The Performance of Authenticity

We live in a culture where nothing is real. But we pretend it all is.

Erin Moriarty is a young actress on an Amazon show called “The Boys.” I had not heard of her or the show until this past week when I stumbled across an on-line did she or didn’t she rabbit hole of a conversation about her face. Here’s the before and after in question:

I’m not an expert. But it seems pretty clear that in the photo on the left (the before) she has a natural, girl-next-door look. And in the photo on the right (the after) she doesn’t. Even though some people (even doctors) have defended the altered face as just a result of aging or makeup, I’m pretty confident in saying it is more than contouring with fancy techniques that makes her look so transformed and not in a good way.

It’s not just that she’s shinier in the after pic — she has a totally different face. Her nose is much thinner, her lips are much puffier. Before she looks cute and unique, her face distinguishable amongst Hollywood starlets. After she looks the same as any generic young, blonde reality star/aspiring model/Only Fans “creator.”

Because when you cut your face up, and pump it full of fillers, you start to look like everyone else who cuts theirs up and pumps theirs up with fillers. Everyone becomes the same cartoonish, generic version of pretty. The cheek and chin implants are all the same out-of-the-box shape, and the fillers fill everyone’s lips out in the same exact way. Everyone ends up with the same face.

But the starlets who engage in aggressive face manipulation continue to play the role of real and authentic young women committed to their own individuality because it isn’t cool to want to change your face. It isn’t cool or aspirational to hate your face enough to chop it up and distort it. We are supposed to love ourselves in all of our unique differences even as we make ourselves the same as everyone else.

And in the age of social media, stars are supposed to be just like us, riddled with vulnerabilities and insecurities while going to the grocery store in sweats. That’s what makes them “real.”

So there’s always a hefty dose of aw shucks we’re just like you vibes on Instagram from folks like Ms. Moriarty (who I don’t mean to single out as particularly egregious in any way, she’s just someone illustrative of the toxic performance of authenticity that is so pervasive in our culture). Like here, Moriarty is being whisked away from some fancy event (presumably) and the caption reads: what are we ordering from Uber Eats later? (See I may be at this fancy event but I’m just thinking about ordering food. Like you!)

I really don’t mean to pick on Moriarty. I don’t really even know who she is. And she’s just the latest representation of a manufactured face feigning authenticity.

I mean, can you tell these three women apart? Barely. (Courtney Cox, Geena Davis, Julianna Margulies.)

Or these three? Do you even know who the one on the right is?

It’s Madonna! Looking a whole like Erin Moriarty’s after pic (kind of), even though the women are more than 35 years apart in age.

In the three pictures above, the woman on the left is Meg Ryan, the ultimate girl-next-door from 25 years ago. This past November, Ryan landed on the cover of People Magazine with this quote: “I’ve learned to stay true to myself.”

Today, being “true to yourself” is altering your face beyond recognition.

I get it. Hollywood has to be tough. And when everyone is doing it, it just looks normal. Except it doesn’t.

And the trend at the moment involves distorting your face while insisting you’re being your most authentic self. Which is totally different than Dolly Parton who famously said: “It costs me a lot of money to look this cheap!” (Which actually was charming in its realness.)

The current distance between I’m sooooooo true to myself and aggressive and obvious plastic surgery has me stuck and asking: what is going on? And is it illustrative of some larger societal issue?

---

I know there isn’t really a new insight here. I’m not professing to have one. People get a lot of plastic surgery and Botox and they pretend they don’t. But the cognitive dissonance between that fact and the performance of authenticity is almost too much to bear.

We live in a culture where nothing is real. But we pretend it all is.

Our faces aren’t real (altered by plastic surgery). Our moods aren’t real (altered by pharmaceuticals). Our reality shows aren’t real (duh). Our school isn’t real (virtual, during covid). Our friendships aren’t real (social media). Our sex isn’t real (porn).

Modern life is a simulacrum of authenticity but we pretend it’s all ACTUALLY REAL. And despite how un-real everything is, we pretend to hold authenticity and realness up as the highest values, to be constantly worked towards and aspired to.

We have lost sight of the actual functionality of actual realness. It’s now just a pose.

Take Rachel and Dave Hollis, the Instagram famous influencer couple known for their realness, charm, wellness tips and rock-solid-but-still-always-filled-with-everyday- challenges (because they are real!) relationship. Until they got divorced. And then he died of an accidental drug overdose.

“Being real” is supposed to serve us. It is supposed to integrate our minds and bodies and our lives. It is supposed to make us more comfortable in the world, happier, more content. It is not supposed to be an affectation to be bought and sold. It’s not a branding strategy. And yet, that is exactly what it has become. Realness and authenticity have no functional uses anymore. They are simply pretenses put into the world so that people admire and like us. And we can pretend to like ourselves.

And so, is it really so surprising that Matthew Perry found his public-facing redemption as a recovering, newly sober, former addict and then died of a ketamine overdose?

For all the self-help and therapy and you go girl feminism and children’s books about being yourself, the cultural norms lean towards the performance of self-confidence and embodiment of self. All while changing our faces and our bodies with surgery (while pretending we haven’t), altering our moods with medications (and our kids’), and endorsing the notion that our children may be born in the wrong bodies and can simply alter those bodies with manufactured, non-functional body parts to become the truest version of themselves.

This is a culture that has lost its grip on reality. A culture that says: you too can be the best version of yourself by altering every single thing about yourself — your nose, your lips, your mood . . . and yes even your sex. It’s all one big performance of authentically being oneself. And as long as you perform authenticity everyone will cheer.

---

At the Emmy’s last Sunday, Christina Applegate presented the first award. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2021, she’s stayed out of the spotlight for the past few years. But she came out at the Emmy’s with a cane, and a pretty close to normal person’s face and body. She joked “Body not by Ozempic” and she cried real tears and the audience gave her a standing ovation.

It felt uncomfortable watching it. I felt uneasy seeing a famous person actually being real. More than that, I felt embarrassed for the cheering audience who just had to be contending with their own inauthenticity in the face of actual human vulnerability, which we rarely see anymore.

But we all get old. We will all get sick. We will all die. Even Madonna — regardless of how much she tries to pretend she’s still the rebellious material girl of my youth. I look at her face now and it just makes me sad. I want so much more dignity for her. And for myself.

---

I am fervently committed to embracing actual reality in all ways, big and small.

I think the issue of gender ideology is at the center of our cultural battles at the moment because it is fundamentally an issue of truth. I used to think it was kind of a side show fringe issue. I thought it would pass. That it wasn’t such a big deal. A trend amongst the young. Whatevs.

But now, for me, it is the most obvious and blatant example of being told we must embrace an obvious lie. A lie that says: sex is not binary; sex is assigned at birth rather than observed; men aren’t stronger than women; a man with a penis is a woman; men can get pregnant. And on. And on.

If we give in to this lie, if we pretend that this falsehood is reality, there is no lie we won’t embrace as true.

And then what happens?

And what meaning can our lives possibly have if they become entirely untethered from truth?