(2) Drs. House and Cox (Scrubs)

Do I need to clarify that House is a character on the eponymous tv show? No? Good. I just wanted to say "eponymous."

So these two are my pick - (Morpho, here) - although we suspect Seester of liking what we like, because that's how it usually works. (We're almost the same person, but with different quirks. And by different, I mean wildly varying. And by quirks, I mean things that make us difficult to love, despite our many charms. But the aforementioned charms are basically identical. We get it from our momma).

So why do I list Dr. House and Dr. Cox under a single entry? Clearly you've never watched either show. I, on the other hand, have watched enough of each to successfully diagnose both Wilson's disease and acute intermittant porphyria before the lead characters on two separate occasions. And House/Cox qualifies as a PiP candidate, breezing.

Why, you ask? They are not pretty, you say! There are only two criteria for this blog, and they are almost completely lacking in the first "P"! This is true. However you are forgetting that crucial second "P." Between them, they're way up there in the pain department - physical *and* emotional. And they have, you know, pretty eyes and whatnot. Enough to keep them in the game, anyway. Ratings below.

Subject(s): Morpho
Object(s): House/Cox
Prettiness: athletic physiques, big blue eyes...that's all I got.
Pain: House - Hoo boy. Lives with chronic pain from his nearly useless leg as a consequence of his refusal to have it amputated, emotionally damaged by lover's betrayal, gets punched or shot every few episodes for being a genius misanthrope. (Gotta love a strong man on his knees). Cox - abrasive and egomaniacal, but deeply passionate about saving lives. Suggestion of abusive childhood with lingering emotional scars. Rarely shows feelings, but when he does his vulnerability index is off the charts. Together, Cox and House share a base note of bad boy, middle notes suggesting damaged goods, and a lingering top note of homoeroticism that we find irresistable. (But that's another blog).

Stats: 3/10 for prettiness, 10/10 for pain (Cox brings the emotional pain, and House more than keeps his end up with the unremitting physical anguish. Add the tough guy veneer, and the result is exquisite).

Overall PiP score = 6.5

(1) Westley ("The Princess Bride")

Westley may have been our first PiP candidate. (We both have some sort of vague memory of a pretty boy being whipped, but the source or this early impression cannot, at this time, be documented. It may be a shared memory, but the early onset and advanced progress of sisterbrain* makes objective experience harder to pin down). Westley is delightful because he is very capable, but repeatedly incapacitated. Strong, but rendered weak. We love this transformation. Don't get us wrong, we also love frail-needing-care, but strong-made-weak is its own heady cocktail of masculine misery.**

Subject(s): Seester & Morpho
Object(s): Westley
Prettiness: general loveliness, eyes like the sea after a storm, submissive tendencies ("as you wish")
Pain: gnawed on by ROUS's, ditched by his woman - twice!, bondage/torture, crying/humiliation, physical weakness brought on by being mostly dead, accompanying bout of despair.
Stats: 9/10 for prettiness, 7/10 for pain (speed and ease of recovery affected angst quotient, pencil moustache jeopardizes prettiness quotient, but still clearly a strong candidate)
Overall PiP score = 8

*Sisterbrain = a merging of consciousness that may be the product of a common genetic heritage, prolonged shared experience, or spooky psychic powers. Manifests with mind-reading, simultaneity of observations (Jinx syndrome), and finding the same people hot. Other side effects include telekinesis and exponential increase of sexiness. We can make you want us. Or kill you with our minds.

**Gender will probably become an exploration within the context of this larger body of research. Why is the combination of pretty & pain particularly appealing in the masculine - though not the exclusively male? Female masculinity and trans-masculinity are both appealing sites for angst - some might argue they come with the territory, at least in fiction, where the well-adjusted transman or butch is not exactly a stock character - but femininity and pain are not particularly erotic to either member of the research team. Is this because real world vicimization of feminine women is so very visible (which is absolutely not to say that victimization of non-feminine, non-female identified persons is less prevalent) or because it's too personal, as we are both femme- and female-identified? Is it that product of sexism which conflates feminine with weak and masculine with strong, that creates an erotic contrast in the latter which is absent in the former? Is it relevant that the research team skews hard queer? ("90/10" bisexuals, heavily lesbian-leaning with a smaller but significant penchant for male masculinity. Well, very significant, as Seester recently married a cis-boy. Himself cannot help that his dick is attached, and rightly considers Himself a straight man married to a lesbian. For this we love him and cherish him's queerness).

Whatever the implications, the determination is that we like boys, bois, butches, trans- and cis-men best when their eyeliner is running. Is that so wrong?

Addendum: Then why does it feel so right?

Pretty in Pain - Our raison d'etre, our raison d'aimer.

While Mom was having her hackysack* out, Seester and I found ourselves with a lot of time on our hands in a hospital waiting room not overly stocked with amusements. We played Harry Potter Uno** and Steely Hardness***, but exhausted their entertainment value at least an hour before Mommers got out of surgery. That's when we started listing - going back as far as we could - all of our crushes where a fictional character's beauty is augmented by suffering. (Note: this is an obsession with purely fictional characters. Seester and I have explored the erotic appeal of "pretty in pain" IRL, and have concluded - independently - that it is tiresome and unproductive in the long term. Like, 2-3 weeks, max). The list was so long and prominent in our individual and shared histories that we decided to give the matter some real scientific attention.

Pretty In Pain is a blog intended to document our fascination with beautiful suffering things, and if possible, to draw conclusions about the patterns, parameters, variations, and spread within the larger population of our peculiar obsession. A cure is not anticipated, nor sought.

Over time, it is our hope that this becomes a collaborative research effort. Blog readers are invited to contact us with their own PiP candidates. Any supporting documentation - pictures, synopsis, breakdown of PiP criteria - is helpful, though not required.

- Morpho & Seester (2009)

* I don't like the word "gallbladder."

** For future reference, the Invisiblity card blocks plays & the Howler forces one player to reveal hir cards. We had to look it up.

*** The world's most perfect game for airports and waiting rooms, which are always stocked with romance novels. Each player selects a novel from the same series, (to eliminate unfair advantages). The game is a race to find the first figurative reference to the male member, and is named after the first such reference ever found in the history of the game.