I recently started watching nature documentaries with my daughter, thinking it was going to be a relaxing, educational answer to the moral dilemma of screentime-brain-rot. I imagined us both marveling over interesting facts about the earth and the animal kingdom, looking up various locations on a map, talking about hemispheres and the distance between the poles. I would get to introduce her to the endlessly delightful world of collective noun trivia. “Did you know that a group of foxes is called a skulk?” Of course she wouldn’t know! “What about hippos, Mama?” she’d ask. “And sharks? Zebras?” (A bloat, shiver, and dazzle, respectively. You’re welcome.) We’d bond and relax, gently stoking our curiosity about this vast, rich world around us, learning together.
Instead, we mostly watched a lot of baby animals fight for their lives while their shockingly indifferent family groups looked on.
Here is a sampling of what we saw:
- A baby seal, old enough for solid food but too young to swim, is left on the beach while his mother spends up to a week hunting for his meals. The other seal mothers push him to the outskirts of the group (a harem, bob, or herd, btw), where he becomes a target to nearby hyenas and wild dogs.
- A newly orphaned baby macaque spends days trying to earn the protection of her female troop, who turn their backs on her while she inches hopefully around the grooming circle in a scene that looks eerily similar to a new girl being ignored by the popular crowd in any given high school.
- A two-day old elephant born during a drought can’t keep up with the herd (also called a memory or parade) after his mother’s milk dries up. One of the older females brutally kicks him into the dust when he gets underfoot one too many times.
“Is he going to be okay?” my daughter cried, hands over her face. Horrified, I whispered, “I hope so.”
“How in the world did you think this was a good idea?” my husband asked me.
“What have I learned about acceptance and rejection? How has it influenced my choices, for better or for worse?”
“I didn’t know it was going to be so brutal!” I shouted from behind my own hands. “I thought it would be educational!”
And, well, it was. Because after finishing the series (we had to know what happened), it made me consider the parallel dynamics we experience in the human world — the way we seek acceptance from our social groups, particularly as women. Not only has it been a critical path in my own growth, but I have the responsibility of raising my daughter.
What have I learned about acceptance and rejection? How has it influenced my choices, for better or for worse?
What I kept coming back to was the most common measure we use to determine group acceptance: Whether or not people like us.
Wanting to be liked
I learned early on that women were expected to perform a precise balancing act to earn social acceptance.
The message was loud and clear, whether it was in direct admonishments for being too loud or “bossy,” or delivered laterally through the court of public opinion — think of the magazine covers in the early aughts asking us to speculate about the state of a famous woman’s morals or age by scrutinizing what she looked like. We might not think of this as an education, but it is — an informal introduction to the rules of the social order in which we live, freely available to anyone standing in line at the grocery store.
“Being liked was what would protect you from being ostracized, from losing the sanctuary and protection of the group.”
I learned that women were supposed to be attractive but not too attractive, that we had to prioritize our appearance but not in a shallow or obvious way. We needed to believe in ourselves and break glass ceilings but also, somehow, stay in our lane. We needed to appear young but also dress age-appropriately, and never weigh too much or have too much muscle. And we needed to smile, always, to everyone, no matter what. Smiling signaled that we were nice, and everyone liked nice people.
Being liked was crucial if you were a woman. Being liked was what would protect you from being ostracized, from losing the sanctuary and protection of the group. If you forgot this, if you let yourself slip, you could end up like those women on the magazine covers, presented for the collective judgment of all.
At the same time, millennial children were often told to be ourselves, to not care what other people thought about us, and to not be afraid of being different. The trouble was, these messages came through Disney movies with figures who, in the ways that mattered most, still conformed to most mainstream standards: They were young, pretty, straight, and nice. Whatever about them that was hard for the group to initially accept, could eventually be forgiven because they weren’t threatening the status quo.
Be yourself, the message was, but only within these parameters. In theory, this is what would keep you safe. The group of people you belonged to would remain a community, instead of transforming into a mob.
Acceptance for survival
Acceptance from our social groups is not only a desire we share with the animal kingdom, but it’s similarly motivated by our own will to survive.
