I'm so embarrassing!!

And I just can't hide it

“Cute.”

How many ways have you used this descriptor in your lifetime? A few billion? Think of everything you’d put in the category of Cute: a bathroom towel, a baby sock, a paw print, sardine tin packaging, floral stationery, a rom-com that leaves you mildly wistful, a rhyme-y poem, an oyster spoon.

When you take a gander at the list above, perhaps you can easily understand why I bristle a little when I hear my art described as “cute.”

Cute is anodyne. Cute is forgettable. Cute is a bathroom towel. Cute doesn’t change lives, much less save them.

Wouldn’t any artist prefer their work to be described as devastating, succulent, magnificent, novel, or even challenging and cerebral?

Sure, but here’s the deal: My work gets called “cute” because it IS cute. Or, at the very least, it registers to other people as “cute,” which is completely outside of my control. (Alas, you cannot decide whether your art will devastate others or not!)

It’s embarrassing! After scraping the bottom of my soul in order to process my one wild and precious life experience through creative work, couldn’t I do better than….“Cute?!”

On the other hand, why, really, does this reaction make me wince?

In different parts of my life, I consider cuteness a virtue: my clothes, my desk décor, my wedding invitations; I even consider some of my friendships to be cute, my church is cute, the 50-year marriage between my elderly neighbors is cute.

But when it comes to my art, which is so obviously, clearly ‘cute’ in its cartoonish folksy frilly style with curly-cues and decorative hearts, I react as though I’ve been found out. By stating the obvious, my feelings get hurt.

“I want to be taken seriously,” I whined to my therapist while confessing a jealousy attack over another artist whose work is also personal to her but in a completely different style.

How does that artist manage to be so sophisticated and attract such fancy academic praise, while everything I do seems so home-spun and silly and ultra-feminine and CUTE!?

“What if people come to my art show and they say it’s ‘cute’?” I wondered in horror, worrying about a hypothetical crisis four months from now.

After digging around my brain, we came to the conclusion that I could work really hard to “be taken seriously” by an imaginary future audience, but that would mean forcing my folksy square peg into a serious round hole.

I’d deepen my voice, wear more black, tell fewer jokes, and take an oil painting class and then…would it even work? It sounds like a painful process, and one that probably wouldn’t even result in desired effect (a bunch of fancy academics coming to my art show and…swooning? I dunno).

So, my therapist suggested something wild: Instead of trying to make my art more serious and devastating or whatever, why don’t I actually lean in to what I do naturally? Why don’t I stop pretending that ‘cute’ isn’t an accurate description, and just really cute it up??

This idea made me laugh, but it made sense right away. I could either embody and embrace everything I’m already doing, or decide to become a completely different person in service of being “taken more seriously.”

I don’t even know what that would entail, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t involve my checkered two-piece lounge suit paired with a happy face necklace, which I am currently wearing.

This all reminds me of the concept of the Soul Toupée, coined by Tim Kreider and oft-quoted by me and Mr. Mari:

Years ago a friend of mine and I used to frequent a market in Baltimore where we would eat oysters and drink Very Large Beers from 32-ounce Styrofoam cups. One of the regulars there had the worst toupee in the world, a comical little wig taped in place on the top of his head. Looking at this man and drinking our VLBs, we developed the concept of the Soul Toupee.

Each of us has a Soul Toupee. The Soul Toupee is that thing about ourselves we are most deeply embarrassed by and like to think we have cunningly concealed from the world, but which is, in fact, pitifully obvious to everybody who knows us. Contemplating one’s own Soul Toupee is not an exercise for the fainthearted.

Most of the time other people don’t even get why our Soul Toupee is any big deal or a cause of such evident deep shame to us, but they can tell that it is because of our inept, transparent efforts to cover it up, which only call more attention to it and to our self-consciousness about it, and so they gently pretend not to notice it. Meanwhile we’re standing there with our little rigid spongelike square of hair pasted on our heads thinking: Heh—got ’em all fooled!

I LOVE this idea that we (adorably) think we’re pulling wool over the world’s eyes when we try to keep some garish insecurity a big secret. And I love even more that this obvious, clear thing is maybe what draws people to us in the first place.

Could it be, maybe, possibly, theoretically, that someone is drawn in and ultimately moved or at least tickled by my work precisely because of its rustic and DIY style? That perhaps, just potentially, more “serious”-looking art is less friendly and approachable and therefore wouldn’t speak to that person as loudly?

This seems…possible.

I think about how of all the serious academic fancy books I’ve read, the ones I like best have more a folksy charm. I think about the power in the simplicity of songwriting that has meant the most to me; it won’t win awards but it has literally changed my perspective or helped me heal an impossible wound. I think about all the spectacular meals I’ve had at restaurants in New York, and how my favorite ever food is still a $3 slice of thin-crust pizza from the place in my neighborhood.

Thank goodness that $3 slice isn’t trying to be “Fjord sea urchin submerged in liquid nitrogen drizzled with a Nebbiolo reduction” because,most of the time, that’s just not going to do it for me.

We hear “Be yourself” over and over starting in kindergarten, and somehow it takes a lifetime to get it in our heads.

I wonder if our culture of disposability has anything to do with that. We easily throw away cups and cans, not taking too many moments to dwell on where “away” actually is. We swipe away faces on dating apps, and we just don’t text back if someone doesn’t feel entirely useful to us. Popular messaging would have us cut off friends who don’t agree with our politics, and common rhetoric assures us that we can change our conditioning overnight. Throw it away, swipe next, get rid of, just stop.

When we think about our own selves with disposability conscience, we might believe that any trait or characteristic that we don’t love can be tossed aside, gotten rid of, or at least hidden by a hideous soul toupée.

But anything we throw away goes…somewhere. And when I strain to resist my natural tendencies, or try to change the way I’ve been drawing since I was 4 years old, my insecurities become bigger and more noticeable.

I get even more jealous of others or I carry even more shame (and need a bigger toupée).

I am embarrassing, and so are you! But could it be that what makes us bristle and keeps us up at night are those lovable endearing adorable traits that make us so dang much OURSELVES?

Another Tim Kreider quote: “If we want the rewards of being loved, we must submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.”

As I begin preparing for my art show in March, I’m anticipating that absolutely mortifying ordeal of watching people look at work I made and seeing their reactions (or lack thereof) in real time.

And while I’m bracing myself for a chorus of “Cute,” I’m wondering if the bracing could soften into embracing.

“Yeah!” I could think. “It’s cute!” the same way that Baltimore market regular could look the others straight in the eye, remove his little wig, and say “Yeah, I am bald!”

Nobody wants the watered-down version of us, or worse, the version of us who thinks we have to wear less color in order to be liked more.

Or so I’m reminding myself as I begin my biggest art project in years, creating paintings out of wool accompanied by felted figurines in order to tell a story that feels important to tell.

Cute, huh?