Embarrassment is Embarrassing
December 8th, 2025
Photo: Ryan Carter
Writer: Grace Gingold
Editor: Isabella Acosta
When asked in class to choose one sentence from a long passage by Robert Quinn, I was sure mine was uniquely mine, until the boy beside me circled the exact same line.
“I become myself when I stop living in fear of what I can become-and I begin to bring all of myself to the people in front of me.”
To my surprise, this boy and I had both grown up in West Los Angeles. Despite never having crossed paths in high school or university, we met simply because we were drawn to the same sentence.
But here’s where we differed: Where he sees embarrassment as a life-suppressing weight, I let it wrap around me, take over my skin, and wear it with pride. He shrinks away from the world in hopes that invisibility grants immunity from what he calls “the tragedy of embarrassment.” He hasn’t stopped living in fear; he is still waiting, patiently, anxiously, to become the version of himself that emerges only when he lets go.
Anxiety touches all of us. We can either admit it or suppress it, to the point of pretending it doesn’t exist, but as humans, it’s part of our wiring. Whether it manifests as fight, flight, or freeze, anxiety grabs the wheel, speeds through your veins, rearranges your thoughts, and interrupts the words that haven’t even left your mouth.
Anxiety can become a cage you curl into until it feels like home, so comfortable that your life becomes still, because you’ve avoided the things that could introduce chaos.
Anxiety is constantly discussed, rarely relieved. It is an inner voice that creates barriers, dims positivity, and insists it’s protecting you.
So what is embarrassment?
A mindset. An acknowledgment that we’ve allowed society to build us up and break us down. I once had a friend who was embarrassed to sneeze in public. But why? Let it out. Let all of it out.
Why don’t we laugh our loudest or cry our hardest? We shrink ourselves to fractions of the being we can be. Release the belief that everyone is judging you, because even if they are, they’ll likely forget. That awkward encounter you replay for weeks, that stumble in public, that mispronounced word- it’s no one else’s Roman Empire but your own.
We let people dictate how we feel about ourselves. Social media rewards this as it ties self-worth to likes, comments, and validation. However, embarrassment didn’t start with Instagram. Women in the sixties covered their laughs with fans, hiding their teeth and their joy. Embarrassment is just another way we surrender control of ourselves.
Being embarrassed is, in itself, embarrassing.
We’ve normalized strangers dictating our freest form. No one will remember us in 100 years. Our legacies fade, our stories dissolve, yet we suppress our truest selves now and let norms and customs shrink our potential. On a Subway Takes episode, Austin Butler said that embarrassment is an unexplored emotion. He is right, just as our oceans remain unexplored, our planet remains full of mystery, and human existence itself is uncertain. The odds of you being born are one in four trillion. You are uniquely you. Live the life that others weren’t given the chance to. Show every facet of who you are so people understand what authenticity actually looks like.
Live fully. Love fully. And never let embarrassment stand between you and the opportunities meant for you.
