I’m sick and tired of seeing the words performative, nonchalant, and larper get thrown around like they even mean anything anymore. Somewhere along the way, being embarrassed became the worst possible thing that could happen to a person, and we all quietly agreed to build our entire personalities around avoiding it. I think that’s a mistake. I think embarrassment is actually doing something for you, if you let it.
The best piece of advice I’ve ever been given was from my brother, of all people: “Try to do something embarrassing every week on purpose.” It sounds kind of dumb, like most other things he says, but what he’s getting at is if you actively do embarrassing things on purpose, the easier it’ll be to get over real embarrassment when it inevitably happens. He also at one point told me, “literally nobody cares about you,” and while that one was more of a jab, it still goes hand in hand with the topic of embarrassment.
As any little sister would, I took his words as the Bible, and now I have zero sense of shame whatsoever!
I’m just kidding… sort of…
But he really encapsulated my problem with everything right now. He was trying to get me to learn the very important lesson of how to get over yourself, because harping on and wallowing in your own embarrassment does nothing but keep you from moving forward.
Nobody Learns Anything in a Room That’s Too Scared to Talk
There’s an irritating silence that happens in a lecture hall right after a professor asks a question. It’s not because nobody knows the answer, but because everybody’s doing the math on what happens if they’re wrong.
If you want a pro tip real quick, just be loud and wrong. I’m not joking, call out what you think an answer is even if you’re only half sure. The short-lived embarrassment of being publicly corrected is one of the fastest ways to actually learn something in my experience. It’s not fun at the moment, sure, but you remember the correction forever, because your brain tags it as Oh my God, do not repeat. Compare that to sitting there, nodding along, never testing what you actually understood versus what you just recognized.
The bigger problem is what happens when a whole room adopts the silent strategy at once. Everyone’s so afraid of looking stupid that the classroom turns into the professor’s personal hell of just them talking, agreeing with themselves, occasionally pausing for a silence that everyone misinterprets as understanding. It’s unengaging, and honestly, it’s kind of rude. Being in a room together to learn, and collectively deciding that looking smart matters more than actually getting smarter kind of defeats the point of even showing up.
“Performative” is Such a Cop-Out
Performative used to mean something specific. Now it’s just an arbitrary accusation you throw at anyone doing something earnestly, in public, where you can see it. I think that’s telling because things only read as performative to people who have nothing of their own to show for themselves. It’s a lot easier to sneer at someone else’s effort than to put in your own and risk it not landing.
I’ll admit it; I’ve called someone performative for reading a book and drinking matcha on the bus. Please hold your gunfire, I know. But looking back, I was just projecting my own fear of trying: fear of not having the “right” interpretation of a book, failing to pick up a new hobby and my brain filing it under “Another Thing You Couldn’t DoTM,” or not knowing how to properly order a matcha, I guess? And it goes both ways. I’m reluctant to admit this, but I crochet in public sometimes, and recently I overheard someone call me performative for it, and it hurt like a mother of a brother. But I got over it, because the very thing I was making was a gift for someone special in my life, and that’s worth cringing over. .
If you actually care about something, doing it visibly is going to look like something to somebody. That’s just what caring looks like from the outside, filtered through people who’ve decided cynicism is safer than trying, myself included.
The Archive of My Former, Dumber Self
Full transparency, this fear still applies to me to this day. Even joining Her Campus in the first place had my mind spinning with, “you have nothing of worth to say,” “no one’s even going to read it regardless,” or “the fact you want your writings publicly displayed isn’t very mysterious, nonchalant, cool girl of you, huh?” I go back and read old stuff I’ve published and physically cringe; I even fear that this one is coming off a bit too optimistic and cheesy, but oh well. Some of it I want gone, but that instinct, the one where I want to scrub the record clean of anything that might make me look like I used to think differently, or worse, or less coherently than I do now, is the same instinct I just spent this whole article arguing against.
So I’m leaving it up. Embarrassing old writing is just evidence I used to be a novice at something I’m hopefully better at now. That’s not something I should be ashamed of; that’s the whole point of the process working exactly as intended.
Side note: I’m lucky enough that my friends and family actually do read my articles, and some are even kind enough to give feedback. The people I feared would be the most brutally honest ended up being part
of the reason I didn’t just drop this whole thing entirely. Every acknowledgment of this “thing I do” means so much more to me than I thought it would, but it just goes to show, at least to myself, that the cost of my embarrassment bought me these moments of knowing I have a community.
So Yeah, Everything’s Embarrassing. Do it anyway.
So I guess the takeaway, if my brother’s advice is to be believed, is to sometimes just go be embarrassing on purpose. Say the wrong answer. Read the book on the bus. Crochet in the dining hall. Let someone side-eye you for it. Worst case, you feel weird for ten minutes. Best case, you actually learn something, find a hobby, or make a gift.
And if someone calls it performative anyway, who actually cares?
You’ll live.