Fri Mar 31 09:35:26 2000
World o' Blushing
Tomorrow morning, a few readers will be saying such things as: "Oh, there isn't a unicorn in the garden. You
fooled me!" and their cheeks will then mantle with crimson. Some notes about blushing:
* Human beings alone among animals are facial blushers, noted Charles Darwin. A few members of the primate
family exhibit genital blushing during mating season; they know who they are.
* Experts have linked blushing to guilt as well as honesty, and sexual arousal as well as sexual prudishness. "A
blush is a funny mixture of wanting to hide and at the same time to attract someone," says Murray Bilmes, a
professor at the California School of Professional Psychology at Berkeley.
* It is unusual for a person to blush when alone.
* There are two forms: the "classic blush," which can appear in seconds, and the "creeping blush," which begins as
small splotches or streaks on the upper chest or neck and spreads upward to the jaw and cheeks over a period of
several minutes.
* Existentialists link blushing to alienation. Psychologists see blushing as a response to "undesired social attention"
such as being praised in public. Some social scientists see blushing as a signal that one is not in control of oneself
or as a ploy for averting blame.
* Freudians believe there are several reasons to blush: exhibitionism (it signals "my face is not the only part of me
turning red") and acknowledgment of unconscious thoughts (a woman may blush when on older man, such as her
boss, kisses her because she possesses some half-forgotten yearnings for her father).
* Women who are inclined to blush can apply makeup as a protective measure. But when they apply "blusher" and
rouge to their cheeks, some scientists say, they are feigning helplessness and declaring to a man, "You're the boss."
* The biggest puzzle about blushing, writes Jerome Burne in The Times of London, is that "if it is a signalling
system, and if we all originally came out of Africa, how come it developed among dark-skinned people who
couldn't see it?"
* Blushing is most common in adolescence.
* "Actresses can fake crying, sneezing, coughing, having babies and we can even fake an orgasm," writes Fiona
Fullerton in The Daily Telegraph. "The only thing we cannot do on demand is blush." This may be true in other
professions.
* People can be made to blush by being told that they're blushing. But when chronic sufferers feel a red face
coming on, the best way to cope is to acknowledge. This defuses it.
* A red face might indicate phobic self-consciousness. Extreme blushing has forced some sufferers into taking sick
leave or early retirement from work and even entertaining thoughts of suicide.
* If need be, surgeons can destroy the nerves that trigger blushing, with an endoscopic transthoracic
symphthicotomy. When the patient is under genral anesthetic, doctors insert a camera into his or her chest cavity
through a tiny hole in the armpit. They locate the sympathetic nerve, at the base of the neck, that controls the
blushing reaction and then use heat to kill it. This operation sounds radical, say proponents, but it can transform the
lives of chronic blushers who have become too embarrassed to leave their homes.
Sources: News Services
From: The Globe and Mail, March 31, 2000.