Don't YUCK My Yum
Don't YUCK My Yum
How to avoid being a buzzkill or worse...and how to deal when someone does it to you. (Plus: Beyoncé! Pleasure! Hobbies! Really cozy bedding!)
Imagine you go to a restaurant and you order a dish you’ve been looking forward to for weeks, maybe even months or years. It arrives at the table. Your heart could burst from excitement. It reminds you of a special memory from decades ago, when someone you loved introduced you to this particular dish.
And then your dinner companion looks at it, scrunches up their face, and exclaims “EW, how gross!” followed by a *blegh* sound.
That is “yucking someone’s yum.”
DON’T YUCK MY YUM
My friend
taught me the phrase “don’t yuck my yum” almost a decade ago and it remains one of the stickiest concepts I’ve ever heard. Because it speaks to one of my greatest peeves of all-time.Before we go on, I want to preface all this with something: I’m not saying we should all pretend to like the same things. We’re SUPPOSED to prefer different things! Not everything is supposed to be for all of us! That’s literally how preference works: you decide what you *prefer* over other things. Prefer-ance.
But when people genuinely love something that is not causing harm, that is bringing them joy, and that they’re genuinely excited to love…well, putting your preference above others’ by way of shouting “this is shitty!!!” tells others way more about you than it tells others about That Thing.
To me, it just gives middle school mean girl bully vibes: when liking musical theatre was “weird,” when math club was “dorky,” when wearing something unique made someone a “loser,” when bringing anything other than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to school could lead to you sitting alone at the lunch table.
And no, what it tells me is NOT that I shouldn’t “be so sensitive” or that I shouldn’t care what anyone else thinks.
What it *does* tell me is that I am not safe being my fullest self with you — and so in the future, I won’t be.
THIS AIN’T TEXAS
If you’re wondering if this is really just an excuse to write about Beyoncé…I mean, this is about more than that, but also, you’re not entirely wrong.
When Beyoncé announced her latest album a few weeks ago — Act Two in a three-act project — the internet had a field day. An announcement expertly crafted in a way only the queen could do: her Superbowl Verizon commercial about “breaking the internet” literally did just that, once again. Not only was it revealed that her album would drop on March 29th, but that it was a country album.
Moments later, two tracks were released.
And people had opinions.
This isn’t about whether you personally, or even I personally, love the two songs we’ve heard thus far. I’d like to zoom out further than that.
People had opinions about the songs, sure.
But even more people, it seemed, had opinions about the album’s VALIDITY IN GENERAL.
Amidst so much joy surrounding this announcement — friends and strangers alike bonding and buzzing about their excitement, photos and videos being uploaded at lightning-speed of people donning their cowboy boots and making up gleeful line dances to “Texas Hold ‘Em,” and the incredibly meaningful realization that through this three-act project Beyoncé is reclaiming music genres that originated in the Black community and bringing them back to their roots — one sentiment in particular kept pushing its way through, souring the sweetness.
A country album?
This is a poor excuse for country music.
Beyoncé needs to stay in her lane.
THE FALLACY OF THE LANE
The combination of “this is shitty” and “stay in your lane” is a very specific and especially yucky version of yucking someone else’s yum. And, to me, speaks to a way bigger cultural problem we have: our oversized allegiance to one chapter, one story, and one binary.
In her book Top Five Regrets of the Dying, author and former pallative caretaker Bronnie Ware says the number one regret people have at the end of their lives is this heavy-hitter: I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
Of course, everyone has different ideas of what a true-to-myself life looks like. There is no one-size-fits-all way to craft a life that’s true-to-you.
But that’s the point, and that’s the problem: so many of us are so wrapped up in our idea of what we CAN and CAN’T do that we don’t ever end up exploring anything out of the boxes we’ve built for ourselves, in the exact order we’ve built them.
When I hear someone tell someone else to “stay in their lane,” I hear two things:
“Stay in the lane of my own preference”
and“I don’t feel comfortable stepping outside of what’s expected from me — by others OR myself — so how dare YOU do exactly that.”
If it’s true that what gets under our skin holds important information about what we believe, then what does our preoccupation with people being ONE thing ONE way ALL the time — a way that we either prefer, or if we DON’T prefer, we feel comfortable associating someone with — say about us?
The truth is, the idea of a “lane” is a sham. A so-called lane, as we speak of it, is rarely about expertise. Not really. It’s about familiarity. What others have already approved of for us. What WE ourselves have already approved of for us.
Let’s take Beyoncé, for example. When she first started to release music, her “lane” was not what we think of today. She started as a member of an R&B girl group. Back in the ‘90s/early 2000s, becoming a solo artist and venturing into more mainstream Pop was her stepping “outside of her lane.”
