Dear Gossips,
If you’ve been visiting this site a while, you know I love gross sh-t. Duana, Dylan, and I have a gross sh-t text thread that’s going on three years now where we update each other on new gross sh-t videos and photos and discuss their grossness. For a while there, back in late 2014, we’d just find things on Figure 1 to obsess over. Which is why I get so insulted when people try to recommend Dr Pimple Popper, Sandra Lee. I LIVE for gross sh-t. You don’t think I’ve already gotten off on Dr Pimple Popper?
Recently I had my own gross sh-t moment. More like gross sh-t month. Because my eye stye turned into a chalazion. Like, a world champion chalazion. Click here if you missed the photo I posted of it or would like to see it again. My entire phone is filled with photos of that bad boy that I would regularly send to Duana and Dylan and some of our other friends to track its growth. During TIFF, I’d present it to people in the hallways at junkets with other entertainment reporters trading off on our gross sh-t stories. My friend Roz had a huge cyst on the back of his head once that also had to be surgically cut out. Our other friend T once had an infected toe that had to be drained. We had such a good time talking about gross sh-t outside junket rooms and on red carpets, it almost felt like we were being interrupted when the celebrities finally showed up.
But we are not fringe. How can we be fringe when millions – literally millions – of people around the world are watching gross sh-t popping videos as obsessively as we are? Yesterday Salon posted an article analysing the “primal appeal” of gross sh-t. Basically, this is not a fetish. It’s a very normal, human response to the human body. For some people, it’s relaxation; for others, it’s the satisfying of a natural curiosity that’s been curbed by modern advancement. And also, as Duana has been arguing for a long time now, so this thesis is solely credited to her: gross sh-t popping videos follow pure storytelling narrative and structure. There are three distinct acts: the presentation of the subject (a pimple, blackhead, cyst, lump, chalazian, whatever), the process of releasing it (also known as the action sequence), and then, finally, a definitive conclusion – the trouble site has been emptied, everything has been released. It’s a happy ending! Once again, that thesis is intellectual property of Duana Taha - author, screenwriter, author, and gross sh-t enthusiast. Please attribute appropriately because, don’t lie, you talk about gross sh-t with your friends too.
On that note, please find attached an update on my eye. The procedure happened on Tuesday. You can still see the puncture marks from the painkiller and steroid injections that the surgeon used to numb the area! Remember, at the height of its powers, my chalazian had its own shadow. It acted as a built-in eyelash curler. It was freaky as f-ck. And I do NOT miss it. Not even a little.
Have a great weekend!
Yours in gossip,
Lainey
