In grossness and in health

The, ahem, symbolism of pressing out sebaceous material from a pore in the skin is hard to ignore. "If a woman is squeezing something and there's material coming out of the skin, surely a sexual similarity is in play," says the dermatologist/psychoanalyst from Philadelphia. "There is an undeniable buildup of tension and undoubtedly an orgasmic component to the release. I've even had nurses who admit they really 'get off' on removing blackheads." Pimple-squeezing can even get in the way of actual sex, says Julia M. "I will say that Dave and I have had to stop having sex before because I've become so obsessed with getting a pimple," she confesses. "We'll be in the midst of foreplay and I'll see something on his face and become fixated. I can't stop looking, and I can't think about anything else." One magazine-writing colleague of mine, Nanette (not her real name), 32, admits that with one ex-boyfriend, she was more interested in picking at his back than in having sex with him. "I jumped on his back with a certain zeal and enthusiasm that I can't say I had with regards to sex." (She still misses the pimples, although she's now involved with a blemish-free boyfriend). As Dr. Brad Katchen, a dermatologist and founder of the hip Manhattan spa SkinCareLab delicately put it, "Perhaps there's a playful sort of gratification in the extraction ... the mechanical process of release is kind of just, you know, fun." So fun, in fact, that some pickers have become professionals in the process. Nina Gromov, 52, an aesthetician for the Le Boe Day Spa in Coral Gables, Fla., admits that she got into the business of blemishes because of her love of "extractions." "Ah, yes, I love picking and I've always loved it," she says excitedly. "My grandmother had a lot of blackheads and hairs and I just loved to pick on her skin and back. It was my dream to become an aesthetician and work with skin, and I love what I'm doing." Gromov adds that most of her friends in the skin care business have been passionately picking at others since childhood.

If, unlike the picking enthusiasts quoted above, you're not turned on by blackheads and whiteheads, you're not alone. Many friends, colleagues, and acquaintances who heard about this story reacted with swift and damning derision, peppering my e-mail inbox with comments like "Gross!", "SICKO!" and "I am totally revolted." ("This must be a joke," wrote one ex-porn star I correspond with sometimes. "Oh my god!" e-mailed an editor. "You is nasty," complained an art director, who then contradicted herself by adding, "Don't forget peeling sunburned skin ... it's just as fun!"). Even the women who knew what I was "getting at," so to speak, expressed a sense of shame with regard to picking and pulling (the word "guilty" popped up time and time again). "Being quoted about this grosses me out for some reason," said a 31-year-old New York law student. "Please change my identity to protect my insanity," said another, who went on to describe in excruciating detail just how she takes a Tweezerman to her hirsute honey's shoulders and back.

Although they couldn't articulate exactly from where their sense of shame stems, pickers had plenty to say about why they do what they do, and the majority alluded to the intimacy of the act. "Dave is the first guy I've trusted enough to reveal what I consider to be a gross compulsion," says Julia M. "I certainly felt the desire to do it on other men, but I didn't because I didn't know them well enough. And the fact that I can do it to Dave and he won't reject me, that he accepts that I do it, makes me feel really loved." It's as much about loving as being loved, say other women. "When you're in love, nothing about the other person's body is gross, including their blemishes," says Gail, the fiction writer. "They are kind of an extension of yourself." Jackie, a 35-year-old health care marketer on Long Island, says that the picking of her partner (now husband) began within the first year of the relationship while the couple cuddled and stroked one another (she came across an ingrown hair in his beard). "Paul was my first, very serious close relationship," she says. "And I haven't picked at anyone else, except my mother, when I was young."

As one expert intimated, such intimacy involves a certain amount of manhandling and possessiveness. Gail says that she enjoys her live-in boyfriend's submissiveness with regard to her picking, which she usually initiates in bed. "I'll tell him to turn one way or another, and he'll comply and even keep on reading while I pick," she giggles. "I feel kind of proprietary towards him, like 'this is my person, and I get to pick at him!'" Some guys even -- gasp! -- enjoy the once-overs. "My ex used to [pick] all the time," says a 30-something acquaintance named Philip, a technology consultant in New York. "Most of the time, I thought it was hilarious, and I actually appreciated it because she was really good at it. My skin has certainly gone downhill since we broke up." Biore-Strip-aficionado John Halcyon Styn, 32, a Web developer from Southern California, says that blemish-picking is evidence of a significant stage of intimacy in a relationship. "Skin blemishes are in the same family of horrific, embarrassing things, like peeing with the door open, that you can only go through with an intimate partner," he says, adding that although he loves it when a girlfriend picks at him, "it's nowhere near as satisfying as getting at it yourself."

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