The Tweezers
1997 to present, Kent, Ohio
By Anonymous
As a child, I hated science. As a young adult, I hate science even more when I remember the 7th grade biology class where my self-mutilation habit began.
We were studying genetics, using microscopes to examine flakes of skin, when our teacher asked us to pull out a piece of our hair to examine root bulbs. I plucked out a thin, blonde hair and my lab partner, Ashley, pulled out a thick, dark one. We laid them side by side under the microscope’s scrutiny and observed the white heads at the tip of each hair.
Everyone else was bored. And somehow, I was intrigued.
That night, I sneaked a pair of tweezers out of my mother’s medicine cabinet. At the tender age of 12, I had not yet begun to shape my eyebrows, but this would be the night I began. And even on that first night, it would go beyond eyebrows. Fascinated by the thick, white bulb that slid out of each pore as I dragged each tiny hair out of my skin, I moved to my shins, tweezing hair after hair out of my unshaven legs.
I don’t remember what time of year it was or my science teacher’s name, but I remember the way my legs burned after that first time, as though they’d been doused with acid. Instead of rubbing lotion on them, I fell asleep to the pulsating pain, content in some sickening way.
My fascination with tweezing continued for years. Once, in that first year, my mom and I watched an episode of some other talk show that featured pre-teens addicted to self-mutilation. I was appalled at the girl whose wrists bragged smooth white scars that stretched across the length of her arms, disgusted at how she could find solace in abusing herself that way. My mom was more appalled at the statistics the show presented about other forms of self-mutilation – namely, tweezing. I was confused as to how my curiously comforting new habit could be lumped into the same category as that girl’s scar-inducing cuts.
After my eyebrows and my legs, finally even my hairline fell prey to my habit, which quickly morphed into an addiction. I tweezed the hairs from the front of my slight widow’s peak, relishing the thick root. And although I still can’t explain to you why the act of tweezing comforted me the way it did, I continued to do it, oftentimes rushing home from school to pull my own hair out.
And finally, it became a problem. My uneven hairline became painfully noticeable, the small hairs growing in quickly enough that it appeared as though I had shaved my widow’s peak off. Even worse, they grew in black and ragged, probably due to deadened roots, so I couldn’t let them grow out – I had to continue tweezing in order to hide my tweezing problem. Furthermore, I was missing large clumps of eyelashes where, bored, I’d pulled them out during class. My eyebrows were embarrassingly thin, as I was too impatient to let them grow back in and continued to over-tweeze.
Other students, my own friends, teased me – I made up a story about my stay in the hospital following back surgery, saying that, drugged up on Vicodin, I had pulled out much of my own hair, including my eyebrows, my eyelashes, and my widow’s peak. I concentrated my efforts on my legs, where no one could see the damage my addiction had done.
And, despite the agony it caused both my social reputation and my vanity, I could not stop. Tweezing was my release – with each hair that slid out of its follicle, I felt that a small bit of emotional pain slid out of my body, too. When I was particularly stressed – arguing with my mom in the wake of my father’s death, grieving over a friend’s suicide – I tweezed more frequently, wreaking havoc on my legs as I’d dig ingrown hairs out of the skin that hid them.
Today I am 22 years old and still a habitual tweezer. Every time someone compliments my perfectly shaped eyebrows, I feel a twisted sense of accomplishment, a drive to keep tweezing. My hairline has been mauled, ingrown hairs dotting not only my widow’s peak but also my temples. My legs have been ravaged – they are so scarred they no longer tan, so scarred that I will only wear skirts when I have pantyhose or tights to hide the horror of my habit.
And no one knows. Somehow, neither my friends nor my mother nor my boyfriend knows my secret or, if they do, they don’t think it’s a problem worth acknowledging. But I am stuck in a cycle I cannot escape, a cycle of self-mutilation that has become mental mutilation, as well.
I dream of the day when I can don shorts or Capri’s, when I don’t have to wear thick jeans in the heat of summer. I desperately hope for a day when I can pull my hair into a ponytail without putting a mangled hairline on display.
