A member of my more distant family wrote a lengthy Instagram post about how we have to “normalize crying.” More specifically, crying in public. It was a twofer.
She’s a licensed therapist, and she made this call to action through a front-facing selfie video. In her Car. Shortly after crying. As one does.
What I love so much about people calling to normalize shit is that you can always just boil it down to this: this person is looking for permission to do something that they’re already doing, but feeling weird about.
In my days, I’ve seen calls to normalize: social anxiety, boys painting their nails, depression, small breasts, fat bodies, resting, asking for help, cutting your family off, bisexuality (and really anything related to sex/sexual identity stuff), food aversions, going to therapy, having colored hair, participation not being graded (kids are shy?), not getting married/not having kids, taking yourself out (dinner, movie, etc.) and not wearing a bra… and now crying/crying in public.
Social media from the years of 2017 - 2021 felt like one, infinity-walk out of Whole Foods: everyone had a “normalize” petition. “Got a second for small breasts?” “Spare a dollar for high body counts? How bout being a virgin?” “What if I told you, you could normalize not going to the gym?”
“Uhhhh, sure.”
That’s how I feel when I see these vague calls to action. “I’ll get right on that.”
I feel less confident in my ability to move the normalization of any of the above even one inch forward than I do in single-handedly solving an active Amber Alert.
Which makes me really mad. Not because I think it’s a good idea to normalize any of the above– mostly I think it’s a total bullshit, cope1-a-thon, zero-sum game– but if normalizing depression, food aversions, crying in public, etc. would make the world a better place I would do EVERYTHING I could to make it happen.
I’m a team player to the bone, toxically competitive, and a (hopefully) covert narcissist. That narcissism extends to the entire human race. As I once told a (former) friend who was in a beef with another (current) friend, “I have a hard-on for everyone getting what they want.”
But every time I hear someone whining about normalizing the thing they feel weird about I find myself asking. “What is it exactly you’d like me to do?”
Apparently nothing. It’s February 2024 and most of the common human practices some number of us wanted to normalize have indeed been integrated into the culture, without any assistance from me. It’s honestly impressive how much of the stuff is normal, now.
Were these all self-fulfilling prophecies? Did a critical mass fall in line?
Does anyone feel better? Is the world a better place?
Did it make any fucking difference whether the thing was “normalized” or not? Do you feel better with your depression now that it is not only “normalized,” but it is the norm? Social anxiety is more than normalized. People be annoying as fuck and the Good Person ™ thing to do is just sit there and be aggressively neutral. Is it cooler to be bisexual now that it’s normalized? Or does it kind of take the fun out of it now that it’s as common as getting covid and no one’s allowed to ask any follow-up questions?
If everyone looked at my family member crying in public, walked up to her, and said, “Ma’am, I just want you to know, you look normal as fuck right now,” would she feel better? Seen? Validated?
Or how ‘bout this less extreme example: she’s crying in public, and everyone literally just goes about their day, barely paying her any attention. ‘Cause it’s normal. “Nothin’ to see here! Just a woman crying, very normal, keep it movin’!” What then? Is that what she wants?
What if it really was normal to cry in public? What would the world be like if, at any given moment, 5-10% of the people at the grocery store, the gym, or stuck in traffic were just bawling their eyes out?
Do we like that? I’m honestly asking.
Before I practiced my own self-care and muted the word “normalize” from my Twitter (before mercifully deactivating in early 2022), I thought about submitting my own list of things I’d like to normalize to the collective.
The list included: making fun of people for being too earnest, doing cocaine out in the open, yelling at people for any reason, in any context, getting so shitfaced at the kickback you lowkey make people concerned (as self-care) saying “gay,” as in, “Did you see the new CIA recruitment video?2 It’s the gayest thing I’ve ever seen”... not as like, “homosexual,” not being obligated to go to dumb ass events (weddings, graduations, recitals), not texting people on their birthdays, wrestling with a mild sex addiction, and taking your bad day out on the first person who gets in your way.
As you can see, this was the list of an extremely depressed 20-year-old male. Just not the kind of depression that has been okay-ed by HR.
My list lost, 1000 to 1.
Is my list so much different, or worse, than the stuff that has been integrated into the culture? If I had tried harder (or at all) to take control of the narrative, could I have started a movement? Would people have been receptive to the things that I wanted to do (or was already doing) but deep down felt weird about?
We’ll never know. The culture didn’t bend to my will. Instead, I changed. A lot. I not only don’t openly do cocaine, I don’t do cocaine at all. I do go to some tedious events that have nothing to do with me. I’ve given up hope that we’ll ever repurpose “gay” to mean, “annoying, inauthentic, posturing, fake, toothless, and astroturfed.” And I’ve made it a hard and fast rule not to take my bad day out on other people.
And I’m honestly fine with all of it. Obviously, I’d still love to openly do cocaine. Just not in this society. It’d be amazing to yell at people without fear of scrutiny from my peers. But I was on the losing side of the war and was forced to reckon with the fact that my issues were just that.
So I wonder: am I better off for changing the shit I was struggling with instead of holding out for society to change? And is society better off for what we did normalize?
Here’s what I do know: I am more myself today than I was when I was internally raging against society for curtailing my right to be a jackass as a form of self-care.
We all know for ourselves as individuals, on some level, that whether shit gets normalized or not, the feeling we have deep down inside of us about the thing will not change. Relying on, or even petitioning society to change, is just rubbing the mirror in hopes of removing a smudge on our faces. And everyone fucking does it.
So, congratulations, we’re all normal and we’re all fucked.
“cope”= bullshitting yourself in service of immediate, short-term relief
CIA Recruitment Video (I mean, come on.)