The Shame Machine

The Shame Machine

Adult nonfiction
In high school you may have read Nathaniel Hawthorne's The
Scarlet Letter. Set in the Puritan days, it's a cautionary tale that
focuses on their taboo against sex outside of wedlock. Hester Prynne
must wear a scarlet A for adultery wherever she goes. (Of course the
dude, a minister no less, suffers no punishment).
These days we don't need scarlet letters. We have the
Internet. A person's misstep can go viral and be virtually shamed
around the world. As Cathy O'Neil tells us in The Shame Machine,
there's a whole lot of shaming going on. And a lot of corporations
and other entities are profitting greatly from it.
Much of the shaming is what O'Neil calls punching down. It's
aimed at the most vulnerable in our society and based on a very faulty
premise: the world is fair. We determine out own destinies.
Therefore, if we end up overweight, addicted to drugs, or poor it's
because of our own choices.
"...A common tactic, when a student's lunch account is running a
deficit, is to shame the child. In one Pennsylvania school, a seventh-
grade girl, whom we will call Chelsea to protect her from further
scrutiny, was in line in the cafeteria, getting her slice of pizza,
apple, cucumber, and glass of chocolate milk. But the cafeteria
employee saw that the girl had an unpaid bill and threw the food in
the trash."
Blaming the poor choices of the poor or the parents of the poor
for their plight absolves the larger society of responsibility. Why
squander tax money on "undeserving" people like Reagan's welfare
queens when you can be cutting benefits and/or adding work
requirements to programs like SNAP? Shaming allows us to look the
other way instead of investing cash and time into finding real
solutions.
O'Neil has faced a very common kind of shaming. The day she
learned that she was a big step closer to getting her PhD in math--
from Harvard no less--she decided to celebrate by baking cookies. She
went to a local store to buy ingredients.
"I knew the clerk there. He'd always been friendly. But when I
placed the flour, sugar, and chocolate chips on the counter, he shook
his head and said, 'Why are you buying that? Don't you know you're
fat?'"
Fat shaming is so universal in this country that if you don't
experience it you know at least one person who does. A lot of
people benefit financially from that. Even though diets usually don't
work, the weight loss industry in America pulls in $72 billion a year.
However, O'Neal feels that punching up shaming--where the less
powerful punch up at the oppressors--is a good thing and sometimes the
only way to hold them accountable.
If you want a thorough and thought provoking analysis of
weaponized shame in the United States today The Shame Machine is a
very good read.
On a purrrsonal note, I had a good Easter. Eugene and I took a nice
long drive. We found some bodies of water that were still at least
partly frozen over and ran into a few flurries. We saw a loon. We
got breakfast and lunch. It was a fun drive.
Just two more weeks of classes and finals! Yikes! (Jules)
The Easter Bunny bought me cat treats while I slept. The Easter Bunny
is my friend. (Tobago)
A great big shout out goes out to Eugene.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway


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