Growing up, I would often read people describe “the spot on your back that you can’t reach.” Generally in the context of, like, putting on sunscreen.
I was always super confused by this, in a classic case of generalizing from one example. I can still overlap my hands at the small of my back; there’s nowhere on my back I can’t reach pretty comfortably. It still surprises me every time someone can’t do that.
….wait, that’s actually a thing?
I always assumed that when people said that, they meant, like, “the spot on your back that’s slightly awkward to reach so maybe if someone’s putting on sunscreen right next to you they’ll get it for you since you can’t see it anyway”
Me, reading a story with centaurs that has just mentioned them having a scratching post†: “Huh, yeah, centaurs *would* have large swaths of their bodies they can’t reach with their hands. It’s *weird*, trying to wrap my head around the idea of people who can’t reach every part of their skin with their manipulating appendages. What must that be like?”
Me: “…wait, hang on, there are some humans who are like that”
Me: “my *mom* is like that”
(When it first came up, Mom was likewise surprised to learn that I *could* reach every spot on my back. She brought up age and fatness as possible reasons for us to differ on this, but I remember there’s a Shel Silverstein poem about the one spot on your back you can’t reach that expected children to find this a relatable feel, so I expect it’s not that. Fatness could maybe still be involved.)
†Edit: I mean this in the sense of “a post you rub against to scratch yourself”, not the sense of “a post you scratch”.
I was always told this was a sexual dimorphism thing – that (cis) girls could reach the middle of their back while (cis) boys could not, and that it was due to some kind of evolutionary thing about girls having specialized baby-holding elbows while boys had specialized spear-throwing elbows. (hence “you throw like a girl” = you throw badly)
I take it this is all a load of bullcrap?
Probably a load of bullcrap, yeah. Even if it is sex-linked, I doubt those are the reasons for it.
(Mom and I are both cis women, though she has PCOS and I don’t so our hormonal profiles are noticeably different. And I think jadagul (the OP, who can do it) is cis-male, but I won’t swear to it.)
Yeah, I’m cis-male, and the partner I mentioned elsethread who can’t is cis-female.
Now, (cis-)women are more flexible on average than (cis-)men, so I would guess that more women can do this than men. But that’s a weak guess—if someone who knew what they were talking about said that more men can reach the small of their back because, I dunno, they on average have proportionately longer forearms or something, I would believe them.
(Side note: your elbow really isn’t the limiting factor here regardless; very few people are limited in how far they can flex their elbows. It’s going to be driven by shoulder mobility and by the relative dimensions of various body parts).
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#(October 2017) #conversational aglets #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #gender
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