In his book “The Need to Be Liked,” clinical psychologist Roger Covin, Ph.D. explains that social acceptance is connected to physical survival: Just like the seal, the macaque, and the elephant, we also need food, shelter, and protection — especially if and when we’re unable to acquire these things on our own. We rely on the collective protection and care of our social groups to ensure our physical survival.
But even when our basic needs are met, why is it that the need for acceptance still feels so urgent? According to Covin, our brains are still programmed for our hunter-gatherer ancestors, having not yet caught up to the reality of modern day conveniences like grocery stores. If we relied on the skills of the group to provide us with what we need to survive, we must do everything we can to secure our position within it. “We are hardwired to seek acceptance and avoid rejection,” he says.
“If we relied on the skills of the group to provide us with what we need to survive, we must do everything we can to secure our position within it.”
“Human beings invest an exceptional amount of thought and energy into being valued and accepted by others,” says Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University Mark Leary, P.h.D. “The pervasive quest for acceptance can be seen in the attention and effort people devote to their physical appearance, their efforts to be liked, achievement-related behaviors, conformity, accumulating resources that others need, and generally being the sort of person with whom others want to have social connections.”
If our drive for acceptance is powerful enough to change our behaviors well before we even present ourselves for review, what does this mean for our sense of self? Not to mention the fact that nowhere in all this agonizing about our own acceptance from the group is there any critical analysis of the merits of the group itself.
“What if the interests of the group are bad?”
What if the interests of the group are bad? What if their approval conflicts with what’s best for us?
Maybe that old rhetorical question popular with certain parents was one we should actually take the time to answer: If the group we are trying to belong to all jumps off a cliff, would we do it too?
For me, I think it depends on the cliff.
The cliff
I went to a historic women’s college in the South where I didn’t know a soul, and the experience was the sort of culture shock that presented me with many, many cliffs. One of the first happened when my roommate invited me to a football game at a neighboring university, telling me I could borrow one of her sundresses for the occasion.
“For… a football game?” I asked. In Texas, you showed up to stadiums in jeans and a shirt in the team colors — maybe a jersey and some jewelry if you’re fancy. But in Virginia, college football tailgates look like Easter brunch. I thought it was strange, sure, but it wouldn’t cost me more than a day wearing one of my roommate’s Lilly Pulitzer shifts.
“When in Rome,” I told myself. I jumped off that cliff, but ultimately it was a short drop with a roomy, open pool at the bottom, and I was welcome to stay and swim or head out whenever I wanted to.
“I jumped off that cliff, but ultimately it was a short drop with a roomy, open pool at the bottom, and I was welcome to stay and swim or head out whenever I wanted to.”
Another time, I was at a friend-of-a-friend’s beach house for Spring Break, where a group of boys in khakis and polo shirts arrived every evening to play drinking games on our porch. After the first night, my friend started up a vacation fling with one of these guys, creating a dynamic that turned the rest of the week upside down. Because while I knew my friend as an outspoken, strong-willed feminist on campus, here she was making drinks in bikinis for these local bros who grabbed her around the waist and called her “honey” instead of by her name.
I was in a long-distance relationship at the time, so I spent most evenings tossing ping pong balls into Solo cups and trying not to take the whole experience too seriously. We were young and she was having fun, and I thought it was clear from my hoodie and nightly acceptance at the beer pong table that the position I held in this particular group wasn’t contingent on my acting any differently. Until the night when a blond guy in cargo shorts passed me his empty red cup, slapped his hand against the back pocket of my cutoffs and said “Make it a whiskey, honey,” and I went into a fugue state that resulted in emptying my bottle of Corona all over his backwards baseball hat.
“I thought it was clear from my hoodie and nightly acceptance at the beer pong table that the position I held in this particular group wasn’t contingent on my acting any differently.”
He stood blinking at me for a moment before erupting. Two other guys held him back while he screamed and lunged, calling me every name in the book. My friend and her fling grabbed me, leading me into another room. I thought they were protecting me, removing me from a clearly dangerous situation in order to make sure I was alright.
