For some of us, embarrassment is intrinsic to our personality. We exist under a grey cloud of potentially cringe-inducing possibilities, so that when something truly embarrassing happens (our mother heckling us at our own wedding, watching anything on ITV2), it feels like a real-life manifestation of what’s been going on in our heads the whole time. But why are we trapped in these prisons of lopsided awkwardness? The excellent The Why Factor: Embarrassment (BBC World Service) tackles that very issue.
According to psychotherapist Philippa Perry, embarrassment exists as a primal form of policing. “Fear of embarrassment makes us less likely to break the rules,” she says. “We are pack animals and we want to belong and be part of the tribe.” In fact, the people who lack the ability to get embarrassed are either grade-A sociopaths (“They are narcissistic, master manipulators who compensate so you continue to like them,” says Perry) or medal-winning Olympians. “The ability to shrug off the feelings of embarrassment is a gift to sportsmen,” says cricket commentator Ed Smith. Oh dear.
There is hope for those of us stuck in our very own National Lampoon film, however. “Embarrassment can fade with age,” says Perry, “as we become more interested in our own reaction than our imaginations for what people’s reactions are.”
One woman who has made a career out of embarrassment is Amy Poehler. The actor and comedian guests on NPR’s Fresh Air to chat about her memoir, Yes Pleaseon Fresh Air (NPR). Despite Terry Gross doing her best to steer the conversation one way, Poehler, reveals herself to be more than the rare, put-upon woman in comedy. She gets deep on the end of her stint on Saturday Night Live, her postpartum depression (“nobody likes to talk about how difficult things are, they just want to talk about how easy things are”) and the writing process behind those peerless Golden Globes hosting gigs: “Tina [Fey] and I are so used to working together that we know who will deliver something best, but sometimes we want the same joke. We just have to be democratic about it.”
