But there is a more subtle message taught here as well.
Additionally, Adichie tackled the problematic notion, "if you're serious and female, you can't possibly care about how you look," later explaining, "that's what society, in subtle ways, teaches us".
I taught the computer to learn to play checkers" -- a more subtle achievement than teaching a computer to play checkers, he pointed out -- "and over the next 10 years I got gradually more and more hooked on the relationships between computers and the mind".
The Zen masters of Tokyo may have their economic troubles right now, but they still have their own subtle ways of teaching us a lesson.
It is a subtle way of teaching resilience.
When we reject the subtle growth and teaching age offers, the changes often sneak up on us in drastic, disruptive ways.
Civilization encourages experimentation, permits cheating, and teaches subtle lessons without preaching.
And yet, our paper currency is one of the most subtle ways we teach kids to ignore and overlook the absence of women as public figures and people whose contributions to society matter.
As a child, I had been taught, in subtle ways, to be leery of the police.
However, the support of these fundamentalist groups comes with a tag, which includes literal reading of some holy texts and, in many cases, not-so-subtle campaigns against the teaching of evolution.
