What embarrasses you? I have a theory.
Dec. 20th, 2013 10:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flexagonI've been thinking a lot about embarrassment lately, not really for its own sake but as part of a huge swirl of thoughts about intimacy, privacy (what's that for?), secrecy, sharing, etc. Huge and nearly uncrackable swirl, I should mention, like a cryptic crossword that I can't get those critical first answers on. Embarrassment is maybe one of the first clues to start cracking -- and I'm also going to use this as an exercise for myself, wait for it. So I think, I think maybe, the things a person is embarrassed about are things that are both negative (in that person's eyes, or in the world's) and also perceived to be unusual. At least unusual enough to draw attention.
Attention is part of it, because a person can be embarrassed about something positive when it's brought to the attention of people ("aw shucks, stop it, you're making me blush"). But I'm just going to lump that in with "unusual", because experiments where a psychology professor tells the whole class to simply look at one student for no reason are rare.
And to continue with the "unusual" theme, in my experience, everything gets WAY less embarrassing/shameful when a person finds out that their weird condition/experience/whatever is shared by others... and this, btw, is one reason I'm in favor of talking about everything. Talk, and you might get a "me too" along with the "eww" or "wtf?" responses; or someone might read it and feel better even if they don't say "me too".
I'm not embarrassed about much, and it might be because I think I'm mostly standard-issue. Just a classic homo sapiens sapiens, female, owner of a body, owner of a brain, subject to the usual buffeting of life.
I know I'm still missing a big piece, probably something about privacy. Maybe something has to be negative, unusual enough to draw attention and/or considered "private".
I'd have to say the thing that embarrasses me most during the average month is my skin, when it intermittently breaks out. It's very possible I have borderline BDD about this, because ugh, when I have really visible blemishes I don't see the rest of my face at all. This is despite the fact that I make dermatologists and aestheticians yawn, so I'm trying to figure out if this fits with my pattern. I think it does, because something in my brain believes my skin is unusual even if it's not.
There are the (blessedly occasional) pimples that are like little bombs loaded with flesh-eating bacteria. They will pop no matter how much I leave them alone, and when they reach the surface it's like they dissolve it: they are determined to turn themselves into scabs. Why, why? These things don't appear in any of the "lifecycle of a pimple" diagrams online, so I almost have to conclude that I'm the only one, ever in history, to have such a thing on their forehead. Luckily I get one every year or so, not every day.
And: my chin was upset a while ago, in a way that seemed persistent and strange to me over a few days. It was pinkish, nothing terrible, but the blemishes seemed a bit more like blisters than whiteheads, and one little pink patch seemed to me like all the new blemishes were at the border of the patch. Isn't that a little bit... ringwormy? I thought, and on a hunch I put anti-fungal stuff on it instead of anti-acne stuff. The next morning it was dramatically better, leaving me both kind of disgusted and relieved. (I'm not sure if responding to anti-fungal stuff means it was fungal, but it's certainly a clue.) I also thought fuckin-A, I'm never telling ANYONE about this. Then I was annoyed with myself for that. A quick internet search shows facial fungal stuff to be pretty common, it was a mild/small case, it's easy to see how I might've gotten it (rubbing my face all over a circus school), it's easy to fix and fixed already, and I'm not sure why it was intrinsically any worse than the bacterial infection that comprises acne or, for that matter, the yeast that causes sebborrheic dermatitis. People play host to all sorts of other life forms at various times, after all. We kill them (eff you, bacteria!) or eat probiotics to help them (yay, helpful gut bacteria), or we ignore them (those little eyebrow mites), and we go on. So why the strong urge toward feeling bad about it and/or never posting this? Bueller? Brain?
I admire people who aren't embarrassed about things. On a bus a few days ago, a woman fell down when the bus started; right after "is she okay?" I thought "poor thing, how embarrassing", but she laughed merrily and got up, not bothered a bit. Funny thing about that; the attention shifted right off her, because her "no big deal" attitude made it not-so-negative. And also, anyone who takes public transit a lot knows it happens sometimes. Scrap the negative and the unusual, and what do you have left? Nothing. Standard "homo sapiens on unstable surface" conditions, with the expected outcome of an occasional stumble.
Attention is part of it, because a person can be embarrassed about something positive when it's brought to the attention of people ("aw shucks, stop it, you're making me blush"). But I'm just going to lump that in with "unusual", because experiments where a psychology professor tells the whole class to simply look at one student for no reason are rare.
And to continue with the "unusual" theme, in my experience, everything gets WAY less embarrassing/shameful when a person finds out that their weird condition/experience/whatever is shared by others... and this, btw, is one reason I'm in favor of talking about everything. Talk, and you might get a "me too" along with the "eww" or "wtf?" responses; or someone might read it and feel better even if they don't say "me too".
