-
- |
-
- |
- |
- 14
One of my earliest memories is no more than a command: “Smile.” The directive was delivered by my father, standing over me in a church pew, definitely not smiling. I wasn’t so much a morose kid as a deeply internal one, and whatever expression I made while lost in thought lacked the cheerfulness expected of little girls. As I would learn soon after that day in church, an American female with a downward-sloping mouth cannot escape the tyranny of smile-pushers. My dad’s request was echoed by teachers (“Try to look interested”), relatives (“Why so glum?”), and, much later, random construction workers (“Smile, baby!”).
So it’s more than a little refreshing to know that Barbara Ehrenreich doesn’t care whether you smile. Indeed, she’d rather you not. In Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, she accuses positivity-freaks of corrupting the media, infiltrating medical science, perverting religion, and destroying the economy. She believes that life coaches and their ilk discourage critical thinking among credulous Americans. In her attempt to link starfish-shaped “reach for the stars” beanbags and global economic devastation, Ehrenreich gets ahead of herself, but along the way she pushes back against a kind of cultural pressure so totalizing we sometimes fail to notice its existence.
All the Oprah-ready gurus you would expect to populate this polemic show up to share some advice—here’s Joel Osteen warning us never to “verbalize a negative emotion,” there’s Tony Robbins exhorting us to “Get motivated!” In turning the United States into a 24-hour pep rally, charges Ehrenreich, these professional cheerleaders have all but drowned out downers like “realism” and “rationality.” Their followers are trained to dismiss bad news rather than assimilate or reflect upon its importance. Motivators counsel an upbeat ignorance—the kind of illusory worldview that might, say, convince a president that his soldiers will be greeted as liberators in a foreign state, or a mayor that his city’s crumbling levees can withstand the force of a hurricane.
But Ehrenreich seems less worried about what positivity fans value than what they ignore. Her idea of a life well-lived, as she repeatedly tells us, involves storming into the world and demanding progressive political change. Positivity’s decidedly inward focus—in which the solution to every problem lies in a mere attitudinal shift—thus seems troubling, a “retreat from the real drama and tragedy of human events.” When a Kansas City pastor declares his church “complaint-free,” Ehrenreich sees a demand that Americans content themselves with their dismal lot. When companies hire motivators to boost morale in the workplace, she sees “a means of social control” by which disgruntled employees are brainwashed into acquiescence. “America’s white-collar corporate work-force drank the Kool-Aid,” she writes, “and accepted positive thinking as a substitute for their former affluence and security.”
Life coach/professional-motivator-types are soft targets. They don’t seem particularly bright, they use verbs in dumb ways (as in “God will prosper you”), and they cultivate a general air of overcaffeinated quackery. One wonders how anyone takes them seriously. But no one takes them more seriously than Ehrenreich, who believes them capable of driving Americans toward a bizarre array of conflicting behaviors. In blaming so much evil on positive thinking, she casts optimism as both an opiate—numbing us into a kind of stoned complacency, as with the wronged employers—and a stimulant, pumping us up for an ill-advised investment or attack on a foreign nation She’d do far better to pick one. Does positivity lull us into quiescence or spur us toward risk-taking?
Kerry Howley is a contributing editor at Reason Magazine and an Arts Fellow at the University of Iowa's literary nonfiction program.
SNL: Equal Opportunity Objectifiers
Jon Hamm spent most of the Saturday Night Live episode he hosted last night shirtless.
Confessions of a Woman Comedy Writer
Allison Silverman accepts one from New York Women in Film & Television (and tells us why it's rare).
Comments
Which is it?
By: mbwhat | Sat, 12/19/2009 - 00:25
To maxbuck:
You say that the data are in, and I don't dispute that. But I wonder what data you reference in you assertion that optimists are generally happier and more prosperous than pessimists. It seems obvious that CEOs should be more excited about the future than the homeless. I just wonder if the trend you cite confuses correlation with causation. I am willing to be convinced otherwise, I just don't know the data that you reference.
Ehrenreich
By: MaxBuck | Fri, 12/18/2009 - 22:40
So apparently it's better to wallow in negativity than to "succumb" to the siren song of Positive Thinking. Fine. You're welcome to do so if you wish, but don't come whining to me -- because I don't want to hear your endless droning and complaints.
Look, nobody with a dram of sense would suggest that positive thinking is all that anyone needs in order to be a successful human being. SImilarly, anyone with common sense understands that codswollop delivered with a smile is still codswollop, and there's a need for people to speak up when nonsense is being broadcast. But the data are in, and optimists have been clearly demonstrated to be more successful, on balance, than pessimists. You may prefer to have a sour outlook, and that's your privilege, but don't expect your outcomes to match those of your sunnier neighbor.
I'm sorry Ehrenreich has encountered "optimistic" bullies who have tried to browbeat her into being happy. She (like anyone else) deserves better. But frankly I'm very glad I don't know the woman. She's a pill.
A word about life coaches
By: ChelseaBridge | Wed, 10/28/2009 - 14:16
I generally agree with the premise of your article, but your characterization of life coaches is incorrect and unfortunate. In my experience personal life coaches are not ignorant proponents of mindless optimism, but they are in fact the ones who are gently encouraging the timid woman you speak of to leave her abusive husband. I am not sure why you choose to use life coaches as your whipping boy for the sins of the "negativity is never ok" brigade, but I can only assume it because you've either never been to one, or failed to do your research. The point of a life coach is to help people who become "stuck" in some way in their life - either in a marriage, job, bad habit, or thought process - and give them concrete steps they can take toward leading a more satisfying life. They inhabit the territory between therapists (who usually charge too much money and dwell too much on what happened in your childhood) and the motivational gurus you speak of, who rarely offer concrete suggestions on how to be more successful or happy but instead make you think that walking on coals or sitting in sweat lodges can somehow change your life.
