Everybody does it. So everybody can chill the hell out.
You’ve just finished an intense workout and are sweating profusely, with beads of salty perspiration running down your face, legs, and other unspoken-of places. You run next door to grab a smoothie and everyone in the place immediately looks at you. They do a double-take and you start thinking, “Yeah, I look good.” That’s when you realize, you appear to have just finished a couple laps in the pool, only its not chlorine filling up the place, it’s your delicious man stench.
Sweat-shaming is a real thing, just like any other kind of shaming. You get done working out or fighting off zombies for a good four hours and you’re soaked in sweat.
It’s natural. Sweat is good!
However, when you’re in the midst of social interaction, sweating can be a major source of shame.
Take it from Donald Trump. During an appearance on “Morning Joe,” Trump bashed his rival Marco Rubio, saying “He sweats more than any young person I’ve ever seen in my life … I’ve never seen a guy down water like he downs water. They bring it in buckets for this guy.”
C'mon Trump, give the guy some slack. He’s running for the leader of a free country here!
Or the recent write-up from Amy Roe in the Guardian, who discusses sweat-shaming as “when someone points out your sweatiness as a way to signal disapproval.”
“Like its counterparts,” Roe explained, “slut-shaming and fat-shaming, sweat-shaming is aimed mainly at women, who are actually not supposed to sweat at all.”
So how has the word “shaming” extended to mean the overkill word for subjective criticism?
According to The Daily Beast, “you can be ‘shamed’ when really you’re just being criticized: 'shame' means you are always primed to take personal offence, even when doing so seems entirely misplaced.”
When you post those ridiculous Instagram photos of you digging into a tub of ice cream or a seemingly candid shot of you walking into King Soopers with no shirt on wearing American flag shorts, they are usually ended with a subtle hashtag of #noshame.
This is a pretty smart move when it comes to public criticism. We’re basically judging ourselves in order to bypass the ridicule that would promptly come without the added hashtag.
#notashamed #noshamegame #sweatshaming #hashtag
So next time you walk into a place of business after wrecking a game of Super Mario, take pride in the fact that you’ve earned your sweat!
Leave a Reply