You have two days. Just two days to remove that large, unsightly hickey before going home to Mom, Dad, Grandma, and turkey. Worse yet, you might be going not to your own home but to someone else’s, maybe even your significant others’. The last thing you would want is for your partner’s parents to think that either of you is into strangulation. Eek!
Firstly, what is a hickey? A hickey is pretty much your average bruise, caused by the excessive sucking to soft skin. When the skin is sucked particularly hard, the blood vessels just below the surface of the skin rupture, pouring blood into the surrounding tissue. As the blood is no longer being oxygenated in this area, it loses its red coloring and as it clots and dries out, produces the purple or brown hickey we see so frequently, especially on Saturday and Sunday mornings. As the neck, with some of the softest skin on our bodies, is a particularly erogenous zone to many of us, it is the most common location for hickeys to form. It is also, unfortunately, a very visible part of the body.
So, for those who may have been feeling particularly vampirish after Halloween or in preparation for the new Twilight movie, and who want to avoid a great deal of embarrassment and awkward Thanksgiving dinner conversation, here are Monica’s tried and true tips to removing hickeys before you chow down on some turkey and stuffing: