatural rather than ideal).
This is totally normal in Bali and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, especially when hordes of people are looking for each other’s head lice or gray hair. Also goes for pimples and hard to reach “stray” hair.
I don’t pull out hairs or pop pimples, but I do enjoy when my partner and I “wash” each other if we take a shower together. I enjoy it because of the sensuality and affection that it shows for the other person. It feels good (physically and emotionally) and it is a good excuse to touch my partner’s body (in a very sensual but not necessarily sexual way), and for him to touch mine of course.
My partner has just started “grooming” me…plucking hairs that bother him. He is quite obsessive in general, though. Maybe it is an obsessive/compulsive thing??
In relation to Ed’s comment, I dated a Filipino man for a while. He also “groomed” me, but in a more general sense. He liked to dry and brush my hair for me when I/we got out of the shower. He liked me to do the same (he had long waist length straight hair.)
In response specifically to Hugo’s situations… People who get involved with partners who are addicts (drugs, alcohol or otherwise) tend to have a very strong urge to nurture. People who come from families who have problems with addiction as well tend to have a strong urge to nurture. It is one of the aspects of the cycle (of coming from a family with addiction problems and getting into a relationship with addiction problems) that is most difficult to break.
My family has problems with alcoholism and various other drugs at different points. Alcohol has always been the foundation of the problem. My mother left my father after 35 years and got back into a relationship with a man whom she completely takes care of. The only difference is lack of alcohol and the violence that goes with it. A brother of mine (the most responsible of the 3) has a tendency to get involved with women who need “to be taken care of” (emotionally and financially). I rebelled against the urge to nurture someone physically when I started to realize where it got my mother. However, I still have a tendency to attrack men who need a lot of emotional nurturing.
I agree with KMTBerry and also with the urge to nurture:
“What? You’re going out of the house like that?!” “let me fix that for you…” and it is kind of like Mom wiping your face with a saliva-dampened kleenex.