By Gina Barreca/The Hartford Courant/TNS


People won’t like or admire you for your insecurities, my seventh-grade teacher explained. “They’ll like or admire you despite them.”
She was trying, both tenderly and impatiently, to teach me that “oversensitive” and “just adorable” were not the same thing.
I’m reminded of her words when I realise how eagerly we now tell everybody what’s wrong with us as an opening conversational gambit. It’s as if we’ve replaced a wish for admiration with a bid for empathy.
I’m not suggesting we revert to a world where people you never before met whack you on the back by way of introduction and boom, “Hi ya, pal! I have two cars, three perfect kids and a great job. How about you?”
But should we be drawn into conversations with strangers who, on contact, disclose in a self-deprecating manner, “Hi, I’m sorry, I’m not good at meeting new people because I grew up as an overlooked middle child, have a daughter with bunions and a son who is lactose intolerant plus my spouse and I have been having trouble ever since I’ve been on this weird diet, even though you couldn’t tell I’m dieting from looking at my arms, right, but ‘hi!’ anyhow!”?
For years our culture has taught that there’s a big difference between boasting about your accomplishments vs wheedling for sympathy.
And yet, the hit show on NBC is called “America’s Got Talent” not “America’s Got Neurosis”. For that you turn to cable.
But the real question is whether boasting and bemoaning are, in fundamental and essential ways, different when it comes to general conversation?
Both are bids for attention. Both are ways to make an impression. Both are requests to be treated as an exception.
Both can be wildly annoying during festive occasions.
When translated as subtitles, in effect, both can mean, “Hey, I’m an alpha predator!” or “Look at me! I’m the introvert, remember?”
And both cries can drive the more sensible members of the flock right out of the room.
This is a tough lesson, especially for girls and women. We’ve been told that snivelling is attractive.
But even if we’re no longer encouraged to imagine ourselves as simpering waifs waiting for rescue by princes on white horses or cowboys in pickup trucks, we’re still encouraged to believe that femininity and insecurity are braided together.
We get into problems when that braid becomes a rope and we use it to tie ourselves down.
If boys are taught to mask their emotions (hey, being male is no easier than being female), girls are taught to use emotions to manipulate.
A little girl with a tear in her eye will often be coddled and told she’s a poor, sweet darling who needs to rest after her boo-boo.
Her little male counterpart with a tear in his eye, in contrast, will often be told, in the words of Monty Python, that it’s only a flesh wound.
A professor from Berkeley used to tell a story about a small girl facing a radically different response than the conventional cooing and fussing.
Many years ago, he said, a terribly English family was putting in pegs for their tents while setting up in a camping site next to his. The daughter - a chipper, eager camper around age 6 - whacked her hand with the small mallet she was using and began, quite understandably, to cry.
After checking to see that no real damage was done, her father simply looked down at his daughter and, employing the kind of tone used by Montgomery addressing the troops, said: “Act the man, Emma.”
After a startled moment, Emma indeed halted her crying and, according to the Berkeley professor, more cheerfully than not resumed her duties.
I bet she’s a member of parliament now.
This is not to say that we should thrust our natural reactions or responses so deeply underground that they are irretrievable; that’s a recipe for disaster.
But we shouldn’t expect to be cherished, soothed or embraced solely for our vulnerabilities, either.
We should not regard our imperfections as our primary self-definition. Protect your frailties; lead with your strengths.

♦ Gina Barreca is an English professor at the University of Connecticut, a feminist scholar who has written eight books, and a columnist for the Hartford Courant. She can be reached through her www.ginabarreca.com