The Shame Machine

Chapter 1

Tipping the Scales

 

I was jubilant. On a gusty autumn day in Cambridge, Massachusetts, word arrived that I d passed my qual, or qualifying exam. This was a crucial step toward earning my mathematics PhD. With my doctorate halfway in the bag, I was primed to ­celebrate ­by baking a batch of cookies. In the sunniest, most triumphant mood I went to the Get-­N-­Go, a bodega next door to my Somerville digs, for ingredients.

I knew the clerk there. He d always been friendly. But when I placed the flour, sugar, and chocolate chips on the counter, he shook his head and said, Why are you buying that? Don t you know you re fat?

I felt as though he d slapped me on my double chin. My heart raced; tears leapt to my eyes. I was speechless, but I knew what this was from experience, and from an early age: shame shock.

Much of the suffering from being fat occurs on a gentler and more subtle scale. It s the looks people give you in hallways and on airplanes, the waiter s uneasy pause before asking if you want to see the dessert menu. Those microdoses of shame keep low-­level misery and self-­hatred on a steady course. Shame shock, though, is an explosion. It often occurs when someone confronts you, head-­on, about your deepest shame. When you re exposed.

At that moment in the bodega, all of the shame s poison coursed through my body, leaving me frozen, disoriented, in pain. In this state, I lost track of who I was. I felt worthless, a flop, unloved.

I gathered the ingredients and made my way out of the bodega without saying a word. Even as the initial shock wore off, I remained under its spell. During the aftershock, it felt as if I were sinking, and I desperately worked to right the ship ­propping up my own self-­worth. I was getting a PhD, I told myself. I had a boyfriend. I was kind to people.

Cathy O'Neil

Although [The Shame Machine] contains its fair share of pseudoscience-debunking, including an admirably lucid explanation of how diet programs massage statistics to artificially bolster their success rates, it is largely a work of social criticism . . . [that] keeps the human costs of the titular shame machine in clear view. . . . Frequently moving. The New Yorker

A data-driven, anecdote-fueled narrative of the multitude of human experiences that are targets for ridicule and others reward. [O Neil] vividly portrays the indignities of poverty, addiction, aging, dementia and other conditions we all may face but hope to avoid, and she shows how the pain experienced by people with these afflictions can be used for others financial and social profits. The Washington Post

As O Neil argues, shame is a valuable lens through which to view our own actions and the systems we live under. Considering whether we are punching down on the vulnerable or up against an unfeeling industrial complex dressed up in fluffy corporate PR is a first step towards a healthier sort of shame. Financial Times

I am struck by how very American shame seems when examined in relief, invoking as it does notions of agency, willpower and sacrifice. O Neil carefully dismantles how we abdicate our social responsibility for caring for the vulnerable when we indulge in the notion that poverty and drug addiction result from a failure to self-actualize. The New York Times Book Review

An engaging read . . . [O Neil] lays out the ways in which shame drives problems such as obesity, drug addiction, poverty and political divides. She discusses how social media thrives on and is designed to encourage humiliation, and unpicks the many fallacies in how we think about shame. The New Statesman

O Neil . . . encourage[s] readers to try to think more deeply not just about what shame is but what it might be for. . . . A simple rejoinder to our digital