The internet’s golden girl Alix Earle has revealed that she once thought she got a sexually transmitted infection (STI) from riding a mechanical bull. Yep, you read that correctly.
On the most recent episode of Alix’s Hot Mess Podcast, the 22-year-old TikTok star reflected on a situation that occurred after she went to a tailgate party during her first year at the University of Miami. As she walked in, she noticed that there was a mechanical bull in the centre of the room.
“Drunk girls they’re eating that shit up,” she exclaimed on the pod. Soon enough, she became one of those funlovin’ gals.
“I’m in my skirt, I’m flying around, I had my little game day outfit on.
“I rode that bull not once, not twice, probably 20 times thinking it was the coolest thing anyone’s ever seen.”
POP OFF, QUEEN!
But the next day Alix noticed that she had a bunch of red lumps on her thigh. Although as a thick-thighed gal my mind goes straight to chafing, Alix panicked thinking it was a more serious situation.
“My mind immediately flashes to an STI,” she said, noting that when she was in high school a pal had told her a story about a girl who “got an STD situation all over her legs” after riding a mechanical bull in shorts.
“So I look at my legs and I’m like ‘Oh my god, I have the bull riding STI,” she explained.
Alix then went to her friend Hannah‘s room in tears asking for advice because she belived her to be studying nursing. As it turns out, Hannah had just been studying biology and a math subject so she Googled Alix’s symptoms. In the end, they self-diagnosed Alix with with rug burn or as they put it “bull burn.”
The story is incredibly entertaining and I love how she gets her friends to chime in as she’s telling it. But it sparked my interest.
Would it be possible – under any circumstances – to contract an STI from riding a mechanichal bull? Or is it like the old toilet seat wives tale?
To find out once and for all, I had a chat with Dr Zac Turner.
“I guess it depends on what STI,” he postulates.
While it would be an incredibly rare circumstances, he reckons that there are two possibilities.
1. If someone had a whopping case of crabs, and the saddle was hairy, potentially there could be a transfer.
2. If someone had an open wound and got sweaty on the saddle for it to stick on there, it could transfer to the next person. But only if they too had open wounds, or managed to get a microderm abraison from the saddle and it wasn’t sanitised between riders.
“The thing is, because the area is having a bit of a rub and abrasion, it breaks down the skin which is the natural barrier for lots of these things which is why lots of STIs usually go towards mucus membranes because that area of the skin is thinner and easier to break through,” Dr Zac explained.
“Say you were to get a really good dermabrasion from the saddle or someone had an external sore and then you got one, herpes or something could in theory go in there.”
While Dr Zac noted that if all the perfect conditions of infection from one person to another were met, maybe there would be an eight out of 10 chance of infection. But in normal circumstances where the seat was sanitised or even that someone was wearing pants? One out of 10.
Truthfully, Dr Zac says that he’s always cautious to rule out these things entirely thanks to the story below.
“I once had a patient who had some very strange lesions on their face which we swabbed,” he began.
“After tests came back, I was very surprised to find that they had gonorrhea on their face which I didn’t think was possible. But it turned out they had been to a ping pong show and he had shaved the day before and got hit in the face with a ping pong ball.”
The more you know!!!!!
In conclusion, it’s incredibly unlikely that you’d find yourself being infected with a sexually transmitted disease from riding a mechanical bull. In most cases sexually transmitted diseases are transmitted through unprotexted sexual contact and coming in contact with infected bodily fluids.
So as always, use protection during sex and get tested regularly and you should be a-okay.
