Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylor developed the social penetration theory; the theory helps people understand human communication through proximity and self-disclosure. The book describes the theory of social penetration using the metaphor of the onion, known as the human personality, which is a multi-layered onion. The outer layer of the onion is known as the public self, people's personalities are easily exchanged rhetorically with those who met someone else immediately for the first time. For example, a person's gender, the way they dress, and their profession. The layer beneath the onion surfer is the so-called personal self and attitude. A person can only share information with someone closest to them, such as family and friends. For example, this semester one of my classmates Brittany and I were working on a project together. She called me a “spoiled rich girl” because I told her a story about my pool and my pool man. This offended me because I may have grown up in a wealthy town, but I was never a “spoiled rich kid.” I told Brittany that I wasn't a "spoiled rich kid" and she then started showing off all my stuff and asking me who bought it. I slumped in my seat and told him my mother. She looked up from the computer screen and said, “SEE, you are a spoiled, rich kid.” What Brittany didn't know about me was that my mother is a single mother who raised three children on her own. Everything was taken away from my mother, but with the support of her family and friends, she was able to do something. I told Brittany my story, she learned not only my story, but also that I started working at a very young age. Brittany just looked at me and started telling me her life story. I later found out that she had seven siblings and that her father had died at a very young age. She also told me that she was once a “spoiled rich kid,” but when her father died, she lost everything and her family was left homeless. After communicating together for an hour, both of our perceptions of each other changed. When Brittany was leaving she told me she was sorry for judging me