Take a Bow

The train conductor smiles at me, completely un­aware that anything is amiss. He reaches out. I hand him my ticket. And then, out of nowhere, I flash him a grin: only where my left front tooth used to be, there is now a substantial hunk of broccoli. I continue smiling as though nothing is wrong, as is my custom on public transportation. He, however, is put in the unfortunate position of telling me that half of my lunch is staring out of my mouth, or averting his gaze. He opts for the latter.

Under normal circumstances, I would have spent the rest of the day smiling like a lunatic and only discov­ered the truth once it was much too late. At that point, the various times at which my teeth had been exposed would flash through my mind, stirring up a healthy mixture of hu­miliation, social resignation, and horror. This afternoon, however, was different: the misplaced broccoli was of my own doing. Though it seems a little dramatic to contem­plate social quarantine over a vegetable, the feeling that others are paying attention to our appearance is a universal phenomenon—officially titled the Spotlight Effect. In self-imposing my own spotlight that day, I hoped to answer a few questions: how do different people react? Does anyone notice? And at the end of the day…does it really matter?

We’ve all experienced it. There is the toilet-paper-stuck-to-shoe and Marx Brothers moment of frantic foot scuffing that follows. There is the mortification of smil­ing in the mirror and discovering that the majority of your blueberry smoothie never made it down your throat. There is the quintessential failure to notice a grapefruit-sized pasta stain over your left boob. For some reason, the iden­tification of these blunders convinces us that the world has us under a high-definition lens; we feel every station tune into our trauma, and imagine that they are fiendishly judg­ing us.

Perhaps the lovely I’ll-never-show-my-face-again monologue begins its tragic loop. One way or another, the moment the spotlight zooms in is a moment of agony. The feeling is not limited to unexpected blunders, either—in a recent study by Tom Gilovich, participants were told to wear a Barry Ma­nilow t-shirt and approximate how many people no­ticed. Turns out that almost no one did. The par­ticipants, however, grossly overesti­mated what they believed was a negative response.

The Effect takes hold and we im­mediately isolate ourselves from the people we feel are scrutinizing us; still, we’re dying for someone, anyone, to peel the kick-me sign off of our backs. Alas, the likelihood of this happening is directly related to the closeness of said person to you, and whether or not you’ve reached the stage in your relation­ship when you can do things like fart and forget the words to the Pledge of Allegiance. If not, you can guarantee that strangers will address your gaffe in the exact same way: not at all. Take my broccoli experiment.

It was no surprise that the conductor remained mute, considering my competition for freakiest passenger came from a man three rows behind me playing “Stairway to Heaven” on his bare stomach. But no one else said any­thing either: were they just afraid to tell me? The next step beyond staring would be the point-to-the-mouth, a.k.a. repeatedly indicating the same place until it appears he or she is experiencing a mild fit. The bolder ones might include a variation of “you’ve got something right there.” Either way, the stranger who speaks up is probably doing it to earn a little Karmic collateral—cosmically insuring that the next time his fly is down, someone will stop indulging in schadenfreude long enough to tell him about it.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are always those non-strangers who have no qualms about telling the truth; in my family, food in the teeth is pointed out at a thunderous volume and accompanied by a rude joke. I had only to step off the train before my friend told me about the broccoli. If I had waited five more minutes to see my mom, I’m sure she would have skipped that step altogether and picked it out herself…lovingly, of course.

So why do we spend so much time obsessing over the opinions of the general public, people we have never seen before and will probably never see again? We self-impose a universal magnifying glass that makes it seem like everyone is looking, judging. It’s all the more confusing when we go through an entire day without being alerted to our faux pas. However, if someone appears as though they do not notice you, it’s probably for the perfectly good reason that they don’t.

Research surrounding the Spotlight Effect has de­ducted that we overestimate the amount others notice us, and everyone is far more focused on themselves than the minor flubs of the people around them. What we consider to be an apocalyptic pimple does not, contrary to the world of 80’s teen movies, disrupt anyone else’s hectic life. And even from this egotistical conclusion, we can take comfort in the fact that any time a gigantic “L” is stapled to our foreheads, a select group of people will never hesitate to tell us.

We may be our own biggest interests, but we are also our own biggest critics; if we take it easy on ourselves, there is a good chance that everyone else will too. It’s like the Brazilians say: no pain, no pain. But because the Spot­light Effect is a part of human nature, until we all reach that day of self-actualized inner peace, we can continue checking ourselves out in every reflective surface to elimi­nate the possibility of wayward broccoli. That, and carry around extra dental floss.

Just in case.