Amber Bird | Blog

If you haven’t already, please read the introduction post. That will give you context for this page.

This is the only edit I’ve made to the list since I initially posted it. (And I just decided to do it 8 April, 2015, which is when I wrote the first draft of this.) When I first posted the Not Ashamed list on Facebook, and again when I posted it as a web page at the start of this series, my amazingstrongamazonwarrior and awesome herself friend Anne sent me a comment that she thought my list should also include “awesome.” Both times, I noted that it didn’t fit because the list was specifically about labels that could be or could have been applied to me that people thought I ought to be ashamed of. And who would ever suggest someone feel ashamed of being awesome?

But then, in a lot of different ways the week leading up to writing this, I was reminded that, in fact, this label too could be included on the list. Oh, humans…

In a different post, I’ll talk about my self esteem, which is one side of this label. Because, in fact, I don’t disagree with Anne. I do rather consider myself awesome. Maybe not everyone’s cup of tea, and certainly a strong cup of tea. But, by my tastes and measures, awesome. Today, I want to talk about why I’m here to declare that I am awesome and that I am not ashamed of that.

I want to further clarify that my only experiences and observations have come as a biological female in English-speaking Western cultures. I haven’t seen it in other contexts, but that doesn’t mean this doesn’t apply to biological males or to people in other cultures and countries. Though I really hope it doesn’t….

To be clear, I’m not talking here about bragging or about otherwise making it clear that you think your awesome traits make you better than other people (where “better” means “of greater intrinsic value,” not “more capable in a particular way,” because it is just a fact that not everyone is the same amount of good at everything as everyone else). That’s not something I’m condoning. I’m a big believer that we are all of equal and great intrinsic worth.

Here’s a little choose your own adventure with which most females will be familiar and that demonstrates the sort of situation about which I’m writing.

Someone approaches a female to offer her a compliment (this someone can be male or female, a stranger or a friend). It might be about her brawn, her brains, her beauty, her talents, her skills, or any other thing about her that might be praiseworthy. At this point, she has a few options for response, but most of those options lead to the same result.

If she wants to stay within acceptable social behaviours, she will do one of the following:

• Deny the truth of the compliment.
• Look abashed and avoid responding.
• Look uncomfortable as she thanks the person.
• Look uncomfortable, thank the person, and then rush to tell the compliment-giver how they are better than her.

The compliment-giver will feel quite pleased with themselves for having given a compliment to someone who didn’t know they were good. They will ensure the female that she is indeed that. And both parties will endeavour to move the conversation onto a different topic.

As a middle road, the female might smile and say something like, “Thanks! You are also possessed of some specific praiseworthy trait!” And then the original compliment-giver can smile and thank them and they can try to find a new topic stat.

On the other side of things, the female might do something like:

• Smile and say, “Thanks!” and then move on to a next topic without complimenting the compliment-giver in return.
• Smile and say, “Thanks!” and then go on to talk about how they manage to accomplish the good trait or what they are creating with the good trait.
• Smile and say, “Thanks! I kind of like me too,” and then move on to a next topic without complimenting the compliment-giver in return.

Now, the severity of response to those pleasant responses varies. And, please note, none of those responses includes vanity or hating on others. These are just people who are aware of their good traits and not pretending otherwise, not acting ashamed to be caught having a good trait.

And how, in my experience, does the compliment-giver often respond? Well, here are things I have seen or experienced multiple times in those situations:

• The compliment giver looks confused, then annoyed, and then changes the topic and pretty much avoids saying anything nice after that.
• The compliment-giver looks offended and accuses the female of being vain or stuck up.
• The compliment-giver tells the female they weren’t serious with the compliment and/or hurls insults at her, sometimes really foul ones. (Yes, seriously. For example, a guy told me I was gorgeous. I said, “Thanks! I kind of like me too!” and he then changed to a nasty tone and sneered as he said, and I quote, “F*ck off, you fat, ugly b*tch.” Yes, seriously. And that’s happened multiple times. Even sometimes when my only reply was a chipper, “Thanks.”)

So, in my experience and the experience of many women I know (I didn’t poll them all), the only safe replies to a compliment are to deny it, imply you’re not comfortable being good, or reply with an equal compliment. Never, ever should we just accept the compliment or, worse, agree with it.

(In a similar vein, in a recent post, The Bloggess noted that “I often see an apology that’s added with the happy or proud announcements – as if we’re embarrassed to admit good things have happened to us or that we’ve accomplished something or that we’re proud of ourselves or our family.” Ugh. Exactly. Same sort of issue.)

I have theories about the roots of this issue.

Some of this, even for those not religious, is from deep societal/cultural roots in religions that condemn pride. And, honestly, I’m not a fan of pride. But people get so paranoid about accidentally being or being seen as prideful that they end up with this sort of behaviour I’ve just been writing about. We are supposed to be so afraid of pride that we lie to ourselves and others (and God, if that’s your motivation for denying your awesomeness) and deny the good traits or at least try to ignore them instead of being grateful for this goodness in us.

Some of this, for females, is rooted in the gender norming that tells girls they have to be nice, that everyone has to be equal, that nobody should even seem to be above anyone else. Because that’s not nice. So, anyone who sticks their head up by being praiseworthy in a way that cannot be equally and precisely applied to every other person who might witness the praise is breaking that rule. But denying that there are different ways to be awesome or different degrees of awesome is dishonest and broken.

Some of this is coming from self-esteem issues. We are used to females having those, so that’s the role we are expecting them to play. A confident female is off the script. And maybe she isn’t grateful enough for our compliment, not as grateful as she would be if she didn’t like herself, so she is depriving us of some joy by not having strong enough gratitude.

Self-esteem issues can lead to another reason for this behaviour. Some people address their self-esteem issues by keeping others down. This type gets offended if you see your awesomeness because they wonder if it means you notice their lack of awesomeness. They feel like your acknowledgement demeans them further. With every bit of empathy, if you are that sort of low-self-esteem-haver, I want to promise you that you aren’t helping anyone by hating people who don’t hate themselves and that you also have good traits that, someday, you’ll wish you could acknowledge without worrying someone will make you feel bad for liking yourself.

Sometimes the issue comes up because the compliment-giver is better at the thing than the female being complimented. As if this disparity makes the praise untrue instead of making the compliment-giver more of a qualified source of compliments. ?) (If someone who is an off-the-charts-incredible musician, for instance, compliments you on your musical talent, the proper response is not to deny your skill in the face of their greater skill. When you do that, you are devaluing that portion of skill in them as well. You thank them, you accept that compliment, and then you feel free—without saying “but” or “you’re better” to compliment them.)

To me, all of those seem like really bad reasons for the sort of bad behaviour they lead to.

So, yeah, many times, I have had it implied or flat out demonstrated that I should not acknowledge my awesomeness. That I should be ashamed of it, or at least ashamed to admit it. But I am not ashamed. Not at all. I’m giddy at the good traits I have and grateful to have been born with them or to have had the opportunities to develop them. And, in acknowledging my awesomeness, I am not in any way saying you are crap. “I am awesome” means, simply, that I am awesome. Anything else you hear in there is, as another friend would say, a story about you. And I hope you keep at the story until you reach the point where you can also see and acknowledge that you are awesome.

Be awesome, lift others, and be not ashamed of every bit of awesome you are. Not ashamed!

Cross-posted to the Not Ashamed section of my site (so that it’s all tidy).