Miss America and Me

A matter of semantics

When I was a little kid, my family always watched Miss America. We tended to be introverts, and on top of that we were poor. So we never all went to the movies, or even ate out often. I looked forward to annual TV events that briefly brought the whole family together. But little did any of us realize that one year the pageant would be a life-changing moment for me.

It was the Q & A segment, in which the top contenders for the crown had to prove to the judges that they were not just another swimsuit in high heels. This particular year, instead of being asked about achieving world peace, each finalist had to pick a word from a glittery board. As I recall, the words were lofty personality traits like dedication or intelligence. Each young woman would select a word and explain why this was a quality she thought was important to possess.

They were making rather predictably uplifting choices when a relative of mine said, “Whoever picks humiliation will win.”  This seemed odd to me. Wasn’t humiliation a bad thing? Who wanted to be humiliated? It made you feel sad and picked on. It even made you cry.

Well, one of the finalists picked humiliation, and sure enough, she won. It puzzled me so that I kept thinking about it— as in, thinking about it for the rest of my life. How could humiliation be good for you?

Working from the assumption that it was—after all, she won, didn’t she?—I came up with quite an assortment of ideas. Humiliation kept you humble. It made you more sensitive to others. It was a necessary pain, a rite of passage into adulthood. Until you experienced humiliation, I decided, you could not truly grow as a person. There was no fire in the belly without it. The soul thrived on the exquisite beauty of suffering. Look at Dostoyevsky. Look at Dickinson or Van Gogh. Look at Miss America.

Thus, I did little if anything to protect myself from humiliation. When ridiculed in front of the class, I sucked it right up. I was reminded of my inadequacies countless times by family, bosses and people who saw me as some form of competition. I never defended myself. With each stinging wound, some inner part of me decided I was becoming a better person. Stronger and more empathetic. Closer to God, if you will. The way to grow was to be cut down to size.

Not surprisingly, I was attracted to outspoken people and group environments that were highly critical. I did not have to look far: my own family was so bitchy it should have been a puppy farm. But with some exceptions I sought out those who were bound to find me lacking. I thought everyone in the world knew more than I did and had every right to tear me apart. When people were kind, I’d test them, acting out my many faults so that eventually they’d drop me.

When I saw other people somehow making progress in life without being constantly hurt and humiliated, I alternated between jealousy and pity. I thought they had no right to be successful without suffering enough, but I also believed they were missing out. In the larger scheme of things, I was the lucky one.

Decades went by.

Not long ago, I happened upon the notorious Miss America clip for the first time since I was little. It turned out that the winning word was not “humiliation” (shame, mortification, loss of dignity) but “humility” (modesty, humbleness, unpretentiousness). I heard it or remembered it wrong for most of my life. Was it just childhood word confusion, or was my self-esteem already so precarious that though I heard “humility” I had to translate it into “humiliation?”

I asked a shrink of my acquaintance if people benefitted from humiliation. The shrink said, “No, never. People don’t learn by being humiliated, they just get depressed and frightened. It makes them not want to listen to the person humiliating them.”

“Well, I’m not like that,” I said. “Some of the most important things I’ve been told in life have been harsh and hurtful.”

“You aren’t like most people,” replied the shrink, which as I think of it was quite tactful of her.

Oh, so this is how human beings are. You’re not supposed to think it’s normal to be constantly put down.

Oops, I just wasted my life. Or had I? What was I to make of my lifetime of humiliation that I thought was so good for me? For always being willing, if not seeking, to lose.

I remember a spelling bee in grade school that was down to me and another kid. I missed the word, and he got it right. Rather than say the other kid won first place and I won second, the teacher pointed at us and said, respectively, “Okay, so you won and you lost.” It was a very “me” kind of thing to happen. I later wondered if I missed the word on purpose, so that I could lose yet again.

But looking back now, I know I was given a greater gift than the kid who won. He always won everything. How boring. I doubt he remembers it. Yet here I am now writing about it, sharing it with the world. Over the years, it’s become a funny story. I’ve used it to cheer people up who feel put down. I’m glad I didn’t win the otherwise forgettable spelling bee.

I’m not a linguist, but Oxford English Dictionary is online, so I looked up both words. Interestingly, though both have Latin roots, “humility” has an older European etymology than “humiliation,” which suggests that people sought or experienced humility for a few hundred years before they recognized the ability to humiliate. But for quite some time the words were considered related; the state of humility was arrived at through humiliation. Thus, for all the ways I bungled it up, there was a kernel of truth in my philosophy of humiliation. I merely was born several centuries too late.

I feel fortunate that my latest novel, Identity Thief, is, according to online reviews, being enjoyed by those who read it. But a couple of people have said they hated it. Someone did not approve of my use of strong language, to which I can only say something that sounds somewhat like “thank you” but is something else. Someone else didn’t like the characters, and indeed no one in this crime saga of deceit, blackmail, and murder deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Naturally, the few bad reviews occupy my thoughts more than the many good ones.

But I am able to laugh at myself, and even wrote a little funny poem about bad reviews. If everyone liked the novel I’d have a smidgen less self knowledge and had one less opportunity to be creative.

Humility, humiliation, whatever it is . . . It has taught me well. But to keep myself from sounding immodest, arrogant, and pretentious, maybe I’d best quit while I’m ahead.