You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos (6 page)

The handkerchief changed all of this. Handkerchiefs for cleaning the nose were first used by the “young snobs” of the Italian Renaissance.
⁷
In the beginning they were expensive luxury items and were seen as a status symbol. “He does not blow his nose on his sleeve” was a way of saying a man was wealthy.
⁸
As hankies became affordable, more people were able to acquire this prestigious item and distinguish themselves from the riffraff.

By the late 1600s the use of the hanky was common among the upper class. By the 1700s, books of etiquette were adding the restrictions of not using your hanky loudly, and not peering into it after blowing your nose, “as if pearls and rubies might have fallen out of your head.”
⁹
As the handkerchief became more and more
accessible (culminating in disposable paper ones in 1930),
¹⁰
not using a handkerchief went from being merely impolite—similar to the current view of nail-biting—to being disgusting.

The steep fall of nasal mucus’ status is chronicled in the etiquette literature. In the fifteenth century Erasmus used the word “snot” and described its coarseness while advising how to handle it in front of people of honor. In 1729 LaSalle foreshadowed our current avoidance of the word when he referred obliquely to snot as “the filth,” and boogers as “what you have pulled from your nose.”
¹¹
Currently even oblique references to snot in serious writing risk being labeled juvenile and unnecessary.

Contrary to intuition, the snot taboo did not develop for hygienic reasons. Health is a popular defense for taboos concerning the body, but it usually has nothing to do with their development. As with taboos on spitting, excrement, and sex, the nasal mucus taboo began before the public understood germs and disease. The snot taboo was instead driven by cleanliness as a prestigious sign of wealth and by a growing shame about the body and its functions. This shame will be explored further in the next two chapters.

The taboo on nasal mucus is a mild taboo with few societal repercussions. Nose picking and the eating of boogers is not difficult to keep behind closed doors. Being caught in public can be highly embarrassing but it has not been made a criminal act, nor is the shame accompanying picking one’s nose or eating its contents enough to weigh heavily on a conscience.
¹²

Because of this, even in a book on taboos, some will question the necessity of a chapter on nasal mucus and consider it a joke. However, the inclusion of nasal mucus is important to show the hypocrisy behind taboos. Most Americans would categorize nose picking as gross,
¹³
yet the most scientific study ever conducted on the topic found the practice to be “almost universal,” with over ninety percent of people partaking.
¹⁴

Booger eaters are even more stigmatized. Consumption is so shameful that it is typically not revealed by patients until the third year of psychoanalysis.
¹⁵
Despite this, there are 25 million booger eaters in the United States.
¹⁶
This compares with 22 million golfers in the United States.
¹⁷
There is a significant closeted sub-population that does what America considers repulsive.

This denial extends to the presentation of history. Numerous movies set in the Middle Ages and earlier pride themselves on their accuracy. Yet rarely do these movies portray people blowing their noses in their hands, blowing snot on the ground, picking their noses, and eating their boogers, as kings, queens, and others of those eras did. Artists of those ages had no qualms about representing them in these acts,
¹⁸
but this artwork is rarely seen because curators, editors, and collectors have operated under modern taboos in selecting the art worthy of preservation and presentation.
¹⁹

One of the effects of this denial is to prevent a rational approach to nasal mucus. Our nasal mucus taboo is viewed as irrational by most of the world’s population. In cultures where blowing in the hand is still common practice, our Western handkerchief usage is seen as a disgusting habit.
²⁰
Other cultures don’t understand why anyone would want to package her nasal mucus in a piece of cloth and carry it around when it can simply be left behind.
²¹

Our Western revulsion toward touching nasal mucus has a weak basis. Arguments are made that picking is unhygienic and can cause damage to nasal tissue.
²²
However, when the fingers are clean and the picking is reserved to boogers (and not the nasal tissue) the practice is harmless. Even when the fingers are not clean the practice is the hygienic equivalent of eating finger food without first washing one’s hands. That pervasive American phenomenon can be observed at any fast-food restaurant and those practitioners are not regarded with disgust.

Like any activity, nose picking can be taken to extremes. One psychotic woman picked away her entire nose, and it is estimated that over a million Americans have picked through their nasal septum (the cartilage separating the two nasal passages).
²³
Unfortunately the stigma prevents people from getting medical treatment. One afflicted person described her nose picking as follows:

For the vast majority of nose pickers medical problems do not arise. Instead, unclogged nasal passages are attained through a pleasurable activity,
²⁵
and booger eaters have even reported that boogers are, “quite tasty, salty, to be exact.”
²⁶

1.
        Stomach acid (hydrochloric acid) is extremely strong and can dissolve stainless steel. The stomach keeps from digesting itself by producing a new mucus lining every two weeks.

2.
        Sylvia Branzei,
Grossology
(1995), p. 33.

3.
        Men are more comfortable with nose picking than women. James Jefferson and Trent Thompson, “Rhinotillexomania,”
J. Clin. Psychiatry
, Feb. 1995, p. 58.

4.
        Ibid., pp. 56–59.

5.
        There are undoubtedly teachers who teach about nasal mucus, however, from my informal research they appear to be rare.

6.
        The following chronology of nasal mucus handling is taken from Norbert Elias,
History of Manners
(1982), pp. 143–152.

7.
        Ibid., p. 149.

8.
        Ibid., p. 145.

9.
        Ibid.

10.
      Kleenex facial tissues were developed in 1924 as a makeup remover. In 1930 advertising began emphasizing usage as a disposable handkerchief and sales exploded.

11.
      Elias,
History of Manners
, p. 147.

12.
      Jefferson, “Rhinotillexomania,” p. 57.

13.
      In one survey, over two thirds were upset by public nose picking, and a third considered it unacceptable even in private. Ibid., p. 58.

14.
      Ibid.

15.
      Ibid., p. 57.

16.
      Ibid., p. 58, extrapolated to population of 310 million (2010 U.S. Census).

17.
      National Sporting Goods Association survey, 2010, ret.
NSGA.org
, 28 Mar. 2012.

18.
      Elias,
History of Manners
, p. 144.

19.
      This practice has been more thoroughly documented with excrement and sex and it will be presented in more detail in those chapters.

20.
      Paul Spinrad,
RE/Search Guide to Bodily Fluids
(1994), p. 94.

21.
      Ibid., pp. 93–94.

22.
      Branzei,
Grossology
, p. 13; and Georgie Binks, “Gross Habits That Harm,”
MochaSofa.com
, July 2002, ret. 11 Feb. 2003.

23.
      Jefferson, “Rhinotillexomania,” p. 59.

24.
      Ibid.

25.
      An unscientific survey found that almost forty percent of nose pickers find it enjoyable. Spinrad,
RE/Search Guide
, p. 60.

26.
      Jefferson, “Rhinotillexomania,” p. 57

E
XCREMENT

A
MERICA
D
OESN
’
T
K
NOW
S
HIT

One of my earliest memories is from the bathroom. It is of my father showing me how to wipe: four squares, wipe, fold, repeat. With this orderly and efficient method you could get two or even three wipes out of four squares. My sister’s voracious crumpling technique leads me to believe she had a different teacher. Growing up sharing a toilet, it seemed that she used half a roll to clean her ass. This was supported by the speed we went through toilet paper, and by the soggy mounds I witnessed after her forgot-to-flushes.

My first experience away from our toilet for any length of time was at sleep-away camp. I held it for four straight days. I’ve never had problems holding it. Of course, I’ve had lots of practice. In middle school I never took bowel movements at school. The bathrooms would usually stink abominably because guys would pee on the radiators. To prevent smoking the stalls had no doors, and the stalls were right by the entrance so that anybody who walked in would see you wiping your butt.

In high school my boycott came to an end. The bathrooms were cleaner and had doors, but perhaps more importantly, I was now an athlete. Like most teenagers, I greatly overestimated the importance of my athletic performance, and one cannot physically excel with weighted bowels.

So greatly did I value my performance that at an away basketball game, I used a solo stall in a cramped locker room while mere feet away the coach was talking to the team. In addition, the stall’s frame was severely dented and offered little privacy. When I came out the snickering began.

Apparently, I had focused too much attention on the folding technique from my father’s instructional lesson and missed the part about wiping stance. The fear of every kid was manifest that day—people watched me take a shit
and
I did it wrong. If any other teammates stood erect while wiping they made not a peep as the crouchers derisively cooed.

My participation in athletics didn’t teach me teamwork, leadership, or discipline, but it did rid me of my guilt. I am no longer a shameful shitter. I am so free that I don’t even feel inadequate when I crap my pants every year or so. I don’t always make it. It happens. I clean my undergarment the best I can so it doesn’t stain the suit and soldier on.

But unfortunately I have not lost all my scruples, and it may be my demise. My body is blessed with a lot of moles, like fifty or so. Besides my mother, no one really appreciated the cancerous threat they posed until I got to graduate school. On the student health care plan, Dr. Kim, my physician, was a young dermatologist-in-training. He too recognized the danger they posed and he knew what had to be done—a mole map.

Dr. Kim searched all over me with his latexed hands to make that map complete—in between my toes, under the hair on my head, even under my scrotum and penis—but there was one place he didn’t look. He never looked in my butt crack.