Scarlet Letters
“E-L-E-A-N-O-R” My teacher leans over me, exasperated, as she loudly spells out the letters of my first name for me. “What kid doesn’t know how to spell their own name?!” Third grade standardized testing is bad enough, but being scolded for not knowing how to put the letters of my own first name into the little boxes in front of the whole class just makes it worse. I’ve gone by “Ellie” for as long as I can remember. It’s a good name; solid, catchy, and most importantly (for third grader me) it’s easy to spell. Back then, I couldn’t have defined the word shame, but I could have told you how it felt: hot and red, like my cheeks, burning and public; a flaw in me, on a basic human level. It was as though my own name was written …show more content…
We use shame to draw lines. Us and Them. We would never, we could never do that. Shame is a recalcitrant, a wagging finger, a time out corner with no commiserators allowed. Shame is complicated: woven into our very social contract. Shame motivates people to behave; it can bring out humility in those who have forgotten theirs. The shamed one has a desperate secret she wants to hide; the shamer is on a relentless mission to expose. Shame is two-sided: terrible when directed at us, useful and powerful in our hands when we want to create a moral code, a line between what is considered right and wrong in our …show more content…
Lewinsky has said (in her TED talk “The Price of Shame”) that she has drawn strength from reading the work of Brene Brown, who studies vulnerability and shame, particularly in women. Brown makes a powerful distinction between shame and guilt. The latter, she argues, can be good: “Guilt helps us stay on track because it’s about our behavior. It occurs when we compare something we’ve done – or failed to do – with our personal values.” In contrast, “Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of
“E-L-E-A-N-O-R” My teacher leans over me, exasperated, as she loudly spells out the letters of my first name for me. “What kid doesn’t know how to spell their own name?!” Third grade standardized testing is bad enough, but being scolded for not knowing how to put the letters of my own first name into the little boxes in front of the whole class just makes it worse. I’ve gone by “Ellie” for as long as I can remember. It’s a good name; solid, catchy, and most importantly (for third grader me) it’s easy to spell. Back then, I couldn’t have defined the word shame, but I could have told you how it felt: hot and red, like my cheeks, burning and public; a flaw in me, on a basic human level. It was as though my own name was written …show more content…
We use shame to draw lines. Us and Them. We would never, we could never do that. Shame is a recalcitrant, a wagging finger, a time out corner with no commiserators allowed. Shame is complicated: woven into our very social contract. Shame motivates people to behave; it can bring out humility in those who have forgotten theirs. The shamed one has a desperate secret she wants to hide; the shamer is on a relentless mission to expose. Shame is two-sided: terrible when directed at us, useful and powerful in our hands when we want to create a moral code, a line between what is considered right and wrong in our …show more content…
Lewinsky has said (in her TED talk “The Price of Shame”) that she has drawn strength from reading the work of Brene Brown, who studies vulnerability and shame, particularly in women. Brown makes a powerful distinction between shame and guilt. The latter, she argues, can be good: “Guilt helps us stay on track because it’s about our behavior. It occurs when we compare something we’ve done – or failed to do – with our personal values.” In contrast, “Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of