You are beautiful. That's the message that some want us to see all over the
place, on Billboard's, on little post-it notes, on signs, on buildings. It is a
movement to boost the self-esteem of women who have been told either overtly
or just through cultural cues that they are not so beautiful. Hi I'm Scott Ott
with Bill Whittle and Stephen Green and this episode of right angle is brought
to you by the members at BillWhittle.com. Now men one can hardly doubt the
good intentions of the people who put up the signs that say you are beautiful.
After all, it seems that all of you know fashion magazines and Pinterest and the
rest of the universe cries out to women and says you're not good enough. However,
a PhD psychologist writing in Psychology Today by the name of Rene Endgeln and
i hope i'm pronouncing her name correctly "E-N-G-E-L-N" has said that not only
are these you are beautiful messages not helpful but they can actually be
damaging to women and there's an interesting passage in her article in
Psychology Today that I want to read to you now which because my eyes are
imperfect will require these. She says the social psychologists have amassed
decades of research demonstrating that when a message is inconsistent with what
you believe, you tend to generate counter arguments in response to it and what
she's saying is that when a woman, at least a woman who struggles with those
kind of esteem issues, sees a sign that says you are beautiful,
immediately her mind clicks into gear to argue against it, to bring up the counter
points to that, and yet I thought it was a strikingly human concept where you
have two sides that are basically trying to do the right thing and the one of
them that is overtly spending money to put up signs and tell people who feel
oppressed by their plainness that you are beautiful may actually be
making the problem worse. Bill Whittle how is it possible that people with such
good hearts are not necessarily doing good. Before I answer
that I just want to say that prior to just a few moments ago, I thought those
billboards were directed at me. Every time we go past when I just rolled down
the window thank you that's nice I wonder who put that up probably somebody
probably a fan of some kind of BillWhittle.com members I mean hey look
there's another one oh you guys are doing. No this is too much really
thank you. But to answer your question Scotty you know the road to hell is
paved with good intentions and that's one of the most profound little
aphorisms we have in this language. It is an indication of how much harm can
be done when we try to do good and in this case I think it's a it's just
another echo of the whole idea of the self-esteem movement which is we will
give you the compliments first and then you can do the work later. It's
kind of like you're in an esteem debt. I've never really thought of it that way
before but people like us who grew up in a different time would be praised after
we did something good. We paid in full and here's your reward.
In the self-esteem movement you've got kind of an esteemed debt. All these
wonderful things been said about you haven't done anything yet and I think
the worst part about this is that it creates even if they were correct let's
assume that the self-esteem movement people were correct, that it did
help people feel good about things, reality does intrude at some point or
another and the entire process of growing up is coming to grips with your
shortcomings and your strengths and playing the strengths and trying to
ignore the shortcomings. Everybody's got shortcomings. I can't think of any for
myself right now but I'm quite sure. Do they did you need to take a moment Bill?
I might you maybe we'll just do it in an edit will cover this. This is why we have a comment
section Bill. But in all seriousness, the ability to come to grips
with with what you actually are and who you actually are is not only the
beginning of adulthood it's the beginning of happiness. You can't
swim in a you know in a river you can't swim in and there are many things
that I wanted to do that are that are just simply out of bounds
for me you know like nothing I can do about it. I wanted to be a fighter pilot
I'm not a fighter pilot. I talk about it all my shows are related to it but no
matter how much I want to be I can't be one because my visions not good enough.
Now I could say you're a fighter pilot Bill you know but that's not helping me
and what I have to do instead is I have to say well you know your vision wasn't
good enough here so go see if you can what's the closest airplane you can buy
if you work very hard to get you as close to that as possible and I think
that attitude is what's really missing in society today. And once you get that
50 caliber Gatling gun mounted in the nose of your experimental aircraft I think you'll be fully there.