I'm not embarrassed about much, and it might be because I think I'm mostly standard-issue. Just a classic homo sapiens sapiens, female, owner of a body, owner of a brain, subject to the usual buffeting of life.
I know I'm still missing a big piece, probably something about privacy. Maybe something has to be negative, unusual enough to draw attention and/or considered "private".
I'd have to say the thing that embarrasses me most during the average month is my skin, when it intermittently breaks out. It's very possible I have borderline BDD about this, because ugh, when I have really visible blemishes I don't see the rest of my face at all. This is despite the fact that I make dermatologists and aestheticians yawn, so I'm trying to figure out if this fits with my pattern. I think it does, because something in my brain believes my skin is unusual even if it's not.
There are the (blessedly occasional) pimples that are like little bombs loaded with flesh-eating bacteria. They will pop no matter how much I leave them alone, and when they reach the surface it's like they dissolve it: they are determined to turn themselves into scabs. Why, why? These things don't appear in any of the "lifecycle of a pimple" diagrams online, so I almost have to conclude that I'm the only one, ever in history, to have such a thing on their forehead. Luckily I get one every year or so, not every day.
And: my chin was upset a while ago, in a way that seemed persistent and strange to me over a few days. It was pinkish, nothing terrible, but the blemishes seemed a bit more like blisters than whiteheads, and one little pink patch seemed to me like all the new blemishes were at the border of the patch. Isn't that a little bit... ringwormy? I thought, and on a hunch I put anti-fungal stuff on it instead of anti-acne stuff. The next morning it was dramatically better, leaving me both kind of disgusted and relieved. (I'm not sure if responding to anti-fungal stuff means it was fungal, but it's certainly a clue.) I also thought fuckin-A, I'm never telling ANYONE about this. Then I was annoyed with myself for that. A quick internet search shows facial fungal stuff to be pretty common, it was a mild/small case, it's easy to see how I might've gotten it (rubbing my face all over a circus school), it's easy to fix and fixed already, and I'm not sure why it was intrinsically any worse than the bacterial infection that comprises acne or, for that matter, the yeast that causes sebborrheic dermatitis. People play host to all sorts of other life forms at various times, after all. We kill them (eff you, bacteria!) or eat probiotics to help them (yay, helpful gut bacteria), or we ignore them (those little eyebrow mites), and we go on. So why the strong urge toward feeling bad about it and/or never posting this? Bueller? Brain?
I admire people who aren't embarrassed about things. On a bus a few days ago, a woman fell down when the bus started; right after "is she okay?" I thought "poor thing, how embarrassing", but she laughed merrily and got up, not bothered a bit. Funny thing about that; the attention shifted right off her, because her "no big deal" attitude made it not-so-negative. And also, anyone who takes public transit a lot knows it happens sometimes. Scrap the negative and the unusual, and what do you have left? Nothing. Standard "homo sapiens on unstable surface" conditions, with the expected outcome of an occasional stumble.
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no subject
Date: 2013-12-21 03:26 pm (UTC)I think embarrassment is a learned thing. Some people feel more or less of it depending on how they were brought up and what kind of community they were in (mostly) as children.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-21 06:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-30 05:27 am (UTC)The easiest solution is to be wysiswyg, but that would be both upsetting (for others) and wasteful (for me).
no subject
Date: 2014-01-07 12:58 pm (UTC)If it was, it'd go something like "Shit -- I'm not actually an expert on foo, but I try to act like one, and so-and-so has noticed correctly that I'm NOT. This is negative (I look like a poser as well as an idiot) and also unusual (nobody else ever poses, they really are experts. Yes, I suck."
But "unusual" may have nothing to do with this one. Everybody poses, and I think we all know it, and yet for someone to see a crack in the pose is indeed embarrassing. Maybe not least because it implies poor choice in pose.
When I try to be wysiwig, I get told to stop being so down on myself. Every single time. Also I say things that upset others, and I get called cynical, negative, too bitter. So I have given up on this as essentially impractical, though sometimes the right affect will let me get away with still saying the words, and that's always nice.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-07 01:00 pm (UTC)Maybe embarrassment is a learned thing, but if so, why DO people blush when a psychology professor points and says "hey, everyone look at her for a second"? It seems more likely we need to be trained out of it, maybe by teaching kids to perform... and/or just do non-performance things solo in front of people regularly, but I'm not sure there is really such a thing as that. Doing things solo in front of people is performance.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-16 05:38 pm (UTC)<mull> I can't visualize what your version of wysiwyg is like, that would cause people to criticize.