Curry Communication: Seeking Male Validation May Actually Be Your Love Language.

Everyone on the internet is a critic, including yours truly. Everyone has an opinion when a bandwagon abrudptly rolls around the corner. This particular bandwagon just happens to be Ayesha Curry and her 27-minute segment on the popular Facebook series, Red Table Talk (RTT).

Jada Pinkett-Smith (and her unnecessarily large production crew) traveled to North Carolina to meet the elite female backbones of the Curry basketball legacy in their personal abode. It was in their home where the women highlighted the triumphs and tribulations of being associated with such a weighted surname.

Source: Uncova

I have watched many RTT episodes in full in the past, but to be quite transparent, I did not watch this episode from beginning to end, simply due to a lack of time. I also have a slight issue with successful women indirectly being placed on back-burners by interviewers when they happen to be affiliated with an equally prominent male figure (I knew this would be the case just by reading the video title), so this episode unfortunately just did not light a strong-enough cognitive flame for me to click on the play button. Does this mean I am not allowed to have an opinion on what was said? Yes and no. But I did extract all the information I needed from the snippet I did watch to eloquently hash out my two cents.

During the conversation on marriage, Ayesha confessed that her husband, NBA-star Stephen Curry, tends to receive a bagful of blatant attention from women, and she wonders why she isn’t receiving the same treatment from the opposite gender, at the same frequency.

Source: Facebook Watch

“Something that really bothers me, and honestly has given me a sense of a little bit of an insecurity, is the fact that — yeah, there are all these women, like, throwing themselves, but me, like, the past 10 years, I don’t have any of that. I have zero — this sounds weird — but, like, male attention, and so then I begin to internalize it, and I’m like, ‘Is something wrong with me?’”

Shortly before making this statement, the statement that has been shared thousands of times on social media platforms, she commenced the statement by saying something that I personally thought was key: she does not like when she feels “leveled off with somebody”.

I had to do my own digging on Google to find an accurate definition for this phrase, which is commonly thrown around in subjects dealing with economics and statistics. Merriam-Webster pretty much sums it up as “to reach a steady rate, volume, or amount; to stabilize”. Cambridge Dictionary describes it as “to stop increasing or being reduced”.

Wow. That’s a sermon right there.

I could use what Ayesha said and honestly take this into almost any pivotal direction:

• I could mention the static inconvenience of societal male validation, and how it contributes to the feministic movement.
• I could mention the biblical roles of a wife and husband within Christianity, and how that sanctified image formulates the overall view of marriage.
• I could even mention the changes in neuropsychological pathways during repeated, verbal and/or physical, traumatic events, including “harmless” sociological interactions.

This RTT segment has so may layers!

But I would be writing all day, and quite frankly, what 9-to-5 working individual is going to sit and read an endless blog post? I do, however, want to hone into her self-realizations and attempt to base my opinions on the somewhat generalizations that were made online.

Curry Communication: Five (5) Love Languages

I want to mention love languages. It’s important to know (1) what language you administer, and (2) what you yearn to receive. Everyone speaks a love language (personally speaking, I love gift-giving, and I absolutely cherish quality time). This language can be present in any type of relationship, even the one you have with your household dog, quite frankly.

Source: Aspira Continuing Education

I don’t know Ayesha Curry on a personal level (obviously), and thus don’t have the 1-on-1 experiences to infer her own love language, BUT, if I were to make an assumption strictly based off on this interview alone, I would pinpoint her language as being Words of Affirmation.

Why, you say?

1. She is suggesting that her husband gets romantic recognition from people of the opposite gender.
2. She is suggesting that this recognition comes in a verbal form, in her presence.
3. She is comparing her husband’s romantic recognitions, to her lack thereof.
4. She is showing possible signs of envious desire towards these romantic recognitions.

She wants someone verbally acknowledge her wholistic characteristics!

But doesn’t her husband do that already?

Well, I’m going to state an unpopular opinion:

Love languages are concealed forms of self-validation.

Again, everyone speaks a love language. Therefore, everyone has the power to issue validation, and be validated.

Lets map out Ayesha. She is married, has kids, and is constantly adored by friends, family members, and fans. Someone in her favorable position should be getting validated at an exponential amount! So why is she not receiving the validation she so desires?

In order to be validated, someone must check, prove, and/or demonstrate the accuracy, value, and/or truth of a particular thing.

Something/someone cannot be percisely validated without multiple of these processes.

• In business, market validation includes multiple prototypes.
• In a court system, verdict validation includes multiple jurors.
• In clinical research, hypothesis validation includes multiple Phase II-Phase IV trials.

Ayesha most likely is receiving constant validation, but her issue is that she is receiving this validation from the same group of people.

Ayesha is looking to be cross-validated.

She wants to know that other male figures (i.e. figures who resemble the original image of her adoration) have the ability to check, prove, and/or demonstrate the accuracy, value, and/or truth of a particular thing, that thing being her: her mind, body, and spirit; everything that makes her, her. Hearing comments about her beauty is one thing from her husband, but having it reiterated by other males adds plausibility to that validation.

So, what does this have to do with the general public?

Everyone received and gives some form of validity. That validity pools into the administration and retrieval of physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional communication (i.e. your love language). If this weren't true, “likes” on social media, letter grades on tests, degrees at graduations, employee-of-the-months, loud claps at baseball games, and other forms of accolade all wouldn’t exist. Consistently seeking validation is another conversation, but there is definitely a sense of normalcy to Curry’s predicament. We feel good when we get validated by others: there’s no other way to it. There’s no way to go around it.