The Green-Eyed Monster

My hairdresser says to me, "My thick hair is so hard to dry." She knows I have thin, unmanageable hair and she thinks she is consoling me by saying I wouldn't want to have hair like her very thick, luscious hair because it is hard to dry. Try me. Naturally, I am jealous but I try to be grownup and generous and pretend I'm not jealous. So I tell her it is a problem I would love to have. Maybe she is consoling me, or maybe she is gloating because she has what she knows I don't have.

We all do it and we all know we do it. Sometimes it is hard to resist but we know it will be received with mixed emotions depending on who hears/reads it. The art of the "humble brag" is raging across communication networks because we all like to brag, while seeming to put down ourselves. It is practiced far and wide across the globe as we compete for the greatest bragging rights whether it is the latest technology in our possession, the most accomplishments, or the most publicity. It's human nature to want to feel as good as, or even better than others and make them jealous.

I am fascinated with the phrase itself: "humble brag". I have always been aware of the concept without that particular phrasing when I perceive that someone is trying to tell me that they know someone famous, or that they went to Harvard, or any number of things about which they think I might be jealous. I am conscious of trying to be grownup enough not to "brag" about stuff because it seems so juvenile. Why should I brag about anything? I'm too old for that kind of competition. I would like to think I am not that shallow. I won't claim I've never indulged in the "humble brag" but I would like to think I am too mature to do that. Note that in my first sentence, I first said "hairdresser" when I could have just said "friend." It actually was my hairdresser, and I wasn't trying to be uppety by saying that I had a hairdresser, thereby creating a "humble brag" when I claim my thin hair. Much of this stuff is unconscious and unintentional. When is it a "humble brag"?

Even though I have observed the practice, we just always called it bragging where I grew up, no matter how cleverly stated. Back in those days, we would preface the statement with a disclaimer, "not bragging nor complaining, but..." Then we would proceed to do both bragging and complaining. 

I encountered the quest to properly identify what is or is not a "humble brag" on a favorite TV show, NCIS L.A. That is one of my favorite shows--TV is good for something. Although I am on the Internet constantly, I felt like I was living in a cave and illiterate as one who had not encountered the label "humble brag" before. Off to the Urban Dictionary to see how people feel about the terminology. Off to Google to enjoy reading about how we play with our language. It seems that Twitter has a very active role in this practice where people can brag like mockingbirds and show off their latest and greatest whatever while seeming to be very modest.

I keep coming back to my feeling that the brag is perceived by someone prone to jealousy in the first place. If we weren't so competitive, it wouldn't matter if someone said, "My SAT scores were barely high enough to get into Harvard, but my I.Q. was enough." It would make me wonder about the person's emotional quotient. Maybe we should just indulge each other and celebrate with others because they obviously think we are important enough to try to impress.