The Birds, the Bees, and Being Embarrassed
To be free from embarrassment, is to be afraid.
Illustration: Paige Chiusolo
It's not astute to say that our generation is awfully afraid of embarrassment. We are trapped in a cycle of restraint, marked by thinly veiled grimaces. In the process, we crafted a new world of online vernacular designed solely to affirm insecurities and avoid potential humiliation. We strive to be precisely self-aware, so undeniably knowledgeable about our inventory of shortcomings. Consequently, we conflate uniqueness with awareness, believing that the knowledge of our own individual differences makes our tastes of a higher calibre.
I too catch my eyes darting across rooms, looking to others as a point of reference in a display of social comparison. It's sad to willingly subject ourselves to constructed conformity to feel secure. This exhaustive awareness works. When you play with the observational social book, you’ll be able to avoid those wretched awkward feelings; until you can’t.
Until that is, you're laying in a hospital bed at 3 am with your ass red and exposed, cheeks facing the cardiac arrest-coloured curtain that won’t fully close. You try to “casually” lift your head from where it's burrowed, but the crinkly hospital-grade disposable pillow cover gives your movements away. Unfortunately, as your eyes drift to the crack in the curtain, you don’t make eye contact with a friendly albeit tired nurse but rather a group of drunk men. You think this should be embarrassing… right? I mean you are 15 years old, you look like you have an infected BBL from Thailand, and your compromising position was so bad it sobered up a group of men. Yet, your face doesn’t redden with embarrassment, and you don’t try to turn away – partly because rolling over would make matters 1000% percent worse and partly because this is simply what happens when you sit on a wasp and have an allergic reaction.
You might argue that this situation isn’t embarrassing because allergies are not embarrassing. To that, I would disagree. As someone who walks campus battling rampant wasps while attempting to remain aloof, allergies are embarrassing. Do you know how embarrassing it is to remove your massive protruding backpack at the Division Street Intersection to have some shield between a flying bug and you? Let me tell you… when this happens, people part ways for you like you are Jesus crossing the Red Sea. The reason this situation was not embarrassing is because, at the time, only two thoughts were circling my mind. 1) This will be really funny one day. 2) I can’t die because I got stung in the ass. Neither of those thoughts pertained to how I was perceived (except maybe post-mortem, but I digress) because at that moment there were more important concerns than whether I was being socially acceptable.
Social acceptability and perceptions of being cool are all the rage until you are spending your cognitive resources avoiding the rhythmic hops of a single-legged pigeon at the Boston
Train station. I swear to whichever God packs the most punch, this pigeon thought I single-handedly severed its left leg. It was seeking sweet revenge.
As I sat innocently perched on a long bench, our gazes met. I saw its beady revenge repressed eyes lock in on mine. As its eyes narrowed, mine expanded as if I were prey. Suddenly I was no longer freshly 17, in a carefully constructed outfit of patchwork jeans, beautiful cream boots (that I have since lost and mourned), an Aritzia contour top, and a black leather jacket; I was a histrionic madwoman. Naturally, I sought higher ground because I, Natassia Lee, have the same fear response to a bird as I do to a tsunami. As I mounted the bench, I was confronted with the latent realisation that this bird could likely fly. Switching courses I ceremoniously stepped off the bench. The movement must have startled my mom, pulling her attention away from HELLO magazine. Her eyes met mine, then shifted to the bird creeping closer to me, and her expression took on a familiar look of parental defeat. As I paced back and forth, undoubtedly drawing attention to myself, she called out, her words reaching me in a slightly strained tone: “Natassia, the Amish are watching.”
I stopped abruptly, turning to face her. “Mom, the Amish aren’t here.” She tilted her head back in a slow nod, and as I followed her face, I spotted a group of people dressed in colonial garb. They were eating vanilla ice cream while pointing at me and laughing. Suddenly, I realized that I, Natassia Lee had made the “English” look really bad. My indescribable fear of aerial animals had turned me into the butt of an Amish joke. Yet, I could not bring it upon myself to feel embarrassed, because I did not care whether or not I looked cool – I only cared about escaping the bird.
I know these two anecdotes might lack relatability, but my point still stands: objectively embarrassing situations and feeling embarrassed can be mutually exclusive. Sometimes how you appear simply doesn’t matter — there are more important concerns than looking cool. Sure, developing fears or allergies isn’t the answer, but exposing yourself to situations where shit hits the fan, yet you walk away unscathed, can definitely be a step toward shedding that self-consciousness.