The New Modesty

How We Rebranded Shame as Humility

Compliments make so many of us uncomfortable. We laugh, deflect, turn red, say something like, “Oh, I just got lucky.” We can’t just say thank you; it feels too exposing, too proud. So we twist ourselves into smaller shapes, hoping to seem relatable. The voice comes out soft, self-effacing, allergic to confidence. It’s the sound of someone terrified of being perceived as full of herself.

We used to call this modesty. Now we call it self-awareness.

Somewhere between Lean In feminism and the era of therapy-speak, we created a new social art form: emotional humility as performance. We apologize for our success, but we do it in the language of gratitude. “I’m just so thankful.” “I don’t even know how this happened.” “Still processing.” What used to be pride is now gratitude with a lowercase g. Gratitude has become the emotional concealer of our generation. It lets us shine, but only softly.

Scroll through Instagram and you’ll see it everywhere. The caption that starts with “so this happened,” followed by three crying emojis and the word grateful in lowercase. The beige palette. The humble-brag disguised as disbelief. The culture rewards this tone, the woman who is successful but insists she’s still just figuring it out. We have learned that pride must be disguised as surprise, that certainty reads as arrogance, that the safest way to celebrate yourself is to act like you can’t believe it happened.

When a man gets promoted, he says, “Excited to share some news.” When a woman does, she says, “Still can’t believe this happened.” We know how to talk about burnout and imposter syndrome, but not mastery. We can confess our flaws, but not name our strengths.

Therapy culture deserves credit for giving us language our mothers didn’t have, words for triggers, boundaries, and attachment styles. But it also made us fluent in self-critique while leaving our confidence untranslated. We can identify our trauma responses in real time but can’t quite say, “I’m proud of myself,” without flinching. Somewhere along the way, being self-aware started to mean being self-diminishing. Pride began to feel untherapeutic, as if claiming success meant you hadn’t done enough inner work.

Even when I write about something I’m proud of, I add a caveat at the end: “still learning,” “still figuring it out.” I know it’s code for “please don’t think I’m smug.” It’s the small apology that keeps women likable.

We have become experts in sanding down the edges of our joy so it will not cut anyone else. We treat our confidence like a guest that needs a chaperone.

It wasn’t always like this. There was a brief, caffeinated window when the culture told us to hustle harder, to be girlbosses, powerhouses, forces of nature. We all know how that ended. Burnout arrived, the world slowed down, and ambition started to feel embarrassing. The pendulum swung from “rise and grind” to “rest and receive.” The girlboss grew up, moved to the countryside, and started a newsletter about stillness.

Now the aesthetic is linen and lemon water. The new dream is gentle, grounded, aligned. There is something healing about that, but also something defanged. In rejecting burnout, we accidentally rejected ambition too. We traded “I want” for “I’m grateful.” We traded fire for balance.

We still talk about women’s brilliance like it’s a fluke. Billie Eilish “just” got lucky on SoundCloud. Greta Gerwig “just” made a movie about dolls. Taylor Swift “just” turned heartbreak into a business model. The just is the quiet apology we add to women’s power, the linguistic curtsy before the compliment.

We learned early that being liked is safer than being impressive. Pride makes people uncomfortable, especially when it’s feminine. So we have become fluent in smallness, confident enough to be competent, never enough to be threatening.

Every time we disguise pride as humility, we reinforce the idea that confidence must be softened to be acceptable. We pass down the message that women who are proud must apologize for it, while women who are humble will be loved. The irony is that humility, the way we practice it now, isn’t the opposite of arrogance. It is just shame in better clothes.

Real humility doesn’t require shrinking. It isn’t pretending you don’t know how you got here. It is knowing exactly how you did, and not needing to make yourself smaller to explain it.

Imagine if we said “thank you” instead of “oh, it was nothing.” Imagine if we didn’t preface our wins with apologies or wrap our success in disbelief. Imagine if pride wasn’t treated as a threat to our softness, but as proof of it.

We have mastered the language of empathy. We have learned how to hold space for everyone but ourselves. Maybe the next form of emotional intelligence is letting pride coexist with vulnerability. Maybe modesty isn’t the virtue we think it is. Maybe it is just fear, politely dressed.

We keep waiting for permission to take up space. The secret, of course, is that no one is guarding it, only other women waiting for someone else to go first.

x,

Stephanie

If my writing made you nod along, feel a little less alone, or just gave you something to overthink later, consider buying me a coffee. It’s a small way to say, “Hey, keep doing the thing,” and I’d really appreciate it.