“If my friends could see me now!; What a step up! Holy cow!: They'd never believe it...” From the musical Sweet Charity Music by Cy Coleman and lyrics by Dorothy Fields
It’s a constant source of befuddlement to me that 1+1+1 does not always need to the predicable answer of 3.
You’d think being a good person + working hard + causing no harm would equal approval wouldn’t you?
Ermmm, no.
Well at least not always.
Take the gal who used to be the nations sweetheart, Miss Katie Price.
Being a good person: despite having a questionable grip on main stream morality, raising three children (one of whom is severely disabled) all on her own efforts and often single handed.
Working hard : exposure as a page three girl just at the time the nation was ready for a new queen of the tabloids, turning herself into a human Barbie doll whilst simultaneously banging out a combo of pulp novels/ torrid autobiographies and featuring in every celebrity magazine/reality TV show.
Causing no harm: inspiring the nation to overlook her flaws and celebrate her as a savvy businesswoman, supermommie and icon throughout the Noughties.
RESULT: Topped a recent poll as ‘The Most Hated Woman in
A clear case of 1+1+1 = 0.
You’d think that wouldn’t be possible – wouldn’t you?
Miss Price didn’t change. Throughout the build up to and the ride on the crest of her wave of popularity, she remained true to herself – loud, brash, tacky, outspoken, semi-nude and way outside mainstream morality. When it all went so terribly wrong for her, her sins were being loud, brash, tacky, outspoken, semi-nude and way outside mainstream morality. Thing is you don’t have to change the sum for the result to be different.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… the very same things that give you extraordinary popularity will be the very same things that will give you extraordinary notoriety. Love and Hate live in the same trailer park… in fact… in the same trailer. You knock on the door expecting one… you can just as easily get the other.
I find it fascinating that the very qualities that a person lovable, are the same qualities that can bring them down.
Years ago I worked for a company that illustrates this point. When I left the employ of that place … lets call it ‘Happypath’ for ease of referral… my then boss told me that if I ever wanted to return at some point in the future to give him a call. He then wrote me a spectacular reference in which I later found out I was described as “having a sunny disposition, being a true contributor of team effort, had delivered some outstanding results and will be much missed”. This wonderful reference secured me a position in a top company within days of my departure from Happypath.
Some of my closest friends in my life today are people I worked with or are friends of people met at Happypath. We all have one of those jobs that we look back on years later and remember as an almost halcyon period. Happypath was mine.
However, it was during a conversation with one of my friends sourced from my Happypath days that an off the cuff comment rocked my little world. Whilst reminiscing about our back-in-the-day-adventures, I sighed how life was so much simpler back then and that I wondered if I could get them to honour the promise of taking me back. Please understand that this statement was purely romantic… I had no intention of returning to Happypath (though if I could have the size thighs I had in my Happypath days as part of the deal I may consider it!!!). My friend then said “Jeez Jax, you could never go back there...the staff hated you!”
Taking the people who I now count amongst a dearest friends out of the equation, would mathematically leave behind the vast majority of the staff. And according to my friend they were of the opinion that my reference was written in a very obvious code:
Sunny Disposition = Loud.
True Contributor= Louder still.
Outstanding Results= Could do the job but NOT their way.
Much Missed= Thank heavens she’s out of there!!
I was shocked. I played it down, I laughed, I opened another bottle of wine, the subject matter changed. We had a great night. But after that statement, my relationship with my memories changed. There was no way I could ever cast my mind back to my Happypath years again, that off the cuff remark was like someone throwing a bucket of hot tar over your favourite painting
So much for warm memories of days gone by.
The same qualities that generated so many friendships that have endured were exactly the same qualities that made the majority of people despise me. I hadn’t changed the sum… but the results were very different. I guess if I like Miss Price had to suffer in indignity of a ‘Most Hated’ poll…I’d probably win the ‘Most Hated Happypath Employee past or present’.
I won’t say it’s ruined my life or anything, because it hasn’t. My life is good in so many ways I am almost embarrassed with the richness of it. But to hear that people (whose names and faces I really cannot recall) hated me - mattered. And if I’m honest probably always will.
Whether we admit it or not we all seek the approval of the majority and to not have it does rather affect us deeply. We all have heard the tales of the unpopular schoolchild who spends all their post school years striving for success just so they can taunt their ex-classmates at the school reunion.
I went to uni with a girl I shall call ‘Daisy’. Not only did she have the ignominy of being given a name that at the time was considered unfashionable, she was probably the most hairy individual (of either gender) I have ever seen! She was also ridiculously tall (it was decreed no female should be over 5’11”) and was lumpenly large all over. We (oh yes Jax too was a member of the chorus of disapproval for I am not a saint) called her TROLLBIRD for the full three years she attended our palace of education.
Of course, the inevitable reunion rolled round and Daisy arrived. Of course she was still way over 5’11, but she was no longer hairy or lumpen. As the unfamiliar use of her real name echoed around the room, (suddenly even our own names seemed passé compared to hers), not a soul uttered Trollbird. That word could not fit now anyway…she had become statuesque and rather the object of desire. She accepted all apologetic excuses for past treatment, allowed all advances… and enjoyed superiorly rejecting us all as nowhere near good enough for her. Daisy was a creature of NOW. Her time had come.
Although this is the stuff of great fiction (I recently saw an episode of a US sit-com on this theme that was extremely funny) in real life the whole thing touched me as rather sad. I strongly suspect that Daisy had spent too much of her life trying to prove her critics wrong with the showtune “If They Could See Me Now” playing rather too loudly. Life after the ‘reveal’ moment must feel rather flat.
But how other people view us, even people who mean absolutely nothing to us in our daily lives, matters.
It is a hard thing to bear being hated. Even by the faceless.
This kind of rejection should of course be harnessed. Here in the UK the people’s hatred of the unfair predecessor of our current local system got it abolished - a hatred that was measured in the main by polls. I am not anti polls – I believe that they are a valid way of taking the temperature of how the masses feel.
But taking polls to compile lists of PEOPLE who stir such powerful feelings of negativity in us… now this is have a problem with. I keep being told that these things are fun… but I wonder how those who find themselves on these lists cope.
When ever I see these ‘fun’ polls I wonder why the top candidate is never a murderer, or an evil dictator or even a bureaucratic body that makes everyday life hard. It’s always a singer in a TV reality show, an entertainer or footballer who drove his car too fast, or a topless model who got a divorce. Are these people genuinely hated by the masses or are these ‘fun’ polls more a reflection of the state of mind the architect of these things?
Maybe it is true that it is just a piece of fun, that today’s papers are tomorrows litter tray lining, and that no one takes these things seriously.
But, then I think of me avoiding thinking of my Happypath days. To avoid dealing with the hurt. Then I think of Daisy, a decade after graduation… turning up to turn back the clock. To try change a point of view. I wonder if Daisy and I should just grow a thicker skin.
Objectively, all that matters in this world is the big three:
Be a good person
Work hard
Not to cause harm
That’s should be three things that add up to being liked well enough.
1 + 1 + 1 should equal three.
But it doesn’t because everything in this world is subjective. And subjective means exactly what it means – subservient to the opinions of others.
So that’s why I know for sure, that like it or not… what other people think matters.
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