Forget about all of the other things she’s done — launch a clothing line, a hair line, produce, direct, act, philanthropy, write an award-winning essay — let’s focus on that one very important thing.
Who we know her as now is different than who we knew her as then.
The “lane” people speak of only exists because she “stepped out” of another lane — one that people are quick to forget about.
And even if “staying in your lane” WAS about expertise…well, even THAT is a joke! It implies that we’re not supposed to try new things, and reinforces that if we DO try new things, we better only stick with them (and share them with the world!) if we’re superexperts. We’ve got to be the best, and we’ve got to be the best, FAST. Otherwise, why bother?
When I think of lanes, I think of driving on the freeways in Los Angeles. I don’t drive often, but when I do, it’s when I’m back home in LA. I usually have my favorite lane, sure. But I drive best when I’m able to pay attention and switch, merge, enter, and exit with ease. Being pushed out of one lane and into another by an erratic driver stresses me TF out. Similarly, when I stay in one lane the entire drive because I am so scared to leave the parameters of those little white dashes, my fears amplify. So when I almost always inevitably need to switch lanes, I turn back into my 16-year-old self. The one with a learner’s permit, terrified to take the wheel and doubtful I can get myself where I need to go.
YUMS AND MERGING
The concepts of “yucking someone’s yum” and telling someone to “stay in their lane” are two sides of the same coin. They both stem from an ideology that our way is the best way, one way is THE way, and our opinion is the one others should hear the loudest.
You might be nodding in agreement because you’ve been on the receiving end of someone’s grossed-out face as your favorite meal comes to the table, or seen a friend post a lengthy rant online about how “sick they are” of the song you’ve made your own personal anthem, or gotten side-eye glances when you talk about your love for something offbeat. You might be feeling aftershocks of the pangs of judgement you received when you decided to pivot careers, or take up a new hobby, or share your art with the world when everyone else knows you as a data engineer.
But I bet you’ve also been a yucker and a stay-in-your-lane-r. I know this because I know I’ve been one too. None of us are just one thing, all the time.
This isn’t about shaming people. This is about recognizing that our words have consequences. On others, and on our OWN trajectory. The quicker we are to judge someone else’s (purely joyful, non-harmful) choices, the quicker we are to censor our own.
The more we put others in a box, the stronger and more impenetrable the walls of our own boxes become.
I, for one, hope to live a life where I feel free to love what I love, and explore lanes that help me get where I ultimately want to go. There was once a time in which I would let someone else’s opinion of me/the things I love stop me from loving those things or trying something new. The question in my mind that was the loudest, was “what will they think?” But now the loudest question I ask is “…but what will *I* think?”
I clock the answer, and adjust accordingly. I set my boundaries, and I keep on keeping on.
It’s not always easy and not always fun, but I would so much rather lose trust in someone else than lose trust in myself. I’ve worked too damn hard to let someone else’s definitions define me.
We become fluent in our self-talk the way we become fluent in any language: by practicing both internally and out loud, with others. What we say on the outside strengthens what we say on the inside, and vice versa.
So whether it’s a movie, TV show, artist, song, hobby, color, or literal food — I hope we can all not just learn to let people love what they love and lean into joy, but encourage them to do so.
And I hope when we see people doing something we’re not used to, we can sideline the “stay in your lane” talk and cheer them on for showing the rest of us how it’s done.
We might someday want to do the same 💛
WANT YOUR SELF: In the comments of this post, let me know — have you ever had your yum YUCKED by someone else? How did it make you feel? OR, maybe an even more vulnerable share, have YOU been the YUCKer in the past? Where, in hindsight, did that come from?
And if the subject of yucking someone’s yum isn’t what resonates, I would love to know: have you ever “stepped outside your lane?” What did people say? What feelings bubbled up? Did you shut down, or did you keep going?
As always, the comments here operate under a kindness-first agreement. We support each other here in the WANT community and do NOT yuck other people’s yums.
SOME LAST LINKS
Before we get into the LAST LINKS…the WANTcast is back, baby!
This week’s epsiode is especially relevant to our conversation today: What is PLEASURE: Building An Embodied Self-Care Practice That Actually Works with Anne Hodder-Shipp and Sarah Tomchesson of S3X Plus.
If you love what you hear and are like YES! I want to find what brings me pleasure! I want to develop hobbies! Anne and Sarah have given WANTcast listeners 15% off their course, Pleasure Attitudes. Just enter ATTITUDE15 at checkout. It begins tomorrow evening, Thursday 3/14.
I am also opening up TWO rare additional spots in my 1-1 coaching practice. I keep my active roster intentionally small in order to focus deeply on each client. If you would like to work together or get on the wait list, you can learn more here.
(ps. If you’re a paid subscriber, this next part is for you! Stay tuned for an upcoming segment I’m building out for subscribers, as a thank-you for believing in this work :))
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