Cooties

For other uses, see Cootie.

Cooties is a slang word in North American English, used by children, referring to a fictitious disease or condition, often 'carried' by members of the opposite sex. One supposedly catches cooties through any form of bodily contact, close proximity, contact with an "infected" person's possessions, or third-party transmission. In prepubescent children, it serves as a device for enforcing separation of the sexes. An older person may jokingly refer to cooties when talking about awkwardness toward sex and relationships. The adoption of the term into English traces it back to the American occupation of the Philippines, in 1898-1945, and before that to British soldiers' presence in Malaysia. In most Austronesian languages (e.g. Malaysian and many Philippine languages such as Tagalog included) the term for head lice, lice or fleas of any kind, etc., is "kuto"; foreign troops had ample opportunity to become familiar with the term and made a slang pluralized form ("cooties") of "kuto." How this moved to become the possession of grade school children is a mystery.

Originally, the term meant head or body lice. The term then evolved into a purely imaginary stand-in for anything that is considered repulsive. In British English the term lurgy may be used in the same context. However, lurgy has a broader definition and the two concepts are not equivalent.

The "cootie catcher"

Main article: Cootie catcher

Made of folded paper, the "cootie catcher" is one name for a popular hand held toy among school children. One surface is blank, the other drawn with dots. The joke is to show the blank side, then run the toy through someone's hair, revealing the dotted surface. It is made so each surface looks the same apart from the "cooties". The toy is also also called a "fortune teller" and used in play to tell fortunes.

The "cootie shot"

Children sometimes "immunize" each other from cooties by administering a "cootie shot." One child typically administers the "shot" by reciting the rhyme "circle, circle / dot, dot / now you've got your cootie shot" while using an index finger to trace the circles and dots on another child's forearm. Yet another variation of the cootie shot is "circle, circle / square, square / now you have it everywhere," in which a child expecting an immunization is connived by a friend into being infected with cooties throughout his or her body. A final shot is said "circle, circle/ knife, knife / now you've got it all your life" while using their index finger to draw vertical lines on the other child's forearm. Sometimes a "cootie shot" is actually just a punch to the upper arm which "cures" the punched one from the "disease".

Cooties in popular culture

As with any cultural convention, or fondly remembered concept from childhood, cooties are often referenced in movies, music, on television, in novels and on the Internet. References range from physical manifestation as fantastical creatures to more realistic portrayal as a cultural convention and to the traditional interpretation as lice.

As Spoof of a Sexually Transmitted Disease

• "Cooties" is an spoof created by the Peoples Improv Theater that follows closely the style of a public service announcement intended to raise awareness about sexually transmitted diseases. The popular video was created by the Viral Video class at the Peoples Improv Theater taught by James Murray. The sketch has generated over a million plays on YouTube, and won the "Best Comedy Video of 2007" on Yahoo. "Cooties" was produced and directed by James Murray and written by Ryan Harrison.

Television

• Cooties have been referred to in a number of episodes of The Simpsons. In one episode ("Homer: Bad Man") Bart claims they come from "a girl's butt" and in "The Wandering Juvie" Bart is told by Gina that there is no such thing as cooties (as well as a variety of fake "cootie-repelling" type items such as cootie insurance, which Bart appears to have bought). In another episode, Tennis the Menace, Homer asks a Cootie Catcher "Do I have cooties?" He then opens a tab and reads "No." followed by "Wow this home testing kit has saved me a fortune!" There is also an episode in The Simpsons where Bart gives Milhouse his cootie shot by punching him.
• Cooties is also mentioned in a Friends episode, during Season 5, when Joey referred to Rachel as having the cooties because Ross was selling all of his belongings which Rachel may have touched or come in contact with.
• Cooties feature in the 1990s television series Dexter's Laboratory, as small, girly insects with curly snouts that inhabit the bedroom of Dexter's older sister, Dee Dee.
• In one of the episodes of Codename: Kids Next Door, where the KND scientists believed that their underwater science lab is quarantined because of cooties.
• In the Bobby's World episode "Cooties", kids start avoiding Bobby, believing he contracted cooties when he was kissed by Jackie.
• On an episode of the Cartoon Network program Cow & Chicken, Chicken was kissed by a girl named Whiney. This leads everybody to believe that Chicken has a particularly lethal strain of cooties known as "Whiney Cooties". Symptoms included his beak falling down, his butt dissolving, his eyeballs popping out of his head, and his beak shriveling.
• In one episode of the Cartoon Network program The Powerpuff Girls, cooties were featured prominently, since at first, they are the main weakness of the Rowdyruff Boys, as they explode when the Girls kiss them in order to defeat them. However, later on, when he resurrects them, they are given anti-cootie vaccinations to make them immune to the Girls' kisses.
• The MTV2 show Wonder Showzen featured an episode called "health" where a character called Wordsworth comes down with a case of the cooties; his friend Him uses it to his advantage and sells Wordsworth's encrusted cootie sores as snack treats.
• One of the supposed cures "Circle Circle Dot Dot" is a song by Jamie Kennedy and Stu Stone that was featured on their MTV show Blowin' Up. The song references cooties.

Movies

• In the 1994 Hollywood hit, Pulp Fiction, cooties are mentioned in the context of sharing a drinking straw.
• In the 2006 movie, ATL, cooties are also mentioned when sharing a can of coke.
• Irwin catches cooties and mono from kissing Mandy in Billy and Mandy's Big Boogey Adventure.
• In the movie Grease cooties are mentioned when Jan passes the bottle of wine to Sandy.

Literature

• Calvin, of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, does not seem to worry about catching cooties from close contact with individuals. However, he fears that he will catch them when he is the only boy on a playground full of girls. Apparently, he believes that they are received from airborne transmission, as he begins breathing through his shirt and shouting "Air filter! Air filter!” In the same strip, Susie Derkins, one of the secondary characters who Calvin is with at the time, assures him that "Stupidity produces antibodies." Cooties are also mentioned when Hobbes is explaining that being in love means that when you see the object of your affection; your heart crushes your innards, makes you sweat, shorts the circuits to the brain and makes you babble like a cretin. As Calvin hears this, he says that happened to him once, but that he thought that it was the cooties.
• Cooties are mentioned as lice in a child's hair in "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee.

Music

• "Cooties" was also one of the competitive song and dance numbers in the Broadway Musical, Hairspray. It was sung by Amber announcing that her rival Tracy Turnblad has cooties. The song incorporates "Circle, Circle, Dot, Dot, Dot" as a dance move. In the motion picture, the song is sung by jazz vocalist Aimee Allen in the background of the dance-off in one of the final scenes, and is not sung by the character Amber.
• Name of a Columbia, Missouri band known as the Cootie Shot Scandal.
• Kooties is also a funk rock band from Australia
• Frank Zappa - Dinah-Moe Humm: "So I pulled on her hair, Got her legs in the air, An' asked if she had, any cooties on there; (Whaddya mean cooties! No cooties on me!)"
• Cootie Shot is a punk band based in northeast Pennsylvania.
• Circle Circle Dot Dot - Jamie Kennedy and Stu Stone

See also

• List of fictional diseases
• Sex education
• Gender studies
• Gender identity

External links

• Origin of "cooties" from The Straight Dope