But most of all, I wait for a day when I am no longer trapped by the emotional release that my addiction offers me – when I can learn how to handle myself without ruining myself in the process.
The writer is a senior magazine journalism major at Kent State University. She works for her student newspaper and two on-campus magazines.
Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Wednesday, November 15th, 2006 | Email This PostThis entry was posted on Wednesday, November 15th, 2006 at 12:01 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
14 Responses to “The Tweezers”
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November 15th, 2006 at 8:40 am
Sometimes we are so ashamed of what we do to ourselves, the thought of telling another is not an option.
Since 1996 I came home from work every night and had a drink. Not a coctail or wine; it had to be one hundred proof, of what ever I could get my hands on. At first it was drink until I got a buzz. Ten years later I drank until I was drunk.
I drank only in the evening and at home. No one knew. I stopped one night after praying. “Lord, help me through this, I don’t want to abuse my body any longer.”
Sure that I would have withdrawl or other nightmarish experiences, I woke the next morning with no hangover. I hardly thought about a drink during the day. That night, my test, I had no desire to drink. Six months later, I still do not drink, nor do I miss it. As they say, ‘one day at a time’. Ask Him to help you through this. He will answer you.
November 15th, 2006 at 3:02 pm
I’m so glad that I read this, that I’m not the only one. I don’t tweeze, but I pick at my skin. I’m not sure where it started. Anywhere that I feel some irregularity in the skin, I pick at it, especially on my scalp. I have red dots all over, and I’m constantly fixing my part to make them less visible. I feel so ashamed when someone notices. I immediately vow not to do it again. Still, I soon find my hands wandering around looking for a spot to pick. It’s as though I’m in a trance when I do it, meditatively searching out lumps and scabs to pick off. I feel like I should be able to just decide to stop and stop, since it’s so unattractive, but I keep doing a little more.
I’ll keep trying.
Thank you for sharing. I don’t feel as ashamed and hopeless about it now that I’ve heard from someone else.
March 3rd, 2007 at 11:40 pm
My private pain is food. I eat and eat until I have run out of food. It’s not a secret, as I talk constantly about the things that make me uncomfortable. But these friends still aren’t aware of the toll it takes on me mentally, emotionally and of course, physically.
It’s only recently that I’ve realized I binge to fill a void in my life; I’m lonely. Food doesn’t love me but it fills something hollow inside of me. (And I am not referring to my stomach!)
I sympathize with you and hope we both heal.
April 17th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
i do it too on my legs but am in the process of stopping. it is unimaginably difficult but i will get there. once i am healed i will have lazer treatment to permanently remove the hair as then there won’t be anything to pick
April 17th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
I came accross this when I was looking up infor on why some hairs have black little bulbs and some have white ones. I never expected to come accross an article that descibes exactly what I was doing when I started to wonder what the difference between the bulbs was.
I too have a problem with tweezing. I particularly enjoy it on my legs, and my pubic area too. I like the little coarse hairs the best, gross as it sounds. I also have issues with other methods of self-injury, namely cutting and punching myself inthe head. The cutting and the punching came much later, the tweezing started at 12, like yourself. I never made the connection to damaging behavious, until in grade 9 I did a school project on self-mutilation.
It’s good to know, however randomly I come accross this, that I am not the only one screwed up like this. Compared to my other issues, tweezing seems like a small thing, that I know no one would ever take seriously (though it makes me not want to be intimate with men because I know how nasty my pubic area looks, but I can’t help tweeze there).
April 30th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
Really good story. i habitiually tweeze my \”treasure trail\” the hair between my naval and my bikini area. I have ingrowns there now from too much tweezing but I cannot stop. It is a really bad habit. I hope I can stop, I try, but I always start back. I begun to think it was a form of self mutalation or addiction. Your article made me feel less alone because I don\’t know of anyone else who does this and I wouldn\’t admit to anyone that I do. Wish you the best of luck.
