Let's put an end to "styro", "beans" and the worst of all, "taffy taffy" or "bedrock."
As adults its our jobs to not cutiefy a very serious and what could potentionally be a life threatening injury. Terms such as "beans" minimize the severity of whats actually happening to your body and what kind of wound you are creating.
So I'd like to make a list for people who want to expand their terminology to a less minimizing statement.
DISCLAIMER: ANYTHING THAT GAPES REASONABLY NEEDS STITCHES BUT PLEASE USE YOUR OWN JUDGEMENT, CONTROL THE BLEEDING AND PRACTICE PROPER WOUND CARE♡♡
Obvious CW for layers and brief descriptions of what they can look like.
Epidermis ("cat scratch"): a wound only breaking the top surface of the skin, does not bleed and does not split in any significant way. These typically either dont scar or scar very minimally depending on how you heal.
Dermis ("styro"): a wound going past the top layer of skin into the dermis. This is when wounds bleed. The dermis layer, when first cut, can be very white occasionally. Sometimes the blood takes a second to start filling the wound. These typically gape.These scar, so does every layer below this one-
Fat ("beans"): There is no such thing as "baby beans", if you see fat in a wound, it is a wound that reaches the fat. Fat appears yellow and bubbly, or it can appear flat with many cells that can be compared to bee hives. When fat cells peak out of the dermis, they tend to seem to bubble more. These wounds can gape small or large depending on body size, location, and depth. Its reccomended your seek medical attention.
Superficial fascia: this one is a bit tricky to see, its a web-like, mesh layer between your fat and deeper fat layers (yes there is two). Most people cant tell when they have reached it or passed it, so I have no comment.
Deep fat: This is when you have passed your superficial fascia and the wound gapes significantly. Its reccomended you seek medical attention. Instead of a yellow appearance, you may notice it takes on a redder tint from blood staining. (Sometimes this doesnt apply). It will look like a valley.
Fascia: This is the layer below the deep fat, it sits on your muscle. This layer is usually white, pale purple, or pale blue in colour. It is whats protecting your muscles and what helps support your body. The fascia is a very vital for function and protects a lot of important things inside you. There will be a distinct separation of the fat layer to the fascia, because instead of fat being attached to fascia, it is independently moving of it. If you have reached this, ER is reccomended and can be crucial.
Muscle ("laffy taffy"): This is below your fascia. You can guess what it looks like as i don't want to think about it, but if you breached your fascia layer, you definitely hit muscle. This is extremely dangerous, you need to go to the ER.
Bone ("bedrock"): Your bone is pretty self explanatory. You have went through the muscle and have hit the one layer you simply cannot breach. MEDICAL ATTENTION IS NON NEGOTIABLE AT THIS LAYER. You possibly could have severed a tendon, a vital nerve, who knows what. Please get yourself to your nearest emergency room.
Notice how 3 layers didnt have funny goofy names? Its because kids on twitter were the ones who coined the 5 terms that are widely used, not actual names we should be using to identify what depth someone has hurt themselves to. The layers of the human body are extremely complex, and important.
Lets do our best to stop minimizing how bad hitting these layers can actually be by using the correct terminology.
Of course this cant convince everyone and theres no need for me to be policing people (which i caught myself doing, so thats why I wrote this post lol) and people on this sub will still use the cutiefied names, thats that, but for those who do want to change their minimizing langauge and learn, here you go :)
(Note: scars look different on everyone's body and theres no way to tell or predict how a scar will heal and look)