In “Sexy and I Know It,” the singer makes a bold proclamation of his physical attractiveness and his cognizance of this fact.
But this seemingly simple statement is just the starting point for a discussion on the narrator’s sexiness: What if he isn’t sexy, but thinks he is (as is strongly suggested in the video)? Are there people who are sexy, but don’t know it? What about the rest of us who aren’t sexy and are painfully aware of this fact?
At first, I thought the different scenarios for sexiness as perceived by others and sexiness as perceived by self could be neatly captured in a two-by-two matrix:
But then I realized that I wasn’t covering an important third variable aside from sexiness and awareness of sexiness: expression of sexiness. For example, the “She’s All That Girl” never makes claim to her sexiness; what about those who are sexy, don’t realize that they’re sexy, and yet still claim that they’re sexy? What about those who aren’t sexy, know that they’re not sexy, but still claim that they’re sexy for ironic effect?
As far as I know, business school’s haven’t perfected the use of the three-by-three matrix yet, but thankfully, they have given us the tool we need to capture this complexity: the flow chart.
Or in this case, the LMFAO Chart.* Click the image for a larger version. I know you want to:
*I make not apologies. I’m Making Awful Puns And I Know It.
I don’t know about the state of the art within business schools, but elsewhere, at least, 3×3 matrices are easily made, displayed, and reasoned about. Unfortunately, what you need is not a 3×3 matrix, but a 2x2x2 table, which is not so easy to display on a 2-D page. However, when at least one of the dimensions is small, as is the case here, you can do pretty well breaking the master table up into sub-tables and displaying them sequentially (though perhaps that’s not as much fun as a flow chart).
Well actually you need a 2x2x2x2 Matrix
Sexiness
Self Perception
Expresses View they are sexy to other
Expects Others to Take Seriously claims of sexiness
With “Expects Others to Taken Seriously” being conditional off of “Expresses View they are sexy to other” being true. This gives you 3 possibilities that aren’t on the chart
Sexy,knows they are sexy,expresses it, expects to be beleived:Boastful Pride
Sexy,knows they are sexy,expresses it, doesn’t expect to be taken seriously:The way Bizarro thinks that he’s a handsome and doesn’t understand why no one agrees with him
Sexy,doesn’t know they are sexy,expresses it,expects to be beleived:Unneeded Deception/Persuasion
Sexy,doesn’t know they are sexy,expresses it,doesn’t expect to be taken seriously: Deception/Persuasion
Not Sexy, knows they are sexy,expresses it, expects to be beleived:Narcissistic Self-Delusion
Not Sexy, knows they are sexy,expresses it, doesn’t expect to be taken seriously:Bizarro from everyone around him’s perspective
Sure, if you’re going to apply the “expects to be taken seriously” test to all of the other possibilities, then you will need to add another dimension. However, you’ll notice that the flowchart doesn’t do that; it uses that test only to subdivide the one cell. Personally, I think that’s the right decision. The distinction between whether or not the speaker expects to be believed is really only useful in those cases where the speaker is knowingly expressing a view that is at variance with reality.
First, the 3-aspect matrix can be achieved with a nested approach, having each cell of the 2×2 matrix be itself a 1×2 matrix (or a 2×2 matrix were we to introduce a fourth variable).
Second, there’s also the possibility of actually expressing the belief that oneself is unsexy to others, rather than simply remaining mum on the subject of one’s own sexiness. Rodney Dangerfield is the perfect example of that.