May 2nd, 2007 at 9:59 am
I have a problem with tweezing too. In fact, I just did it like 5 mins. ago.
I want to stop. It’s nice to know that i’m not alone.
June 22nd, 2007 at 1:24 pm
I think its great that there is this kind of information out there. It is only recently that I have begun to view my tweezing of my bikini area as self injury. I have always self injured in one way, from cutting and scratching as a teenager to picking at my skin. For the past year I have found such comfort in tweezing the short hairs of my bikini, I am ashamed to tell my boyfriend what all the rednedd down there is from, I know he notices. It is articles like this that reinforce my theory that, Like the cutting, this is something I will need to stop. I will do it in my own time like everything else, hopefully that will come soon. Thanks again
March 3rd, 2008 at 7:19 am
why do you all do these thing’s to yourselves….its easy to stop a bad habit….and don’t tell me its not because i have OCD…and i find it easy…….also…why be so upset about so many things….theres so many other good things to experience…if you linger on all the bad things in life, you miss out on all the good…..
May 31st, 2008 at 8:19 am
I’m 15 and I tweeze constantly. At first I just started with my eyebrows. They’re thin but people constantly compliment me on how perfectly groomed they are. They have no idea that i can spend hours staring in the mirror searching for any tiny hair. Then I started tweezing my pubic area. I know I sound like a TOTAL loser but I actually use tweezing as a reward. Like if I mop the floor, I let myself tweeze for like 5 minutes. Sick, I know. Until I read this I thought that it was kinda a useful habit because I HATE body hair. Will it really cause scarring? I really don’t know if I can stop or even if I WANT to stop. Like I said I HATE HATE HATE body hair
November 9th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
I tweeze my eyebrows every night for hours. And I did at them to where they bleed. I can’t get the short hairs out so I dig at them with pointed tweezers. Then the next night I’ll pick at the scab till it bleeds again. I can’t stop. But now I don’t feel so alone.
March 19th, 2009 at 8:11 am
I began tweezing when i was in 2nd grade… I’m 21 now and although it’s not as bad as it used to be I still find so much release in it. I want to stop but it’s difficult bc i associate tweezing with emotional release.
And it’s hard to stop when i have such thick hair and a dislike for body hair.
I mostly pluck my bikini line to try to get rid of all the ingrown hairs, but I just end up making it worse. My bf notices and wants me to stop “slaughtering” myself, and even though he is right he doesn’t know that this habit started out because of so much emotional pain i was going through as a child.
Does anyone want to share ways that have helped them stop?
December 3rd, 2009 at 12:05 am
I have many mental issues that I am aware of but never get treated for. I asked my friends if tweezing was mutilation and my boyfriend. They say until it hurts, but to me it never hurts. I feel happy or content accomplished. I only tweeze my happy trail but a couple months ago I made a goal to tweeze my entire vagina.. I had to stop because I felt so embarassed around my boyfried; I wound up shaving it all off. I try so hard to keep my issues inside but I am very prone to addictive behavior. For me to stop myself, I leave my bad tweezers around, you know the ones that can’t grab anything and I purposely lose my good ones. I have OCD hoarders, ADHD and probably suffer from depression, but in my family it’s wrong to have something wrong with you… ya know. I feel so, ashamed sometime.
December 11th, 2009 at 12:41 am
This is the first time I have ever written or said anything publicly about my problem. I too, as repetitious as it may sound, tweeze everything and have been since I was ten. About two years ago, I found the label for it (trichotillomania) which on one hand has made me feel not as alone, but on the other hand, since no one that I see has really fixed it, makes me feel like I’ll never be able to stop. My pubic area is the worst part. I have managed to control my legs and I don’t pull from my head, but I take it all out on my pubic hairs. I am glad that the people that I’ve read that do this say that they have boyfriends because it’s stopping me from wanting to have sex at all because it looks terrible. I guess I just wanted to thank you for continuing getting trich out there because there are probably so many people who feel lonely about this and it needs to be known and talked about.