Well, I don't know. It's not just necessarily experimental I won't take a Cessna up
unless we are unless we're air to ground capable let's just put it that way. Well
you know bill you reminded me of the old story of the little boy who went back
out in the backyard with a baseball bat and a ball and he put the bat on his
shoulder and held the ball in his left hand and he said I am the greatest
batter on earth and he threw the ball in the air and he swung mightily at it and
completely missed. He picked the ball up again,
hoisted the bat again he said I am the greatest batter on earth and he threw
the ball up in the air and he swung at it and he missed again. So he bent over
and he picked up the ball and he rested the bat on his shoulder and he said I am
the greatest pitcher on earth. The the author of this Psychology Today
article this Rene Endgeln has written a book called Beauty sick and in a way
Stephen Green there is this sickness, this cultural obsession, with physical
appearance, you know reminded me of an old friend of
mine who was an alcoholic who went to a treatment center and then later I was
talking to him and he said well they tell me at the treatment center that I
have low self-esteem and his name was Corey and I said well with all due
respect Corey my perception is that you have high self-esteem and he said what
do you mean and I said everything's about Corey it's you know what's wrong
with Corey and how why doesn't Corey go I can't Corey do this and why does Corey
keep drinking and why don't you know and it's constantly non-stop self-talk,
and I think Steve is it maybe that's the problem this whole self-esteem movement
addressed by this you are beautiful banner or billboard, is really just
completely headed in the wrong direction. Our problem is external to us perhaps
in some ways but really it's inside. Okay let me preface my answer by
saying this. My wife and I just a couple of months ago celebrated our 15th
wedding anniversary and after all these years
I barely know how she thinks. No, I take that back. I don't know how she thinks. I
don't understand it. I don't understand how women think. I don't understand
how their men think and I'm only very dimly aware of how I think. it's
just it's not in my skill set. I'm not sure anybody really understands what
goes on in another person's mind and I'm fine with that. I would like to think
and this is what I I first thought when he enjoyed this
story in the backstage segment, I would like to think that as people as a
species that we are generous and confident enough to simply take a
compliment in the warm spirit in which it was intended and feel good about
ourselves for a second and leave it at that,
but apparently we aren't. That's just not who we are as a species. What a shame
that is unlike communists and leftists though I'm not going to try and you
know pound those square pegs into the round hole. Instead, I do still like this
idea of helping people feel good about themselves, even if it's just for a
moment, but clearly feeding in to selfish self-esteem that isn't genuine with a
compliment that is generic and meaningless isn't doing the trick.
Go figure. So instead, if you want to make somebody
feel better about themselves even a perfect stranger, why don't you do a nice
gesture for them? It can be simple as holding a door or helping with the
groceries, whatever it is, just a small simple gesture and maybe they'll do
something nice for you, and if they do, you know there's
a word, I think it may be my favorite word in the English
language. I overuse it. I catch myself and I try and stop myself and I keep
overusing it, but the word it's not beauty, it's not beautiful, it's lovely.
Lovely is one of those words that just says oh isn't that nice but without
putting any pressure on anybody. So if somebody does that nice gesture for you,
tell him that was lovely and maybe they'll take that real compliment in the
same spirit that their nice gesture was given to you. Well as Chrissie Hynde, the
lead singer for The Pretenders, used to say nobody's perfect,
not even a perfect stranger, and I think that when we try to make everybody
feel good about everything we make nobody feel good about anything and we
just highlight their inadequacy. There is an old saying that it is competence that
breeds confidence and so if you want self-esteem, be good at something. Do
something well and maybe that thing that you do well is you're really good at
putting on an outfit and some makeup and doing your hair right and you look
fantastic and that's fine but that's your thing okay and maybe somebody
else can you know solve a quadratic equation. I don't even know what a
quadratic equation is. I'm not even sure what those words as they're coming out
of my mouth indicate and that's fine but I think that we make a mistake when we
try to create sort of this idealized man or woman and then measure ourselves
against it and we make a worse mistake when we try to measure other people
against it, so those people well-intentioned though they may be who
want every woman to look in the mirror at that little post-it note that they've
told her to put on the mirror that says you are beautiful, she looks at that and
then she looks at the mirror and all she sees is the ways in which she falls
short, but if you get outside of yourself and say you know what instead of
focusing on what I look like, why don't I get out there and try to help other
people like Steve suggesting why don't I go out.. you know you don't have time to
look in the mirror when you're feeding the poor for example. You don't have time
with to look in the mirror when you're trying to land a rocket ship on a space
on a platform that's floating in the ocean. You really don't get absorbed
in the more trivial things of life and I think the overall point that these
self-esteem folks need to understand is beauty is fleeting. No matter how
beautiful you look at 25, you're not going to look the same kind of beautiful
at 85. The real beauty comes from the character of a person and the real sense
of esteem comes from the accomplishments of a person and that's what we need to
recognize and reward but that's kind of superfluous because a person who has
accomplishments and who has character already knows it. For Bill Whittle and
Stephen Green and the entire Right Angle team, thanks to the members of
BillWhittle.com for making Right Angle possible.
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