While walking to a park, my five-year-old cousin approached two men and asked them why they were holding hands. In that same day, he asked my friend if her boogers got, and I quote “tangled” in her nose piercing. On a later occasion, he directly asked a long-haired man the reason for the glass disks in his ears, further speculating about the bull-like septum piercing in the center of his nose. Ahhhh. The brutal honesty of a five-year-old.

Pure. Uncensored. Authentic.

Now, if I were to express this curiosity, I would be suspended for bullying, sued for a hate crime, and verbally accosted for admiring individuality.

Today, we live in a society where people manipulate their conversations for the sake of others’ sensitivity. We live in a society where the truth is considered an insult. We live in a society of political correctness.

People frame their conversations in fear of offending another. A large percentage of conversations begin with “no offense,” and are followed by a “but.” In other words, I fear that what I am about to say may evoke some sort of human emotion, so I apologize in advance.

Another classic is the whole “excuse me if I am misinformed.” In real, authentic, yet outdated language, one would not add this into his or her sentence. Misinformed or not, it’s an opinion; it’s an attempt to express an idea. Yet, in our society, potential offense is associated with anything that anyone has to say.

Ever since kindergarten, we are taught that everybody is the winner. Every youth sporting event has trophies for each player, because “it’s not who wins or loses, it’s how they play the game,” and “the greatest game you can win is won within.” In reality (some of you may want to skip past this part), there is a winner and loser. One person gets the job, the other is jobless. One person gets accepted, the other denied. It’s how life works – but people are afraid to admit that.

It may cause bruising.

Elementary reading levels are now color coded; God forbid there is a beginner, intermediate, or advanced. Nope, Laura is blue, and John is green, and Sally is purple. I’m almost certain that little blue Laura would not even be able to read “beginner” even if it was written on the back of Goodnight Moon. Meanwhile, purple Sally is reading The Secret Garden as a first grader and cannot even be rewarded with an “advanced” because she may offend the blue group.

If you are overweight, you are big boned. Short, vertically challenged. Big boobed – voluptuous. No. If you’re overweight, you are overweight. Short, you are short. Big boobed, LUCKY! Good for you, big boobs

It is becoming exceedingly impossible to recognize individuality and differences without the other person requiring stitches and a Band-Aid.

We, as a society, are beginning to tiptoe around everything so much so that it hinders our ability to freely communicate in a diverse community. BJ Gallagher, author, speaker, and activist explains, “we are dooming ourselves to perpetuate the very barriers that we were originally attempting to overcome through political correctness” (Gallagher, BJ).We cushion our speech with Tempurpedic mattresses. They feel nice at first – I mean you sink into the things. But in doing so, reject reality, suffocating ourselves with padding.

My grandpa told me a story about how he was not accepted into his kindergarten class because he was left handed. Instead, he was placed into a class, labeled “sub-normals.” The sub-normals were forced to eat dirt and already chewed gum off of the sidewalk. The normal kids were constantly threatened to join the “subnormals,” whenever their handwriting was deemed unacceptable or their behavior was inappropriate. Of course, I am not advocating for this form of segregation or discrimination. I am not advocating for bullying or racism or ignorance. I am not advocating to revert back to how society used to be.

However, political correctness is only advantageous when used in proper portions. Ugly is now “esthetically challenged,” midgets are “little people,” the dead are “living impaired,” insane, “reality challenged.” By excessively correcting human conversations, human conversations are no longer human. We ultimately portray a very phony version of ourselves by bubble wrapping our opinions. We artificially constrain our spoken language to avoid any negative emotion.

Although positive intent exists behind political correctness, the difference between intent and impact is severe. By self-censoring each and every thought and conversation, political correctness ultimately stunts human potential.

Rasmussen Reports, a company that collects and publishes polls with incredible accuracy, conducted a survey concerning political correctness in 2011. Of a random sampling of 1,000 American adults, fifty-eight percent believe that America has become too politically correct. Seventy-nine percent of these adults believe that political correctness is a problem for our country (“79% See Political Correctness As A Problem”).

It is a problem: we are preventing progression through the manipulation of speech.

Again, I am not encouraging you all to leave the room and begin bullying and acting plain ignorant. I am encouraging you to stop PG-13-ing your R- rated philosophies: state what you feel and find comfort in differences.