Modern-day humiliation rituals

and America's problem with embarrassment

I recently saw a TikTok from a French girl who said she doesn’t understand why everything is so embarrassing for Americans. She said Americans will trip on the sidewalk and make a big deal that ‘that was so embarrassing.’ ‘What’s embarrassing about that?’ She asks in her French accent that I obviously tried to mimic immediately after hearing. She goes on to say that tripping and these things that we Americans consider “so embarrassing” are just part of the human experience and are not thought of as embarrassing in other countries as we make them out to be.

It made me think of my own history with embarrassment. I remember the first time I truly felt that feeling – and how it lingered for YEARS after the fact, sending a shiver down my spine every time the memory crept its way back into my brain. 20+ years later and I’m finally over it enough to write about it for you:

It was first grade in Ms Sensale’s class. Ms. Sensale was the pretty, young teacher at school that everybody wanted to have and now that I think about it she was probably only 25 at the time. A child herself! It was a kid named Justin’s birthday and we all sat criss-cross apple sauce on the rug singing Happy Birthday to him. He was so shy and quiet, probably hating the attention, that he didn’t react at all to the song. The class didn’t like this. Kids started yelling at him to smile, to give us any sort of positive reaction to our great performance. Because my last name was next to his in the alphabetized class order, I sat right next to him on the rug, as it goes. After what felt like minutes of my 6-year-old peers yelling at this poor kid to smile, I took it upon myself to make it happen. I reached over and tried to physically force a smile on his face with my hand… (I KNOW it’s BAD but in my defense, we hadn’t learned about consent yet). Justin immediately burst into tears and Ms. Sensale came over to console him.

I don’t remember what happened next but I’ll never forget the feeling, the aftermath of making somebody cry on their birthday. Remember when I said I was over it? I might’ve spoken too soon.

Looking back on it now… all that to try to make a man smile? I guess that is embarrassing!

Maybe the French girl on TikTok was right; we should all be embarrassed less – but in this day in age, there are some things that feel like modern-day humiliation rituals. Some examples:

• The DunKing Meal

  • I hate to call anyone in my life out publicly but here I go anyway. My boyfriend and I were lying in bed the other night when he said, “I might do something crazy tomorrow morning.” Now, this could mean a number of things but in my gut, I knew it meant he was going to get the new Dunkin Donuts’ DunKing meal. What is it, you may ask? It’s a good deal; a classic sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich with a side of hashbrowns and a medium coffee for just $6 but the kicker? They give it to you in a pink and orange cardboard munchkin box that says “DunKings” all over it. To do your morning commute with that in hand is, for lack of a better word, brave.

• Food accounts that make me comment “PANCAKES” to get the recipe

  • I know our parents used to have to get a recipe by decoding 100-year-old handwriting from tea-stained scraps of paper that had been passed down generations but there’s something about leaving a public comment on Instagram with the name of the dish to get the recipe direct messaged to me that feels harder than that. The last thing I want is for my friends to be scrolling on Instagram and see that @alexagracee commented “EGG SALAD” on a reel

• Your computer or phone disconnecting from your headphones and audio playing loudly in a quiet space

  • This one speaks for itself. It somehow happens to me once a week but each time, my heart stops and I try to make eye contact with anyone close to me, so I’m not in it alone.

• Having to reveal it’s your birthday mid-conversation with someone

  • When somebody doesn’t know it’s somebody else’s birthday, it feels like the greatest elephant in the room. This feels embarrassing for both people in the interaction. I recently saw two coworkers chatting and one of them didn’t realize it was the other’s birthday so they were having a normal morning interaction. I couldn’t stop thinking about how the non-birthday girl was going to feel horrible later on, when she realized it was birthday girl’s birthday and she hadn’t addressed it. Then I thought of the birthday girl, full of birthday energy, hiding the fact that she was a brand new age. Obviously, I chimed in and brought up the birthday. Hey, I can’t be a passive bystander!

  • This feels like a good time to mention that it’s kind of my birthday as I’m writing this. I say kind of because my birthday doesn’t exist this year due to the unfair rules of Leap Year.

Anyway, I turn 7.25 in Leap Years and 29 in real years tomorrow so here’s to entering the last year of my twenties with less embarrassment!