“Wow. Didn’t know people still did walks of shame so early.”
After I rounded the corner of the Presbyterian church on Rugby, I was astonished to hear someone say this, and then make eye contact with him, before realizing he was talking about me. It was 8:30 am this past Saturday, and I was walking to an informational session for students considering a Master’s in Public Policy.
(photo courtesy of www.martinhorn.com)
Here I was, in business casual with a winter coat on and a bag with two notebooks, my laptop, and my wallet, rushing to get to the meeting on time. I was thinking in my head about why I really wanted to go into public policy – to improve public education in America. In my mind, it was anything but shameful.
But this man, in his button-down shirt, vest, and UVA hat, seemed to think I had some other motive on my mind. For a split second, I considered taunting him and his three friends – one man and two women, presumably both of their wives. Instead, I looked him in the eye, shook my head, and proudly told him “I’m actually going to an academic meeting for women who want to go into government work.”
The look on his face was priceless. You would’ve thought that I had just delivered the bad news to a group of fraternity men that Kroger was all out of Busch Light. He looked shocked, stunned, taken aback, and his friends’ cheeks went bright red. “I’m sorry, honey,” one of the women said almost instantaneously.
The whole encounter probably lasted 30 seconds. Besides his initial remark, the women’s apology was the only interaction exchanged between me and them. But still, I replayed this moment over and over in my head during my walk, which probably contributed to my being a few minutes late. A walk of shame? Really?
I immediately started questioning if my outfit was appropriate. I had been to a million “business casual” events in the past, and the three-quarter sleeve navy dress I was wearing always seemed to fit right in. Maybe it was my shoes, I thought, but when I looked down, I was wearing the same ballet flats that I had left the house in.
(photo courtesy of www.dailyprogress.com)
There was nothing I could identify, besides being a female walking alone at 8:30 in the morning from Rugby Road (where I live), that indicated that I was doing a walk of shame.
So, I concluded that the problem wasn’t me, and moved on to my Introduction to Psychology-level knowledge of how people think. Turns out, you don’t really learn much in Introduction to Psychology (sorry, first years).
Nevertheless, I thought about that man’s remark all day, and the only thing I could conclude was that he assumed that since I was in a dress on a cooler day with a medium-sized bag, I must’ve been wearing what I had worn the night before. To me, that didn’t matter.
To know that I was being labeled by a group of people due to the fact that I was maybe walking or acting or dressing a certain way was one of the most disturbing things that I could imagine. What else did people say about me?
More importantly, what did I say about other people? So often we see people in passing. We go to a school of 16,000, and eventually we see a lot of different people doing a lot of different things. We get used to it, but that doesn’t mean that we label it as either good or bad, but instead, we draw distinct character assumptions about people from a miniscule interaction.
I had never been on the other side of a blatantly judgmental interaction like that, but in some ways, I’m glad it happened. Now, whenever I see someone I don’t know doing something that I question, I make myself think twice about what assumptions I can and can’t draw from seeing them. Usually, it’s none – I can’t make any honest assumptions, and that’s because I don’t really know them. So, I challenge others, and myself, to think twice about those assumptions we make, and really try to understand why we make them.
Side note: I just want to put it out there that women can walk alone early in the morning in non-athletic clothes and being doing things other than a “walk of shame.” Ask me what the true walk of shame was? That man in his pastel shirt and bright orange hat.
(photo courtesy of instagram.com)