In 2010, Melissa Petro was fired from her job as a New York City public-school teacher after the New York Post began a humiliation campaign against her for the sins of her prior life, which included being a sex worker. The headline read, “Bronx Teacher Admits: I’m An Ex-Hooker.”
What followed was an intense crash course in public shaming. After losing her career and withstanding more than two years of extreme public denigration, Petro focused on her writing. The incident and its fallout was the seed for her new book, Shame on You: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification. Throughout its pages, she tells her own story, as well as the stories of more than 150 others, exploring the root cause of an emotion most of us try to ignore or push away.
The shaming Petro endured was remarkably vitriolic. This psychotic Post column about her, for example, calls her an “idiot prosti-teacher,” a “whore with chutzpah,” and “an openly loose woman.” Her experience is somewhat unique, though she’s not the first to go through it; Monica Lewinsky likely relates.
I spoke with Petro ahead of the release of the book to ask her what she’s learned about shame, what it’s like to go through a campaign of mass-media humiliation, and more.
One of the early and astute observations in your book is that shame is a powerful tool to keep people in their place. And some people think that’s good. Shame is a control mechanism.
Shame has become a weapon to get people to conform to a heteronormative, racist, patriarchal world. And anyone who steps outside those lines will be punished back into place.
We avoid feeling shame because it is so threatening to our nervous system. We’d rather be angry or “fawn,” which is to please or conform. We’re also not encouraged to feel very much of anything in our society.
The way that shame is wielded is pretty powerful. It upholds invisible boundaries.
Guilt is when we recognize that our behavior is not living up to our ideals — there is a gap between who we want to be and how we act. When we feel guilty, we can change our behavior. Whereas when you feel ashamed, what can you do? Wallow in self-loathing because you are so inherently flawed? There’s no improving that, there’s only hiding it. I never think of shame as being productive.
Your story is compelling.
I am not tragically unique, but that’s how shame makes us feel. We’ve got this one thing that, if anyone knew about it, would totally change their perception of us. And it kind of does, to be honest. People do look at you differently. But you’re more than that one thing.
Someone once told me their biggest shame was that their father committed suicide. I’m like, How do you take responsibility for that? But they do.
I took enormous responsibility for what happened and I carried it for so long. All I wanted to do was tell my story. And then what? Prove that I’m a good person and I’m worthy of love?
With the book, I wanted to turn the lens away from me to truly see other people and their experiences. When we can shut up and listen to other people and realize we’re not alone, that frees us from shame. I’m talking a lot, ironically.
Well, this is your interview. I liked how you included in the book how you were going to go to trial, but then you were told that you wouldn’t win the case.
That was something I insisted be included. The arbitrator was the same dude who famously negotiated the transit strike earlier that year. He told me I was going to lose. He was not on my side from the start. No one was on my side from the start, even the union lawyer. They wanted to get rid of me.
Nobody wanted to fight for the rights and dignity of women with experiences in the sex trade. And to be honest, that wasn’t their job and that wasn’t my job. My job was to educate children, and [this controversy] had become a distraction. There was a part of me that knew I could never return to that classroom without it always being an issue. I had a First Amendment case I could have argued. I didn’t want to compromise.
But the truth about life is that we compromise all the time. We are constantly compromising our ideals. Do you think my house looks exactly the way I want it to look? There’s always a gap between what our life looks like and how we wish it looked. And you know what? It’s not because we are not good enough. And it wasn’t because I couldn’t fight hard enough. Sometimes you just have to be practical.
“I was humiliated, and that was wrong. And I understand the intent. The intent was to send a message to women, that if you step out of line, this can happen to you. ”
Yes. And it’s not a movie. It’s real life. And this is what happens.
I felt so much humiliation and shame because I believed in myself, but I knew those institutions had more power than I did. And isn’t that the truth of all of our experiences as women? There are institutions making choices for us or inhibiting our choices, and we want to believe, oh, we’re feminists. We choose, choose, choose. But we choose given what’s available, and those choices are constrained by our circumstances.
Yes. Is it worth it to go to court or do you just settle?
