Posted by:
Charmaine
· on September 17, 2010 | Comments
Well, I did it. What, you ask? Facebook. Just now, I “outed” my hyperhidrosis to all my Facebook friends.
Yes.
Imagine all of the people who have friended me from High School (High School!!!), college, old jobs, current acquaintances from my children’s school… all of the people I hid my HH from all my life… they all know now. And I am shaking and… sweating (ah, bien sur!).
I have a Facebook fan page for this website (I hope you have seen it and “like”-ed it). The way Facebook works, if you have a personal profile and you then would like to start a fan page for, say, a website, then that fan page resides “inside” your personal account. Therefore, the two are tied together. So if you would prefer that your fan page be utterly separate from your personal page, tough luck.
I did not fully realize this at first, being a “newbie” to Facebook, and rather old. By the time I had established Hyperhidrosis And Me’s Facebook presence, it was rather too late. With each hyperhidrosis-themed status update that showed up on my Wall, and with each new person who showed up from my past with a friend request, that ashamed little girl inside of me cringed. OK, the grown up part of me cringed too. I could not even look the moms at school (who had friended me) in the eye.
Are you surprised by this admission of current shame? Perhaps you think me a hypocrite. After all, what do I say all over this website about Speaking Out about hyperhidrosis? I say quite vehemently “Hyperhidrosis is what you have, not who you are.” I preach about all of that all over this site, on my Facebook page, on Twitter, and on many website “comments” sections and in several blog network sites.
Therein lies the catch. All of that soapbox preaching has occurred online. The safe anonymity of the Internet was my safety net, my mask. Offline, I have only chosen to practice what I preach to a select few acquaintances and friends. Well, to give myself some credit, I have been candid about it to many more people recently. It has gotten easier with practice. I have chosen who exactly knows my little secret, and I have controlled when, where, and how I have shared it.
But with Facebook? There was no controlling who of my FB “friends” saw my hyperhidrosis postings. I was left to block out what they may have been thinking. To them, part of me knows that it was really not a big deal, that whatever they learned about me and my “secret” perhaps gave them pause but did not really mean much at the end of the day. To me, though, as I am certain some of you know, it became the elephant in the room. I had to address it.
Do I feel better? Not yet. I will have to get back to you on that– that little girl inside of me wants a lemon drop martini.
Posted by:
Charmaine
· on April 23, 2010 | Comments
We all roll our eyes from time to time when the phrase “politically correct” comes up. Remember the good old days, we whisper, when you could tell a good joke without Offending People? I am just as guilty at times as everyone, although I would like to believe I am sensitive to the feelings of others. My sensitivity comes from knowing what it feels like to pretend to laugh at some offensive joke or comment about sweating, while feeling inside like the butt of that joke.
Somehow over the years, we as a species have come to see sweating as shameful and disgusting. In our society, there are only very specific circumstances in which this natural bodily function can be deemed acceptable: when exercising, in extremely hot and/or humid conditions, or when ill. Even if you are nervous, we learn at a young age, you are expected to hide it.
As a result of this unspoken rule that is taught and reinforced countless times in childhood, public perception of those who sweat visibly is negative in every way:
- People whose hands are sweaty must be nervous. People who are nervous are shifty and not to be trusted. People who are nervous are weak and not self-assured; they have no self-respect.
- Somehow, the mental image of a “sweaty guy” is of someone who is overweight. People with Hyperhidrosis come in all shapes, sizes, and flavors, as we know.
- Sweating is unclean, so it only follows that people who sweat do not observe proper hygeine.
- Yup, we’re greedy, too. I recently saw this sentence: “…he couldn’t wait to get his sweaty hands on all that money…”
So here’s the kicker, folks! When we get up the nerve to tell a friend or peer about our Hyperhidrosis, what do we hear, almost without fail?? “Oh, so what. That’s okay. It’s no big deal.”
These perceptions are ingrained in all of us. Subconsciously, we judge our own sweating as society does. So, IT IS A BIG DEAL!
The only one way to change this unfair perception is to make it Politically Incorrect. We must come out of the shadows and raise awareness that Hyperhidrosis is real and that we, to quote my friend Anne, are “normal people who happen to sweat”.
‘Nuff said!
