Electric Field Lines applying ‘Lateral Pressure” I’ve read from an MIT physics lecture that “electric field lines apply lateral pressure perpendicular to themselves” and that this explains electric repulsion.

For the electric field lines to be applying ‘pressure’ does that mean that when two like charges come close to each other and their fields interact, that each field is ‘pushing’ (pressure) on the other field because its trying to bend back to its original orientation? Below I have a link to a  animation MIT created between a positive charge and Van De Graff Generator to help show my point.
Positive Charge/Van De Graff Generator Interaction
To more clearly summarize, do electric fields want to ‘bend back’ to their normal orientation and does that fundamental property give rise to electric repulsion because interacting fields ‘push’ of each other to achieve their normal orientation? Is my understanding correct? Im having a hard time wrapping my head around this and this is the closest I have gotten.
Here is a link to the full lecture for better context if you are interested.
Thank you for your time!
 A: Just two ideas.
First, if you consider the field lines as tensed voluminous ropes, then lateral pressures do indeed occur around the sides of the body. Even if one considers electric field as a continuum, this condition can be approximated by refining the field lines into thinner and thinner lines.
Secondly, the body consists of elementary dipoles and the electric field around the body, which we simplify by a macroscopic dipole, actually interacts along the whole surface of the body.
The electric dipole of the body is the sum of all separated electrons in the body with its surplus at one pole and the deficiency at the other. In between, of course, there are still charges in the body. These charges interact with the electric field around the body. So along the mantle surface of the body there is an induced, self-reinforcing process.
It would be interesting to do an experiment in which an insulator is placed between the field and the mantle surface of the body and then see if field changes are measurable.