Women are constantly asking that question: Is it worth it? Do I confront the well-meaning, but inadvertently sexist comment? Do I fight even though it’s going to ultimately hurt me in the long run? Now that I’m a mother, I really understand choosing the least-harmful path.
What are your shame triggers, and are they different from what they used to be?
Insinuate that I’m deceptive? That’s a huge trigger for me because of the traumas I lived through when I lost my career for presumably “hiding” these truths about me. The idea that I’m lying is a huge trigger.
I have a lot of triggers related to being a mother. As a sex worker and a woman who’s experienced mass-media humiliation, I was acquainted with shame and shaming, but it didn’t come into focus until I became a mother.
It was just impossible to get it right as a mother. There was so much contradictory information. And then my son started to present as special needs, and all of what is true about children and parenting came into question because his needs were very different. My big trigger is still mothering my son – not because I feel ashamed of him, but because I fear that I’m doing something wrong or I’m not good enough as a mother, and that’s why he struggles.
What was the phrase you used? Mass-media something?
Mass-media humiliation. Obviously I knew that other women had survived scandals, but to have it articulated as mass-media humiliation and to learn that that is a uniquely traumatizing experience – it has specific effects on an individual, everything from financial ramifications to psychological ramifications you’ll then experience for the rest of your life – having that language helped me reframe what I had endured.
What did you learn?
One, that it’s humiliation, not shame. Even if we know intellectually that we don’t deserve what’s happening to us, there is a part of us that believes we could or should have done something differently. Enter shame. Whereas humiliation is completely undeserved.
I was humiliated, and that was wrong. And I understand the intent. The intent was to send a message to women, that if you step out of line, this can happen to you.
As a mother, it feels like you have to walk this weird tightrope of identity where you aren’t too sexy.
That’s probably another [trigger]. I’m afraid that I give off those vibes. My cousin, who’s a therapist, calls it “leaky sexuality.” I’m always afraid I’m leaking. One time, one of my husband’s friends said I was hitting on him, which I really wasn’t. I’m always afraid I’m giving off sexual energy, but I don’t know if other women feel that way.
Shame is so bound to women’s sexuality. Just think of the expression “walk of shame.” It’s about a woman having sex.
And being exposed in the daylight. We’re supposed to be two things, but not at the same time. We are supposed to exist professionally and care, nurture, and participate in our community and give, give, give. And at night, we’re supposed to be this other character. And that’s what was really so offensive about the “hooker teacher.” I refused to embody one identity completely, and people were offended at that refusal. We’re not supposed to show this. You’re meant to be discreet about your private life.
When you were doing sex work, did shame come up in unexpected situations?
In some ways, it was a place I could be intimate and vulnerable. You kind of are raw in those rooms. Your deepest secret is shared with these people versus the civilians who see you all dressed. In some sense, you’re shameless and unburdened in those spaces in a way you can’t be in your real life. And that’s why it’s so entrapping. Also, it pays really well.
Shame and power are two sides of a coin. And the more power you have, the less shame seems to stick. I remember this story about a powerful female executive at Time Inc. who would “let loose” in the bathroom without hesitation. It was loud. It struck me as a power move. Because being in a physical body can be especially shameful for women.
It’s so funny. I worked at this one strip club where the customers would see you go to the bathroom. And I had such an issue with that. My coworkers were like, what do you fucking care if they see you go take a piss?
There’s something empowering about being shame-resilient. But even the most shame-resilient among us still experience shame and feel vulnerable. To feel vulnerable about the fact that you shit is a waste of energy, though. So much of what we’re encouraged to feel ashamed of is just a waste of our energy.
Do you have any advice for building shame resilience?
One of the pieces of advice that I picked up on in doing interviews for the book, and that I could relate to in my own experience, is that shame-resilient folks really hone in on other shame-resilient folks. Curate your social feeds, and get rid of anything that makes you feel inadequate. Sometimes we kind of seek that out, right? We’ll hate-follow. That’s not good for you.
I can’t believe how lucky I am. I just get to encourage people to be themselves and to be myself. And the more we do that, the more we strengthen that muscle inside of us, and give other people permission to be themselves too. And that’s the light I want to be in the world.
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