Pleasing Others and Why You Shouldn't

Gossip Girl is taking its time to hit Netflix and I was in the mood for something at about that level.  To sate this mood, I started watching Pretty Little Liars.  The show is what I expected it to be and I'm happy about that, though it does have its moments of depth. In fact, it has its moments of truths.

In one of the early episodes, Toby and Emily are talking about peer pressure and bullies. Toby tells her that the bullies don't want you to change and be more like them. They want you to go away. If there is any true line in any show, it is this.  The people who dislike you will not start liking you because you jump through their hoops to please them. They're just going to think they have control over you.

I watched this episode a bit after I'd read this article discussing why a girl had plastic surgery to make people stop teasing her. The article makes a lot of good points about how we should reframe our ideas about attractiveness and self-esteem, but if you look in the comments, you see the same thing repeated over and over again. "Now the bullies will know they've won.  They will never leave her alone."

There are times, of course, when it is important to live up to people's expectations.  Those times involve work.  You need to meet performance levels. You need to look a certain way at your job. Every job has its own type of uniform, even if that uniform is full out drag queen dress. Meeting expectations and standards at a job (or to fulfill a requirement of a class) are distinctive in two ways.

• 1. There is compensation for meeting the requirements. You get paid/get a good grade. 
• 2. There is a time limit.  You only work for so many hours. Classes only last so long. 
• 3. (and this one is the most important) Once you meet the requirements, no other higher levels of requirements can be set.  Now, I know this doesn't always apply when one is working. Some bosses are demanding fucks who keep upping the standards. When that is the case, it's best to leave the job as soon as possible.

 In the cases mentioned above, conforming to a certain standard is acceptable. In life, around people, especially when you are being bullied or pressured into it, it is not only unacceptable to conform, it's also futile. There is no reward because they won't stop their treatment of you. There is no time limit, because if you let people begin to chip away at who you are, that will never stop. Worst of all, there will be no end to their demands. Once they start seeing how well you jump, they will keep asking you to go higher and higher and higher.

There will be times when knowing this is the most horrible thing in the world, especially when you are surrounded by the people who are treating you like crap.   There is also a lot of freedom in it.  If you know you really can't please these people no matter what, it affords you the chance to stop trying. It allows you the option of spending your energy in other ways, like devising strategies for handling them and looking for ways to get them out of your life.

Getting them out of your life is the most important thing you can do.

Look, I know how cliched it is to tell people to be themselves. It's one of the slogans of the modern age and something that probably holds as much weight as any other empty bit of advice people will give you. We pay it so little attention any more that we tend to forget how true it really is, how vital.

Perhaps it's best to put it this way. In any given situation, you have to weigh your actions, thoughts, and emotions. If people are impacting you in a negative way and they don't fulfill the three requirements I listed above in my happy little bullet points, then you need to truly consider if they are worth your time and effort. Yes, if you are stuck in a geographical situation with them, it may not be possible to remove yourself physically from the situation. In that case, your best bet is emotionally removing yourself.

Nothing hurts a bully like indifference.