PREVIEW: The Friday Edition. - Have we no shame?
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What is the essay’s opening argument about the danger of normalizing weird behavior?
This is associate editor Karina Pacheco, and this is my essay Have We No Shame. I recently read a piece by the inimitable Kat Rosenfield examining the overuse of the word normalize, a largely online phenomenon that begs onlookers to validate or otherwise destigmatize things that would typically be considered unusual or unattractive or downright rude. For example, normalize chewing with your mouth open, normalize going no contact with family, normalize never texting back. Asking others to normalize something actually implies that the said thing is in fact weird. Normalizing is a preemptive hedge against judgment or rejection.
How does Carina explain that normalizing makes eccentricities lose their uniqueness?
By insisting people normalize, say, owning ten dogs, you're just acknowledging that owning that many animals is weird. Because if it weren't weird, you wouldn't be calling for a chorus of affirmation to feel secure in your decision. Are you with me? Rosenfield makes an excellent point. This phenomenon stunts individuality because eccentricities stop being eccentric if they're normalized. When stylistic oddities like mismatched clothes or patchworked furniture become routinely accepted, the result is a strange cat twenty two, a monoculture of eccentric aesthetics where everyone is independently trying to look eccentric and creative, but ends up looking the same as the other guy. I remember one summer where every trendy girl in New York was wearing cowboy boots or ballet flats with athletic shorts and a collared button down shirt.
Why does the essay claim that the push to normalize everything started with Millennials and Gen Z?
You just had to be there. It was not normal, but they tried to make it so. Once something is normalized, it's socially and publicly validated and can no longer be wrong or weird. Instead, it becomes wrong or weird to judge the normalized phenomenon. So now not only can weird things not be considered weird, but it's morally wrong to pass judgment on something that was previously understood as bizarre or undesirable for no other reason than someone's need to feel validated in their peculiarities. Are you still with me? Calls to normalize have long been reasonable pushes for progress from tiny academic circles, like efforts to normalize breastfeeding in public in the late nineteen nineties and two thousands.
But in the 2010s and twenties, the idea exploded as an attempt to normalize just about everything, a trend I'm comfortable placing at the feet of millennials and Gen Z.
What role do shame and embarrassment play in personal growth according to the discussion?
What started as a silly fad to commiserate or bond over little quirks has quickly devolved into a compulsive need to overshare and over-validate every experience, characteristic, or predilection. Especially unconventional ones, and especially those tied to personal insecurity. My generation, the Zoomers, has long been inundated with demands to normalize everything, from buying coffee every day to skipping class and now as adults work for mental health reasons, and then cutting someone off at the first sight of difficulty. Take dating, for example. When a friend tells you about a bad first date, rarely do you encourage them to consider whether they are really incompatible with the other person or whether they have room to improve their dating etiquette.
Instead, you affirm the face-saving conclusion that the other person was a jerk. Never that your friend may have talked with their mouthful or forgotten to ask a single question, and therefore they should never see them again. At the first sign of discomfort or conflict, normalizing reactions by declaring them self care allows a person to justify almost any action, immediately disengage, and refuse to accept any personal accountability.
How does the speaker connect the need for risk‑taking with overcoming the culture of over‑normalization?
I shudder to think of the mud that so many good, necessary emotions have been dragged through to get to the altar of normalization, chief among them shame and embarrassment. They are, as Rosenfeld says, essential ingredients to a functioning society. They form the bedrock of shared norms and values that keep our society functional. Varying degrees of risk taking and independent decision making and failure are essential to establishing character and creating the foundation of self-trust and resilience that everyone needs to truly grow.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the essay’s opening argument about the danger of normalizing weird behavior?
0:08–0:49
2
How does Carina explain that normalizing makes eccentricities lose their uniqueness?
0:49–1:35
3
Why does the essay claim that the push to normalize everything started with Millennials and Gen Z?
1:35–2:23
4
What role do shame and embarrassment play in personal growth according to the discussion?
2:23–3:31
5
How does the speaker connect the need for risk‑taking with overcoming the culture of over‑normalization?
3:31–5:20
6
What calls to action and subscription information are given at the end of the episode?
5:20–6:05
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Tangle
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