Vanity, modesty, and the deflection of praise

Last night’s post on the “Sudden Awareness” blog hit a trending theme in my life right now: the catch-22 that faces any woman the instant she receives a compliment. Accepting praise unchallenged feels conceited, socially inappropriate, and not just to the woman receiving it; the person offering the compliment and others who overhear it are likely to judge that response as well. What we’re taught to do, as nice young ladies, is to undercut ourselves, to pass the credit to someone more deserving, to dodge however we have to dodge to get out of admitting there was anything about us that could possibly merit such a comment.

Recently, a butch friend complimented my appearance. I ducked the comment with a teasing, “You’re full of it,” and she responded with an earnest plea bred from her own experience: Please tell me how to tell a woman she’s beautiful in a way she can accept! (Paraphrased, but close.) I didn’t have an answer for her, other than pointing out that her frustration is shared by millions of others who don’t have answers, either.

I grew up keeping the front room absolutely spotless in case unexpected company dropped by, cleaning everything else imaginable if company were expected, and then immediately apologizing to guests for not having the house in better order when they arrived; the implication, I suppose, is that ordinarily our house looks even better than this, and if I’d just had more time, you’d have seen that. More importantly, I’m not prideful enough to be pleased with how my home looks, no matter how hard I worked to make it welcoming.

Accomplished something great at work? Immediately pass credit to my staff; they obviously did all the hard parts. If I’d just been half as competent as they, look at this other thing we could have accomplished, which we didn’t; that part’s my fault.

Won an award? It wasn’t talent, skill, gumption, work ethic, or anything else on my part; I was just in the right place at the right time and got lucky with an opportunity. Anybody could’ve done it.

Like my new curtains? That was luck, too, and I promise I’ll get around to doing the other rooms soon, too, so they don’t look so awkward.

Published an article? Actually, you won’t even know about that unless you see it long after the fact in my CV, because no way I’m letting anyone know. But if you did see it, and congratulate me, I’d have trouble staying with that long enough even to hear it; I’m far too likely to go immediately to all the improvements I saw after it was too late to edit further. (For the record, I intentionally avoid re-reading anything I ever published anywhere. It always makes me cringe. Always.)

And heaven forbid you compliment my physical appearance. Do I consciously try to look nice? Of course I do, just as most of us do. I fix my hair and makeup. I manicure, wax, and moisturize. I choose clothes I hope are flattering, choose jewelry to match, you name it. Of course I care. And yes, deep inside I’m thrilled you noticed, feel the smile start way down in my chest to hear you say it. But do I accept it outwardly? Absolutely not. If you say anything nice at all about my physical appearance, I’m immediately going to undercut it, even though I’ve told myself repeatedly I shouldn’t.

My ex hated that. She tried, really tried, to get me to “smile, say thank you and stop.” And I tried, still do … and still fail. Sometimes online, where I have the option to delete what I just wrote and take it back without a trace, I manage to accept that kind of approval more gracefully. It’s something I work actively to improve, and something I still don’t manage well, especially in person.

Maybe it’s fair to blame the culture of my childhood, much of which is still in daily contact with the person I am now. My mother gives very few compliments, especially physical ones, and if I were to accept one of those without deflecting it, she’d turn it into a biting criticism faster than a reflex. She’s also a true master of “Southern praise,” those nasty insults delivered with smiles that seem, on the surface, to be accolades but are absolutely anything but. (My Yankee friends may not know what I mean, but anyone from the Deep South does, I promise.) Beyond the fact that compliments were highly suspect in my youth, I learned from my entire community that women should be modest above all; being called “prideful” was deathly criticism I and every other girl around me fervently avoided.

But I’m not a child now, and how I behave is clearly my choice to make. So I’m not willing to blame my roots for what I do today. Why do I feel so vain if I don’t disembowel any nice word I’m given? Why is modesty such a virtue in my personal hierarchy of valuable traits that it trumps anything else? Why will I sometimes tell you outright why you’re wrong, if you praise my appearance in particular, when I’d never deny any other sort of opinion you offered with so little foundation as my own discomfort at hearing it? I give compliments freely, and I mean them, so why do I rebuff them when received?

Why am I so worried about being vain?