But instead, they took turns telling me that though they understood why I was upset, I had really crossed a line with the beer.
“That’s just the way it is here, you know?”
“It was harmless, really.”
“It almost would have been better if you’d just slapped him or something.”
“Maybe if you just apologized, it’ll be alright.”
I was flabbergasted. I had lost the protection of the group, crossing firmly into exile. The only way back in was to apologize to Blond Backwards Baseball Hat, who was still apoplectic in the other room, shouting that he was going to call his girlfriend to come over and fight me (because he was a gentleman, you see). “It’s not a big deal,” my friend said to me. “You don’t have to mean it.”
“Absolutely not,” I said.
“I didn’t know what was going to happen to me, stranded at the top of the cliff while everyone else hurled themselves over its side — I just knew that whatever lay at the bottom was likely to be much, much worse.”
I spent the rest of the week locked in my room, desperate for the break to end. I didn’t know if the girlfriend was going to show up, or what would happen if I walked out to use the bathroom while a party was in full swing. I didn’t know how my friendship was going to survive this experience, or what the social dynamic was going to look like when we got back to campus, or whether the rejection from this group was going to extend to my rejection from other groups after they learned about how unchill I’d been.
I didn’t know what was going to happen to me, stranded at the top of the cliff while everyone else hurled themselves over its side — I just knew that whatever lay at the bottom was likely to be much, much worse.
Choosing to go against the group in this case made me an unlikeable woman — which I learned then wasn’t just about not being pretty or young or thin or even nice enough, because at the time I was all of those things. The real problem was that I wasn’t following the rules.
I had decided that wanting to be liked was not desirable enough to accept their terms, and it only cost me my position in a group I didn’t want to join. Which made me something worse than just unlikeable: I was ungovernable. What was really at stake wasn’t whether or not I was liked by these people at all. It was about who had the power to control my behavior.
As it turns out, only I have the power to do that.
The true source of rejection
Look — it isn’t wrong to want to be liked. And it is true that social isolation can have devastating effects. But sacrificing your true self to avoid social rejection will cause a lot more damage than sitting alone at any lunch table from time to time. Because it isn’t the group’s rejection that causes the most damage; it’s when we reject ourselves to win someone else’s approval that can leave scars that last.
“It isn’t the group’s rejection that causes the most damage; it’s when we reject ourselves to win someone else’s approval that can leave scars that last.”
Recently, I found a pair of pants on ThredUp for 90% off the original price. New, with tags, and in a cut I’d been loving on others but never tried myself, I purchased them immediately. They fit me perfectly, yet I could only bring myself to wear them around the house because somehow, somewhere, I’d learned that being short and curvy meant I wasn’t supposed to wear wide legged pants.
“I know these aren’t very flattering,” I said to my husband when he walked in on me trying them on. My tone sounded like I was admitting to a crime, but I was only trying to beat him to the punch by saying what I knew was objectively true. “But they are so comfortable.” I started to change out of them, and he looked at me quizzically. “Wait, then why wouldn’t you wear them?”
It felt like a trick question. We all know the rules about “dressing for our figure.” These pants are a no-no for me: pleated, high-waisted, wide legged and cropped just at my ankle bone, foreshortening my already short legs. Which is bad. But I loved the windowpane print and the way they swished around my legs when I moved, how they seemed both dressed up but also relaxed.
“Because they aren’t cute on me?” I said to my husband, like it was common knowledge. He shook his head. “Says who?” he asked me. “If you love them, isn’t that the only opinion that matters?”
What did I think was going to happen if I wore these pants out in public? Would people stop talking to me, avoiding my eye, just because I’d broken the rules about what kind of pants I was “supposed” to wear? In an effort to protect myself from the possibility of someone else’s rejection, I was pre-emptively doing the deed for them. I was rejecting myself.
“In an effort to protect myself from the possibility of someone else’s rejection, I was pre-emptively doing the deed for them. I was rejecting myself.”
The critical voices in our head are often echoes of the voices we heard growing up, the voices of our peers or the media or other influential adults who made the sort of value claims that introduced us to the social order we are living in. As children, we take all of these voices to heart, accepting the terms of likeability as fixed rules instead of simply flawed, arbitrary opinions.