Great review
By: Katie27again | Sun, 10/18/2009 - 09:52
Although, I don't agree that there is any potential upside to this cult of positivity, given that it is always tied to corporate interests and thus is always in the service of power. This is what makes it so pernicous--it's never going to result in your doing something good for yourself. It certainly isn't going to result in anyone thinking twice about that McMansion. The housing bubble depended on fools and their optimism.
I Don't WANT to Smile, Dammit!
By: njgirl0976 | Sat, 10/17/2009 - 21:15
As a child, I was cheerful, but--as life progressed--I become more and more introverted. While I wasn't the same bubbly giggle-puss I was as a kid, I was far from morbid and depressed. Still, I was admonished to "smile" so much, I began to scowl in response to each demand to grin like a manical Kewpi doll. I'm still the same way: My smile in response to "smile" is so toothy and feral, people will take a step back.
And I am so tired of the "Pink Ribbon Brigade," I could just spit. I hate the colour pink. Cancer "survivors" are great and all--no one should die before their time and cancer is a horrible, painful disease--but good grief, save it, okay? There's nothing "sexy," "empowering," or "gift"-like about it. If you want to be positive about your cancer experience, that's awesome. But keep it to yourself while I'm enjoying my chemo.
I'm positive you're wrong
By: The Crack Emcee | Sat, 10/17/2009 - 10:13
My experience says that Barbara Ehrenreich is mostly correct in her findings, and the reviewer's speculations are more of the same tripe attempting to cover for the harm NewAgers cause. Ms Howley's statement, "One wonders how anyone takes them seriously." gets right to the point of how they prosper: Most people don't take what they do seriously ("driving Americans toward a bizarre array of conflicting behaviors") as they, for instance, kill on a regular basis - as proven by the recent sweatlodge deaths surrounding Oprah's pal, James Arthur Ray. This influence is causing people, in America and all over the Western world, to jump out of windows, kill their kids, destroy their families - you name it - and all under the guise of "harmless" positivity.
And I loved this:
"If we believe Tony Robbins can motivate an I-banker to throw billions into a risky investment, shouldn’t we also grant him the power to motivate good risk-taking—say, helping a timid woman leave her domineering husband? Maybe it’s true that “executive coaches” can quash dissent among employees by encouraging gratitude rather than opposition. But if the positivity coaches really can help people find happiness in what they already have, they’ve surely convinced some followers to forgo an unaffordable new McMansion or a flashy new car."
It struck a nerve because these smiling meanies encouraged my wife to leave me - the more strong-willed of the two during our 20-year marriage - for a quack who ended up killing her mother, and then using my ex as an accomplise (sp?) in the deaths of two others. Howley misses what my "domineering" manner was trying to accomplish with my wife - keeping a deluded woman I loved in check for her/our/everyone's own good - and, instead, encourages the very opening of Pandora's Box that I worked, for so long, to keep closed for everyone's sake, merely because I'm "a man" and, as any of these feminist/NewAge types will tell you, macho guys like me must be destroyed on the alter of female perfection.
And BTW - while these jerks may encourage someone to "forgo an unaffordable new McMansion or a flashy new car", all they encourage these gullible ego-trippers to do, instead, is give the money to the life coaches. Now where's the "good" in that?
It's a scam - a cultish scam at that - and ignorant, but supposedly-smart and forward-looking, outlooks like Miss Howley's, are exactly how it's allowed to ruin the lives of so many. To me, it's a fine example of how a little education - without experience - can be a very dangerous thing.
About time..
By: purple8 | Tue, 10/13/2009 - 20:51
Most of the time my mood is just fine--pleasant, even. Not glum, but certainly not the maniacally gleeful mood that my employees and peers seem to expect. Along these lines, when did it become a general expectation that workplaces become fun! and upbeat! and motivating! to employees?
Over the years it seems there is increasing pressure to energize! the workforce. And it usually involves some cheesy coach hired by corporate that I have to pretend to like. I don't want to live The Secret. I don't want to throw fish and chuckle like the dudes in that video I've had to watch too many times. I just want to get my work done and get the hell out of there.
Effects on women
By: MissGaramond | Tue, 10/13/2009 - 19:47
I would have to say that the exhortation that women be positive all the time and change their attitude is about us changing ourselves rather than the world we live in.
I wonder if this culture of denial has anything to do with women becoming more depressed. If we have to eat every plate of dog shit we're served with a smile, no wonder we'll be a bit depressed.
the pink-ribbon thing
By: bluestone | Tue, 10/13/2009 - 17:30
In my experience, the breast-cancer "positivity police" are almost always "survivors" of stage 1 or 2 cancers. There's a lot less of it if you have to come to grips, at age 45, with the fact that you probably won't live to see your second-grader graduate from high school. That's when faith in positive thinking pretty much falls apart, which shows how much it was worth in the first place. While we're at it: stop buying pink appliances, shoes, handbags, etc., and just donate the damn money directly.
It's not possible...
By: jennies1897 | Tue, 10/13/2009 - 15:56
It's not possible to be entirely positive. If you are, then you're usually negative to someone you think is negative. And that means you're not entirely positive. If that's the only place you're negative it's going to mean you're REALLY negative and almost hateful toward someone you view as negative. You won't even be able to brush it off or ignore it. Life is about balance.
Cancer patients...ummm...Isn't their outlook negative already 90% of the time? I'm not saying that they're going to die - but facing your own mortality can be an absolutely terrifying and a quite depressing experience. For some people it's important to acknowledge what depresses you or causes you fear...for others, it's best to ignore it completely.