Squeeze & pop, you've hit the spot! Thoughts of a spot-popping fanatic.

This is probably my weirdest and most private 'fandom' that I'm a part of, and that fandom is fans of Dr Pimple Popper. Dr. Sandra Lee is a certified dermatologist from America who films and posts videos of her professionally popping people's cysts, blackheads, lipomas, dilated pore winers etc. Those words probably don't mean anything to most readers whom don't have any knowledge in dermatology. There are a variety of different "pimples" that the professional spot-popper has to tackle and remove which require different procedures. Sadly, no, I'm not a medical student so I have learnt all this vocabulary and the difference in these spots by simply binge-watching her videos which can very much be seen as "sad" and "weird", as William Shatner told his Trekkie's on the Saturday Night Live "move out of your [their] parent’s basements and to proceed with adult experiences" (10). This misconception of fans being social outcasts, recluses and obsessive weirdos who have no aspirations in live is very patronising, disrespectful and quite frankly, wrong. It's just a hobby/passion, just like playing Minecraft or going to knitting club - it's something people choose to do in their spare time. Watching videos of Dr Sandra Lee popping lipomas isn't going to turn me into a recluse or make me "emotionally unstable, socially maladjusted, and dangerously out of sync with reality" as quoted from a newspaper by Jenkins (13). Understandably, yes there are obsessive fans whom are driven to insane actions such as murder (John Lennon) but this isn't due to them being a fan. 

The stereotypes and assumptions of being a 'fan' do have very unrealistic and extreme connotations as Jenkins states (17) "Significantly, if the comic fan and the psychotic fan are usually portrayed as masculine, although frequently as de-gendered, asexual, or impotent, the eroticized fan is almost always female... the feminine side of fandom is manifested in the images of screaming teenage girls who try to tear the clothes off the Beatles or who faint at the touch of one of Elvis’s sweat-drenched scarfs, or the groupie servicing the stars backstage after the concert in rockamentaries and porn videos." 
This stereotype suggests that female 'fans' are all sex-crazed women who pleasure themselves over their idols, if this stereotype rings true this suggests that I pleasure myself over watching spot-popping videos and Dr Sandra Lee, I'm an outcast and will one day end up trying to murder my "idol". 
No. 
I enjoy watching these videos as they make me feel clean. As Shove states "Concepts of what's right and proper are unavoidable when thinking about how cleaning practices come to be as they are and how it is that weekly patterns of bathing and laundering have turned into daily routines." (79) and these videos make me appreciate my cleanliness, cleaning routines and practices. This may appear to resemble OCD however it isn't that I spend countless hours bleaching my floor and surfaces at home, I don't. But washing and being physically clean is something essential to me as I do fear waking up to find a cyst on my back. Despite this, I enjoy seeing that these spots are treatable. Due to my 'obsession' with personal hygiene I do have to pop my own spots - and peers as if I don't then it makes me feel dirty. 

Reading this back it may seem obsessive and peculiar but I didn't realise it was wrong to want to be clean?

If you're interested in learning the difference between a dialated pore winer, cyst, lipoma and blackheads then click the links below:

Blackhead
Lipoma
Cyst (the worst ones to watch)
Dilated Pore Winer (fave)

‘“Get a Life!” Fans, Poachers, Nomads” in Jenkins, H. (1992) Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. London: Routledge

"Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience: The Social Organization of Normality (New Technologies / New Cultures)" in Shove, E. (2003) Introducing Cleanliness: Morality, Technology and Practice." Berg Publishers.