From That 70s Show, I learned that hickeys could be naughty. After they began dating, Donna, a brassy teenager played by Laura Prepon, had left a large one on Eric's neck. Eric's older sister Laurie (Lisa Robin Kelly) can't help but call it out to her entire family the next morning at breakfast. She says it is like a Norman Rockwell painting. Mom is serving breakfast while Daddy reads the newspaper. Eric, brother, is trying to conceal a large, purple, severe hickey. Eric doesn't seem too proud but he isn't hiding his pride. Laurie adds one more tease to the mix: Eric, hickeys can lead to dirty things.This scene was not the only one. My friends and I felt like hickeys were the dirty thing every time they were mentioned on TV or in movies. Even if you were a good kid, it was not acceptable to show people that you were so vulgar as not to have one. You were not meant to be proud of this. Hickeys were often embarrassing and never acknowledged. There are still TikTok challenges to help people get rid of them. They represented young, reckless love: sexually promiscuous, shameless, and eager. I also found them hungry. I thought, what's so bad? It was hot to feel so enthralled by someone that you wanted your teeth in their mouth and leave a note. I was attracted to the idea of possessiveness, not the idea of being attached to someone else's body. It was the romanticized idea that you didn't care about the consequences.Perhaps this was due to my fascination with vampires (pre Twilight, thank goodness), but it was still a curiosity. In my late teens, I got my first hickey from a tall, dark-haired, handsome man. I loved his lips and thought they were delicious. Soon, I would discover that giving them was as enjoyable as the taking of them. It was an indulgent act if passion. Moonstruck (1987), starring Cher and Nicolas Cage, stars Loretta's mom Rose. Rose spots one on Loretta's neck after she has been canoodling and chatting with Ronny. Rose shouts, You got love bites on your neck... Your life is going downhill! You need to cover that thing up! Rose later discovers one on Ronny's neck. Their romance is openly revealed by two clues that look like mouths. They were both so certain they wouldn't find true love that they now crave each other's bodies, time and love. This is not juvenile.Hickeys are instinctually rooted in basic biology. It is very simple. You use your lips to suction the recipient's blood until the vessels burst under their skin, creating a bruise. It can take a few seconds, or it can take longer. However, too much pressure can cause blood vessels to burst and in rare cases, even death. As they linger, they can change from a reddish hue to a purpled or brown color. They can last from a few days up to two weeks.Although the term hickey was introduced to the English lexicon as a relative to doohickey in 1934, it is likely that the practice existed long before then. Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary Biology, wrote in 1872 The Expression of the Emotions of Man and Animals. He described how people interact with each other and express their feelings in a variety of ways.These behaviors, which are often associated with kissing, are universal. Sheril Kirshenbaum (author of The Science of Kissing) told me that this is what she meant. She also said that these behaviors start in childhood. The first moments we have with security and love are often characterized by lip pressure and stimulation via behaviors that imitate kissing. She said that these early experiences establish important neural pathways that help babies associate kissing with positive emotions. The lips are the most exposed erogenous area in the body, she said. They purse outwardly unlike other animals. Kirshenbaum stated that they are densely packed with nerve endings so even the slightest brush can send a cascade information to our brains. This can make them feel very good.
