You Don't Like The Sound of The Truth Coming From My Mouth

I heard a bit on the radio last week about some guy who is trying to start an honesty trend -- a total honesty trend in which even white lies are unacceptable. I've been pondering this for days now, and while I get where he's coming from, I just can't get on board to where he's going.

I didn't hear the whole bit, but from what I understand, the idea is to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, whether a person asks for your opinion or not. So if your friend's pants make her butt look fat, you're supposed to tell her, even if she hasn't asked what you think. In fact, the deejay who had read an article about this thing said the honesty guy had actually stopped his interviewer in the middle of the interview to say he was bored with the conversation.

I like the idea of being truthful, but only when it's my business to offer my opinion. If a friend asks, and her butt does indeed look big, I'm not going to lie and insist that any woman would be lucky to have a bottom so tiny as hers. But I won't be blunt and mean about it either. (A former coworker of mine used to say that when this happened with his wife, he'd tell her, "I think there's something else in your closet that would be more flattering." I think that's a good approach -- it's honest but has the least chance of hurting her feelings.)

But all truth, all the time sounds harsh to me. I get the idea that ultimately, your friend will be grateful that you made her go back and put on some more flattering pants, but I can't help feeling that people blurting out every opinion that they have, every moment that they have it is just going to make others think they're rude and too talkative to boot.

A few years ago, a woman I knew through work told me that a dress I'd been wearing the last time she'd seen me was a "granny dress" and that even she, a grandmother, wouldn't be caught dead wearing something like that. The funny thing was, I'd gotten the dress off the junior's rack and had worried that it was actually a little young for me. Even so, after she said that, I never wore the dress again.

The guy who is promoting this whole honesty thing thinks this will catch on in a domino effect fashion -- he starts it, others will join in and and pretty soon, everyone will be doing it and there won't be any more hurt feelings, because people will be used to hearing blunt truth. I get that too, on some level. There are certain people in my life who can blurt out most anything and not hurt my feelings. My mom, for example, in typical mom fashion, has always been pretty blunt with me. I'm used to hearing it from her, and I trust her opinion, so I'm not surprised or offended by things she says to me.

I'm pretty sure that the honesty promotion isn't going to go very far, given how easy it is to lie, or at least improve the truth. But because I do like the idea of being more honest than dishonest, I thought I'd share one small truth here.

Sometimes when I am in the middle of a conversation with someone I don't know all that well, especially in a situation in which one or both of us are trying to create a good impression, I can't help thinking to myself, how would this person react if I kicked her/him in the shin, as hard as I could? I believe this comes from Helen Hunt's line in 80s teen classic Girls Just Want To Have Fun, in which she shares that whenever she is alone in a room with a guy, she wonders if she would puke if he kissed her. This prospect is just too gross for me, and kicking would probably be more fun, so I go with that.

I hardly ever actually want to kick people; I think it's just my way of gauging how they act when not on their best behavior. Maybe I should just start telling them, "your ass looks big."