It is with this essay that I start thinking about the space for shorter genres like essays 'we should be taught to read at schools.' This one in particular over and over again. First of all for the message about the fatal importance of being uncomfortably honest with ourselves and second of all for the impeccable style and references. Getting a paper bag today.

- The dismal fact is that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others—who are, after all, deceived easily enough; has nothing to do with reputation—which, as Rhett Butler told Scarlett O'Hara, is something that people with courage can do without.

- Like Jordan Baker, people with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes.

- In brief, people with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called character, a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to other, more instantly negotiable virtues.

first reread of this essay this year!! miss little really rocked my world when she printed it out for me in year 10. so nostalgic so good. would be 5 stars if not for the blatant racism….

‘To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which, for better or for worse, constitutes self-respect, is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference.’

hmmm…
I had high hopes for this piece in the beginning, however I can not simply glide over the casual racism and colonial ideas in this essay. I hardly heard anyone mention this before I read it which is surprising, given how central it is to the writing, and no I don’t think that these things can be excused by “being products of their time”. I keep hearing people praise Joan Didion so I was disappointed to read something like this from her.

This y'all literary king? ..... racist wh*te women sharing basic 'philosophical' thoughts that 11 year olds have.

Coming into 2021, I wanted to think more consciously about my values. Self-respect immediately came to mind. It’s a term, I think, which is often conflated with self-confidence or holding one’s self in high, unwavering esteem. These are facets, sure, but self-respect has to do with actively fighting self-deception and self-rationalization in a way that allows one to live with integrity. In a sense, it’s the anti-people pleasing.

Joan Didion famously unpacks these ideas in her 1961 essay for Vogue “On Self-Respect”. Reading this, I thought about women. Women are arguably—by way of social conditioning and/or biological predisposition—especially empathetic. Of course, this is a good thing. The problem is that this capacity for empathy (learned or intrinsic) can lead to the erosion of the self. I wonder: How do we cultivate and encourage empathy (among both sexes) in a world that so desperately needs more of it without self-effacement and how do we know when to let go?


I think of how women are far too often chastised as “having no self-respect” for exerting their sexuality, how they are more likely to be conditioned from childhood to please others and how this can contribute to a lack of self-preservation. I think of how, sometimes, we flatter ourselves into thinking our generosities are markers of selflessness, a testament to our willingness to help or offer emotional support when they can be aptly disguised desires for acceptance or a reflexive need to attach.

Self-respect is about strength of character, it’s about the alignment between word and deed, particularly when that word is made privately, to one’s self. It’s about the discipline to prioritize future comforts instead of immediate ones and it’s about taking responsibility for one’s life whilst acknowledging that every choice is a wager and life has no guarantees.

This essay makes me think of Leslie Jamison’s essay collection “The Empathy Exams”. It also brought to mind the gorgeous song, “Fade Into You” by Mazzy Star, which I interpret as ballad of losing one’s self in another and about the delicate lines we must walk in our quest for empathy and fundamentally, love—both for others and for ourselves.

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“It is the phenomenon sometimes called alienation from self. In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves – there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.”

wish she went this hard in more paragraphs!

one cannot ignore the racism

"..to give us back to ourselves—there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home."

“Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.”

I do think there’s a “no shit” factor as I mentioned with All About Love by Hooks, but since it’s just an essay and not a whole ass book it wasn’t as aggravating. I do think there’s more to be said about the quote I mentioned, also more to be said about how to build your own substance. But the general premise was cool when it wasn’t shitting on Indians.

10/10 essay my life has changed for the better

"There is a common superstition that "self-respect" is a kind of charm against snakes, something that keeps those who have it locked in some unblighted Eden, out of strange beds, ambivalent conversations, and trouble in general. It does not at all. It has nothing to do with the face of things, but concerns instead a separate peace, a private reconciliation."