Self Concept: A tale of braces, beliefs, and self bias
Before I start babbling endlessly, a big thankyou to my friend Sampson for helping me fix the problem with my comments. You are amazing, you rock my world, and I owe you huge.I was never the most popular kid in my junior high. I was too tall, my nose didn't fit my face, I had a huge chest and arms that were too long for my torso, big feet, bad hair, glasses, and an awkward way of doing just about everything. Although its arguable how much of this has changed, my parents decided at that time (questionably the most awkward of my life) that it was a good time to get braces.
Cruel, I know.
Who am I? A nerd, with bad hair, and braces.
I will never forget walking into Home Ec that day. Everyone was staring at me, I'm sure of it. There I was, terminally uncool, with miles of metal hanging from my jaw. Not only would no boys ever like me, I was sure at that point I was going to be one of those women with 45 cats and a huge empty house and headgear.
Every face in that class was looking at me, and judging me. Judging these huge, metal monstrosities that were attached to my crooked teeth. I had no idea about the spotlight effect, but it has definitely been one that I've become used to.
For those three (long) years, I was god's cruel joke...a geek, marked for uncoolness with braces, who got to watch her twin sister be the cute popular one.
It was at this time that I decided that because I was so physically hideous and doomed to spend the rest of my life alone in a huge house scaring the neighbor kids, that I decided my best course of action was to be nice to everyone. All. The. Time.
Which incidentally was one of my dumber ideas.
My goal was to present myself as the nicest, sweetest person possible, who just happened to look like a freak of nature. Had I been aware of what I later found out was self-monitoring behavior, I would've been much better off. I spent the majority of my time doing worthless, boring, inane and even ridiculous things for other people, praying to god that they wouldn't notice that I was a dork (they would've had to be blind).
Eventually, the braces came off. The rest of my body evened out with itself, and I even got a bit of coordination (Not a lot, but significantly more than I had at the time).
The spotlight effect still happens pretty regularly. When I got my tongue pierced, I was sure that everyone knew just by looking at me. Same with my tattoos (which are hidden if I'm wearing any sort of clothing at all). But I was positive the day I got my tattoo that everyone had X-ray vision and was staring right at the CareBear tattooed on my left hip. Ridiculous, I know, but true (except for my mother, she really does have X-ray vision, and she's psychic, but those are stories for a later time). That's the worst part about the spotlight effect. Suddenly, I'm the female version of Napoleon Dynamite all over again.
I did learn a few things about myself through this experience that I can draw on later in my academic career.
The most important thing I discovered has nothing to do with psychology, though.
I learned that some of the most famous, beautiful, and most looked at people in history have felt the same way I did, braces and all.
posted by Clare at
Thursday, June 02, 2005
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