(911 words)
it's a little wonky...
Elly Jarvis
Cultural Critique
March 22, 2012
I know what you just
did…
Imagine
Jim and Sallie are dating. Jim and Sallie are out for dinner with Sallie’s
parents. It is a nice dinner, the family is getting to know Jim, they are
enjoying their endless breadsticks and the charming conversation.
Jim
leaves for the bathroom and comes back…and none of us are tricked by what he’s
just done. We know your secret Jim. You left the dinner table with pimples on
your face and now they’re gone. You may think Jim, foolhardily, we are asking
ourselves “Where did they go?!!” As if.
If you think we don’t know you just popped every one of those little pus
puppies, you’re in the dark. Your face has left you, instead of red-handed,
red-faced. And now you look even sillier than you did before. Jim tries to play
it off, casually taking a sip of his wine, “So tell me about your stocks?” he
asks Sallie’s parents. They oblige his answer, trying to look more at their
food than at his face.
Don’t
get me wrong. Everyone gets pimples. I get pimples. You get pimples. Your mom
regrettably still gets pimples—that’s why she wears all the creams and the
things to bed.
What
I’m saying here is: pimples are fun to pop. We all love to pop them. Fuck the
people who say pimples scar, it scars me having to stare at your unpopped
pimples. People who don’t pop their pimples inspire hatred in us pimple-poppers:
we stare at their bubbling blemishes and beg that we may go over, breaking
social boundaries, and pop their pimples for
them. Even writing this inspires angry thoughts of my friend Kaashyapee Jha in
high school Calculus, whose pimples were bigger than the problems we were
trying to solve.
This essay is not an argument
against popping pimples. Trust me, I know how haggard a pimple can get.
Sometimes shit gets real. This essay is an argument against popping pimples in
the midst of a social engagement. I use the term “social engagement” lightly--
imagine anything you are doing with other people. That is a social engagement.
We’re all guilty! You’re at dinner
with some friends, you are studying at the library, perhaps you are at a
basketball game, it makes no difference. You come into the event with a pimple
(or maybe even several—YIKES!) that are driving you crazy. During your social
engagement your hand keeps casually grazing your pimples, eager to find a
moment to slip off and put them to an end.
This
already is troublesome. Everyone else can already see that you have a pimple,
so it is unpleasant to be a victim to watching you caress it constantly. I know, it’s really really hard to not
do, but it’s also really hard to watch you.
After
you have potentially been grazing your pimples for quite some time, you pop off
into the bathroom and you go to town: you pop this, that, there, and near
there. You get pimples you didn’t even know you had: you are really on a role.
Or
perhaps you’re more of the spontaneous type. Instead of the pimple grazing, you
instead go to the bathroom with the sincere intent of doing your number one or
your number two. But once you’re here, in the bathroom, you recognize how many
haggard pimples you have to pop…and you do your thing.
Here’s
the silly truth: you looked better with your pimples than you do now. Your
pimples were forgivable, no one judges anyone for having a couple of clogged
pores. However now you look truly silly.
Which is better: having a pimple
face or a freshly popped one? I decided to conduct my own social experiment to
see which seems to get you more winks at the library, so to say. I let my pimples grow in number for a
couple of days and went to the undergraduate library at the University of
Michigan. My books in hand, I sat down at a table across from the hottest boy I
could find: and trust me, he was pretty.
While
I attempted to engage my Buddhism reading I would occasionally look up from my
book to give a coy look to the boy across from me. Hey I’d say with my eyes. He’d oblige my smile back. Things seemed
to be going well.
BUT
I’VE GOT ALL OF THESE DAMN PIMPLES! Surely he could never be attracted to me
with these! So after I pimple-graze casually while reading about kabuki actors,
I go to the bathroom and I do my little “ritual.” After zapping the pus out of
every last one, I return to the table across from this hottie.
I
looked up and smiled hey at him again
with my eyes. He engaged me kindly, and then his eyes took to a slow perusal of
my face. He noticed popped pimple A, pimple B, he frowned as he looked at the
war zone I’d left behind . Then he gave me a smile of finality, that told me
the potential was over.
What
can we take away from this scenario? YOU LOOK BETTER WITH PIMPLES THAN YOU DO WITH
A HOT MESS RED FACE! Keep your
pimple-popping to alone time. Do it at home, at a late hour. Pimple popping in
public is not only gross, it makes everyone around you uncomfortable. So please
stop. For all our sakes.
