When you feel like, “take your birthday cake and…”
Do you ever have one of those weeks, months, or years where you feel like the world has turned its back on your god-given talent? There you are doing all that you can. And you’re quite good at it, you think. So why is no one mirroring that back to me?? (Smash goes the birthday cake.)
As an artist it can be frustrating (and all too common) to see shows that you should have been invited to, artwork being made by others that is similar to yours but selling for 10x the price, or people turning down opportunities to work with you (what I like to call rejections).
I was having one of those weeks a while back - ok let’s just call it a month - but as I began to write out a cranky essay about how crappy it feels to be underestimated, I did two things.
One, I acknowledged that all of my creative problems were good ones to have. It is important to keep perspective. (Hello Ukraine.) And two, I started to wonder, is there maybe another way to look at this? Maybe it’s not as bad as I think.
So I started to go back through my gripes and write an alternative perspective on each of them. By the end of this exercise, lo and behold, I found that a series of frustrating changes that week had led me to having more solo opportunities and more independence to make my creative work. Is it possible, I thought, that I am just scared to continue on alone and not valuing my own strengths? Yes, and yes.
Plus, even if there are people who don’t see me, there may be value in being undervalued. Oprah, who I consider one of my spiritual benchmarks, says that she loves being underestimated. She said when it came to her contracts early in her career, no one actually expected her to reach her goals so they gave her a way better deal than someone they thought might actually succeed (hello racism). And that’s how she made so much money. Case in point that sometimes your best strategy is to be slightly under the radar.
But we aren’t all Oprah, so what to do if you are being underestimated in your average non-TV personality life- or even if that’s just the narrative you’re telling yourself?
Dig in, and learn to advocate for yourself says Vivian Manning-Schaffel who wrote and article for Shondaland.com called How to Cope with Being Underestimated. In it she offers suggestions from businesswomen who have fought their way through corporate America (hello sexism), and have carved out a place for themselves. The solutions to this problem seem the same regardless of whether you are being underestimated or whether this feeling of less-than is just a narrative in your head.
“The only difference between the people who have become millionaires and billionaires with their tech companies, who are mostly white men, and the rest of us, is in marketing. - Ariana Hamilton of It's About Damn Time: How to Turn Being Underestimated into Your Greatest Advantage
And marketing is really just the power of storytelling. As a visual artist, storytelling is something that I only began to understand fully a few years ago. It has been hard to translate the images in my studio into written language and so I have almost found it easier to create a context around my work through other mediums like essays and podcasting - not just for a specific body of work.
Being in charge of your narrative allows you to tell people how you want them to know you, rather than letting your audience rely on assumptions they might make from a smattering of press releases or reviews written by other people. While all these things help to create a picture of who we are, what is unparalleled in its ability to capture someone’s attention and empathy is a well-crafted story.
The thing that really drove this home on a more serious level was thinking about the podcast, Death of the Artist. It is a short-run series created and narrated by Helen Molesworth about the alleged murder of Ana Mendieta by her then-boyfriend, blue chip artist Carl Andre. Ana had not been able to tell her story (hello murder). And no one else wanted to for years because of art world politics and a lack of interest by the police department. But like all good true crime serials, Molesworth’s podcast was able to paint a holistic picture of not only the facts of the crime, but the socio-political dynamics of the art world at the time, and how little of it has changed. The podcast opened a path to moving forward with more awareness and offered some small retribution for Mendieta’s sacrifice.
Listening also made me realize that telling our stories is not just a step towards social change, like with Mendieta’s story. For those of us alive with the privilege to do so, telling our own stories can also be a form of self-actualization.
It has been incredibly healing, with the help of my co-host Liz who told me in our early days “I need more Sarah”, to begin to tell my own stories through The Side Woo podcast. And it has felt like a weight lifted off my chest every time I am able to do it here.
The whole reason I had a breakthrough about feeling undervalued in my pity party moment is that I knew I wanted to write an essay about it. I thought if I’m feeling this, maybe others can relate. So thank you so much for following along. I hope this helps someone out there.
Last piece of advice: go smash a cake. It’s very cathartic.
Why / Am I being underestimated?
Every creator suffers valleys/blocks/unfairness, I think. It’s always been hard not to take it personally, but I have learned that so much of that noise is about the other person. They project their own disappointment/failure/fear onto me and my work. I finally realized this and stopped letting it drag my mojo.
But just in case you need to hear it: Your creations matter to me. They make my life more colorful, richer, vibrant. They give me hope. I wish I had more clout or connections to help you, but you are a gifted, powerful artist. Never stop believing in your work. ❤️