FANTASTIC FOURSOME BREACHING 

EXPERIMENT

The group put on fake hickeys through the use of makeup; these were made to be publicly displayed. We wore the hickey to a number of different places such as malls, the streets, a high school reunion, church, etc. Each member was deployed to do the activity on a particular setting, which also included institutions like family members and peer groups. This activity was documented by taking photos through the use of phones. 

Shekinah Jumawan (Landmark Mall)

Paulina put on my fake hickey by the side of The Landmark Makati when I was on my way to see my Dad. I hid it with my hair for a while. I was very nervous because knowing my father, he is a very strict and by-the-books kind of person. When I got to him, however, he didn’t show any signs of noticing it despite my effort to make the hickey as noticeable as possible. Maybe he was just judging me silently or he truly did not see it, although I’d say the former is a likelier scenario because the mark was relatively huge and the color was shades away from my skintone. My Dad was also with a couple of middle-aged relatives whom I have never met. I believe they both saw the discoloration as I have noticed them stare at my neck for a good few seconds. Of course, they couldn’t say word since my dad was present, not to mention myself along with two friends (1 was a boy).

The hickey was hidden by my hair for longer than I expected. I thought my hair would simply slide off of my shoulder and the mark would show but unfortunately my hair did not budge. But to be completely honest, I did put in some effort to hide it more than I should have. Having been raised to be a devout Christian, I learned to feel shameful towards having to show this kind of “display of affection”.

Nevertheless, I was able to muster up courage to show it to my Mother but wasn’t able to hold my act together for long because I found the situation too funny and a little insulting. She was completely but silently freaking out about it, saying that she “found me out” among other things. I would categorize her tone of voice and the look in her eyes as accusatory. She would hold a gaze to my fake hickey at times during the breaching experiment proper and also after I debriefed her. She was complaining about how I never told her I had a boyfriend or the like. In retrospect, I kind of want to yell at her for being so brutally judgemental with her non-verbals. I told her I was gonna show it to my Dad again but circumstances prevented that so I never got to show him at all.

I was still wearing the hickey when I got home and so my siblings (save for my 11-year-old brother who was sick and in bed rest) saw it but were completely unfazed. They had no reactions whatsoever; it may well be the indifference we have towards each other’s romantic affairs. But like with my Dad, I’d say they were just judging me silently for blatantly displaying such a “dirty” thing, not even making an effort to try and hide it. I never debriefed them because I didn’t think they would care for my breaching experiment.

Jiah Santos (Streets of Marikina)

Paulina applied the hickey to me and I walked around the area. People on the streets of Marikina stared and giggled when I passed by. (I craned my neck so that the hickey would be really visible to people in the sidewalk. Generally, old people just stared. They didn’t laugh but they looked disgusted and disappointed. Younger people, however, stared, smiled, giggled, then looked away. In general, people reacted the way they did since openly displaying the hickey was not within socially acceptable norms. Furthermore, it is interesting to note the response from old people were more negative than the younger ones. This may be attributed to how older people have the tendency to stick to traditional values of society which dictate that sexual encounters must be kept private. The younger generation, which may generally have looser values, treated the subject of the hickey, not with negativity but with with discomfort and embarrassment which often manifested in their laughter and giggles.

I also interacted with two sets of friends. One set was predominantly girls, while the other set was predominantly boys. When I went with the group of girls, some of them visibly noticed the hickey, and stared but no one said anything until later. Two of the girls I was closer to, whispered and asked why I had something on my neck. They didn’t say the word hickey. It was not even explicit if they knew what a hickey was. I told them the story of how someone gave it to me. They laughed and said “ew,” which meant that they were disgusted. On the other hand, when I went with the group of boys, immediately once they spotted it, they asked me out loud if I had “fun” last night, which alludes to sexual encounters. They also laughed upon seeing the hickey. However, when I showed the hickey to my sister, she looked disgusted and blatantly told me that I was supposed to hide the hickey from sight since it was not “proper” to have it seen publicly.

Paulina Alejandro (Church)

I applied the hickey on in the bathroom at church before the mass started. I used three different color combinations, a deep plum, a rusty brown, and a deep purple color.  A young woman, around my age, entered the bathroom and looked at me. Her eyes instantly landed on my hickey. She blatantly stared at it for a good five seconds, the first two seconds analyzing what it was and the last three (after realizing what it was, looked me up and down, almost as if to judge what kind of person I was (who had a hickey on her neck), before she went away into one of the cubicles.

The walk back to my seat was very awkward, lots of stares from people, especially the women in the family section, the one with all the loud and/or sleeping children. The same up and down look of judgement took place, some eyebrows even went up. I saw one look at me while fanning herself and then turned to her friend next to her and whispered something clearly about me because the person and I made eye contact right after.

The hickey was more visible since the skin on my neck area is much lighter compared to other areas on my body on top of that my hair is short and can’t cover it. I forgot all about it during the mass, when it came to the “Sharing of peace” my grandmother was like “What’s that?!” and my grandfather’s face turned red, some of the women around me just stared. Finally when it came to going to get the “bread” the stares and the look of disapproval from many of the elderly people I passed by and made eye contact with was very overwhelming. I felt like I did something wrong and sinful.

I had to explain myself to the family of course before they gave me their long sermon and ridicule. Since I am in a long distance relationship, to them, there was no reason for me to have a hickey on my neck, how else would i get it after all, to them it meant one thing, I was cheating and I was, as my cousin put it, “slutting around.” After I explained the situation, they told me how “embarrassing” and “bastos” the task/project was.

They dropped us off at Katipunan and my sister and I went to the bookstore, same amount of stares that were either curious or judgemental were given my way, mostly from women. It was night time when we decided to go and walk back to the condo, lots of men were out and about along the street, some of them had smirks and whispered amongst themselves when they noticed the hickey on my neck, almost as if they understood why and how the mark got there. The look this time was more degrading, almost as if i’m being viewed as a toy that’s been played with as a piece of meat even.

My sister was very uncomfortable the whole time, asking me if it was necessary for me to “show that off” while I was with her and why I can’t do it some other time instead.

Ram Talabong (High School Reunion)

I wore my hickey at a high school reunion. I initially tried to put it on by using the suction of a compressed bottle to drain out the color on my neck. It didn’t work so I just borrowed makeup from my mother and followed an instructional web site on how to do the proper shading using eye shadow.

When I arrived at the reunion and met up with my closest friends, they immediately spotted the discoloration on my neck and started asking what it was. I tried to brush them off to spike up their interest and I eventually told them that it was a “Chikinini” (Hickey). They just laughed. They didn’t believe me. I guess it’s because they have known me for so long and they know that getting a hickey is something I would never do. When I asked them what they thought of it before I told them what it was they told me that they thought that I joined a fraternity (another thing that they know I would never do), so they found out early that it was makeup and they just went around the whole day teasing me.

Different reactions came from my high school friends who weren’t as close to me as the first friends I spent my time with. They were silent about it and I had to bring the fake hickey up myself for them to notice (like complaining if it was visible, and even stretching my neck). I asked them if they noticed, they said they did, they were just too shy to ask. I asked them what they thought was the reason for the discoloration of my neck. They also said that I looked like someone who came fresh from a initiation and hazing session for a brotherhood. The deviant act may have ultimately reinforced the norm that sexuality and sexual encounters are not supposed to be displayed publicly.

General Reactions: Dismay, shock, anger, ridicule, curiosity, embarrassment, laughter, and shame.