Future sociologists looking back on the tell-all talk shows and memoirs of the 1990s will think its inhabitants shameless. So why is buying condoms at the drugstore still so embarrassing?
Despite America's obsessive gut-spilling, Tom Nardone and Lisa LoGrasso understand that some people still find buying sanitary napkins a mortifying task. On their Michigan-based Web site www.shopinprivate.com, they sell everything from AIDS tests to "sensual aids." The goods are delivered to your door in a plain, brown-paper-wrapped box to spare you even the tiniest humiliation.
Since the site's debut in September 1998, product sales have more than doubled each month. But in a society where people share life's intimacies on Jerry Springer, why is the web site so successful?
Our society is somewhat schizoid about embarrassment, explains Dacher Keltner, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychology at the University of California-Berkeley, who studies social emotions. "We are shameless about talking about families and relationships," Keltner says. "But we're still highly embarrassed about sex."
