Cool By Association
Making an Impression
A friend told me of a lecturer she had as a student who showed his class a large picture of two women in wet tee-shirts. His point had to do with an advertising slogan across the front of the tee-shirts.
What got her was that the lecturer mentioned before showing the picture that some might find it offensive but showed it anyway. Most did find it offensive, so why show it? Couldn't he just have told them the advertising slogan?
I've often seen people do questionable things like this, and just as often wondered why they do it. I used to think it was something they didn't think through or perhaps couldn't help doing, but I now think there's a less charitable interpretation--one with negative ethical implications.
When I suggested to my friend that the lecturer was trying to make a certain impression she said she thought that was right, that he wanted to "look like a player." I think that's right and that it captures something rather unfortunate about people and their need to impress others--the "Look, Ma, no hands!" syndrome.
Think of name-droppers. What they do is obvious and irritating to everyone and seldom works anyway; why do they do it? Is it just to show off that they know important people? Yes, but there's more. Name-dropping isn't just about letting others know who you know; it's about trying to be taken as one of those whose names get dropped. Name-dropping isn't just informative, however self-serving that may be; name-dropping is mainly associative. The real message isn't "I know so-and-so"; the real message is "I'm like so-and-so."
The lecturer was trying to associate himself with what he thought of as cool guys who go to wet tee-shirt contests and hang out with attractive and sexy women. To do that, he was willing to embarrass the women in his class, no doubt rationalizing that it would be taken as all in good fun. Instead, he showed himself to be a bit of a jerk.
If you have to offend or even just irritate someone to present yourself a certain way, you should be asking yourself what's so important about the impression you're trying to make. And that leads to a deeper question: what is it about whatever you're associating yourself with that's so attractive or desirable? This is a question about your values.
My thanks to Kim.
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