What Are You Most Judge-y About?
What are you most judge-y about? Does being judge-y show you have discernment, standards and ideals, or does it illustrate elitism, insecurity, and a narrowness of mind?
My father was in the rag trade; I’m judge-y about fabric. I don’t care if Rayon is currently resurgent. It is unwelcome in my wardrobe. I’ve never been able to order clothes from a catalog or website because I need to feel the weave, touch the fibers and see if the design is woven or printed. Don’t tell me I should eschew design for durability or renounce style for sustainability.
And I’m most certainly not sleeping on sheets made from repurposed tires or recycled candy wrappers even if it’s good for the planet. I will help the planet in other ways, but I’m sleeping on high-thread count all-cotton sateen. If they want to take that away from me, they’ll have to pry it out of my cool, well-rested hands.
Even as a kid, I bought my clothes at thrift shops instead of Woolworth’s was because I preferred a twenty-year-old silk dress to a brand-new polyester pantsuit.
Look, we’re all judgmental about something, and that judgment perhaps not completely unattached to malice, so what does your particular category selection say about your character?
Judge-y folks are those who imagine their sensibilities, tastes or responses in a specific arena are more discriminating, more informed and more exacting than anyone else’s.
Other folks are judge-y about wine, cereal, chocolate, lip-liner, toilet tissue, music, fruit ("heirloom tomatoes are serious business” says a produce aficionado), jewelry and pizza.
Actually, many people are snobs about food, but particularly Italian food. “I won’t eat any pizza that’s not my mother’s and I won’t eat any sauce that’s not my own,” says my friend Yvonne. Now, that’s a snob. That’s someone who believes that she is so entirely an expert on the topic of pizza and red sauce that she regards as automatically inferior any version created by someone who does not share her DNA.
At it’s best, being judge-y can be seen as having cultivated a thoughtful and finely curated sense of selectivity. (And yes, people think they have that about cereal and toilet tissue.)
At it’s worse, being judge-y can cut you off from experiences you might thoroughly enjoy. It took me a long time, for example, to admit that I love reading horror stories and long, epic historical fiction as well as canonical literature (and, of course, lots of humor). I was far more judge-y and much more of a snob about books when I was younger—I’m an English teacher, after all-- but now I have gleefully thrown away all caution and am a glutton for gory and gooey volumes, grabbing them by the armful and having to please no one but myself.
Shrugging off the judgments of others is a glorious feeling. And it’s also true that if we judge ourselves less harshly, we can be more generous towards the rest of the world. That’s not judge-y—that’s simple good judgment.
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