As we mature, many of us begin to push back on the voices, arguing with them or simply dismissing them entirely as we learn how harmful or silly or inconsequential they are. We have to choose to take in new voices, the ones that remind us that our own approval can be just as powerful as anyone else’s.
You love these pants, I told myself. And you get to wear whatever kind of pants you like.
I put the pants back on, and wore them to the store. And I felt like a queen.
Permission to heal
In the nature documentary, the babies didn’t need the entire group’s consensus to achieve its protection; the acceptance of a single member was enough to save them:
- The baby seal befriends a fellow pup, granting him access to the rest of the herd while his mother is away.
- A high ranking female briefly grooms the baby macaque after she sounds a warning cry to save the family from an infiltrating python, eventually leading to another adult’s protection.
- The elephant matriarch lifts the baby from the dust and urges him to keep up; the rest of the family take turns helping him move on until the rains finally return and save them all.
Just one member of the group signaling approval changes the mood of the rest. What if we align our social experiences with these sympathetic adults instead of the babies on the outskirts? What if we decide that, instead of waiting for the approval of someone else to grant us sanctuary, we already have it, and then use our security to extend approval to someone else? Can we give ourselves permission to take this power, and to use it to change the rules?
“Can we give ourselves permission to take this power, and to use it to change the rules?”
When Poesy tells me that she didn’t play with anyone at recess, I have to tamp down my instinct to express worry about it. I don’t want to teach her that being alone is inherently a bad thing, especially if I discover that the reason might be because she wanted to play a different game than her friends, and she chose to do that instead. She is, after all, just reporting this information to me — she doesn’t seem upset, so I’m careful not to accidentally teach her that she should be. Instead I ask questions, and learn more about the intricacies of her make believe game, which she clearly enjoyed. “That sounds like you had a really fun time!” I say, and she usually agrees.
Once, she told me that there was a new kid in class who sat on the bench with the teachers the whole period instead of joining everyone on the playground. “Did you invite her to play?” I asked. “No,” Poesy said. “I think she was feeling too shy.”
“It must be hard to not know anyone yet,” I said. “Do you remember what that felt like when you started at school?”
“Yeah. It was really scary.”
“What made you feel better?”
She thought about it. “When they started playing kitties and I got to be the mom.”
“How did you join the game?” I asked. “Did someone invite you or did you just start playing?”
“They said ‘Poesy! Come be the mom!’”
“I bet that felt really good! Maybe tomorrow you can ask the new girl if she wants to play, too.”
Poesy thought about this. “She might not like playing kitties though, Mom.”
“True. But even if she says no, it still feels really good to be asked, right?”
“If we already possess the power to offer someone else a sense of belonging and acceptance, maybe we also have the power to do this for ourselves.”
It took a few days (first Poesy forgot to ask, and then she asked but the new girl said no) but then one day Poesy came rushing out at pick up, overflowing with excitement to tell me that the new girl played with them at recess that day. “She was the grandmom!” Poesy said. “She was my mom!” Now, she always reports whether someone was alone on the playground, and whether she asked them to play or not. She’s always so proud when they join in, aware on some level that she changed something big that day, by making someone feel accepted.
When we allow the rules of our groups to determine who’s in and who’s out, what it takes to be liked, and what we need to do to belong, are we giving away something that might be just as essential to our survival as the security of a group? Because if we already possess the power to offer someone else a sense of belonging and acceptance, maybe we also have the power to do this for ourselves.
Maybe deciding to like ourselves is the kind of power that already exists; maybe all we need to do is believe it’s there.
Stephanie H. Fallon is a Contributing Editor at The Good Trade. She is a writer originally from Houston, Texas and holds an MFA from the Jackson Center of Creative Writing at Hollins University. She lives with her family in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, where she writes about motherhood, artmaking, and work culture. Since 2022, she has been reviewing sustainable home and lifestyle brands, fact-checking sustainability claims, and bringing her sharp editorial skills to every product review. Say hi on Instagram or on her website.
