I see on a daily basis the fakery, and it is obvious, and very unappealing to a man.
The puffed out "duck" lips, the perky chest, the cheeks from hell and the botoxification of the face.
All of it is not pretty, both for the women, and their mental health if they believe these chop shops make them prettier.
We are humans, we make judgements on first impressions. When we see a faked out face, we assume a faked out personality. Ladies, we men regard personality just as strongly as looks, and fakery is hard to hide. Just like when a man sucks in his guts, he has to let it out some point........
You’ve got me thinking! As always, excellent piece, and if you hadn’t said it was Madonna, I’d never known. Also, gross and sad.
As I read, and it really started to hit me at the end, “authentic” is another word that has been subverted because we live in a fundamentally dishonest culture. A culture where, in the name of kindness or inclusion or not shaming, we are socially engineered to lie to ourselves and others in the name of a perverted sense of authenticity.
The contrast may be so striking for me because I used to live an inauthentic, double-life. Now, I spend an hour a day in a room with other people, like myself, whose lives depend on our capacity to be honest. I get to experience the real in all its glorious, painful messiness every time I sit in my chair. I watch dying people get well, and recovery begins with the capacity to be honest.
Perhaps that’s part of what we need--a shift toward rigorous honesty, even if the truth hurts.
It’s bizarre! To be fair, in my minds eye she’ll always be the Madonna in black eyeliner and lace gloves who sauntered across the screen on MTV. Just like a part of me will be the awkward preteen who sang along. But that picture is alien, unrecognizable! I read your piece and went to get a haircut. My gal couldn’t believe it was Madonna either! ... and then I asked her if I was being inauthentic by wanting to talk about covering up the new streaks of gray in my hair. 🤣
I had a part in here saying *Spare me the "you dye your hair" or "you wear lipstick" ... its not the same.* i stand by that. it's not the same. there's a line. i'm not sure where it is. But you are also not going around saying "I don't dye my hair"... it's the pretending its real that is the problem. I think.
God, are the internet and social media not almost full time purveyors of your incisive observation. And we will soon enough be unable to discern the authentic from the inauthentic when AI firmly establishes itself as the reality of our realities. Everything will be authentic, or it won’t and we won’t know the difference anyway. Could be hard. You know me, I think.
As always, I love your writing, and it inspires me to get back to mine in a more serious way, and perhaps even put it somewhere publicly (i'm still haunted by being judged by the coaches in gymnastics, I feel my writing is too vulnerable). But for now it's still secret. As I read your article, it reminded me of my journaling this morning… How I've had moments recently when I was on Instagram scrolling down, which I typically don't spend much time doing, (terrible for ADHD) but after 20 minutes yesterday, I realized: holy shit! This is like looking at the credits of a movie after it's over. It's just the same thing over and over; recycled videos, recycled memes, people trying to be authentic and convey some kind of special (authentic) wisdom, talent or specialty through their IG posts. I can't even go on TikTok, don't get me started. I felt exhausted after 20 minutes and having this epiphany, asking myself what does all this mean? How is this helping society? How is this helping me? Why am I on Instagram? I have gotten help from TikTok videos that are for organization, and I leave it up to that…the rest just seems like a mind-numbing entertainment time vacuum. As a professional artist and photographer… it was heavy hitting this morning thinking about social media. And that I've spent most of the last three years thinking about the art I want to make - ideas in my head. But I'm unable to take the actions to sit down at the canvas. Something happened to me during the pandemic and I haven't been able to crawl out of it. This action paralysis, this social media in my face all the time just because I have a smart phone & it became a habit while being forced to isolate. Back to your article… It's getting the wheels turning in my head, that I CANget back to my artwork and self portraits and enjoy my life and get relief from this expression through a talent given by God. Do I really need to be visible in the digital world as an artist? Everyone keeps telling me everything's online now… But how do you get a gallery show? If it's only seen on Instagram? That's ridiculous. I want to go to New York City and walk the streets and meet other artists in person and have get-togethers and get our canvases and materials out and just make shit! I guess at some point I can hire someone to do digital marketing for me, right? It's just so time-consuming. All these posts with people giving advice, with their fake lives, fake advice, this entire false narrative that comes from every angle… And if I see artist profiles, it only makes me feel worse, because I question myself: why am I on a screen, looking at others making their work instead of just listening to music and making my own? That would be authentic. So thank you for this food for thought that has lined up with my personal journaling this morning. I feel like I'm on track with reality - the reality I want to live in.
You are not alone in feeling this way. The thought of trying to keep up with social media is exhausting and can make me not want to write. Getting into the mindset of writing what I enjoy without the need to post all over social media about it makes the thought of writing again more appealing. That's why I am drawn to Substack. So far, it does seem way more authentic. Best of luck in your artistic endeavors!
Helluva an article, Jen. If not insightful (I might dispute your view on that point) it surely is extremely observant. I'll be thinking about what you wrote for a long long time to come.
As a subset of, or perhaps adjacent to, what you wrote about is this quest for "authentic" experience. Recently a friend of mine was talking to me about taking a northern trip. One of the draws was the idea of seeing how the Inuit live, underpinned by the notion that they are living a more real, connected, authentic life, that by seeing how they live in their traditional way she would at least witness an authentic experience, a genuine life more connected to the land.
We were looking at Iqaliut. I pointed out that they have a Walmart (they call it Northmart, but same signage) modern hotels, a Tim Horton's coffee shop, electric power, sewage system, etc.. There are no teams of dog sleds to see, no Igloos, no hunters out on the ice with spears hunting polar bears. The natives are now living pretty much like everybody else.
The only possible way to experience that culture in the way it's been romanticized is to build a time machine.
Yet this quest for the holy way of life, the authentic experience, has taken root in our current culture. Surely this impulse, along with all the things you wrote so powerfully about, signals some deep dissatisfaction in how we are living.
Thanks so much for calling out the cult of gender ideology. If we don’t hit pause, a generation of ignorant children will grow up sterile, damaged, regretful and resentful.
The cultural revolt that we are living through is a revolt against the layers of fictions that we are forced to accept as we go through our day to day. People's whose lives and inextricably tied to more unalterable realities are the canaries in the coal mine helping us to understand that the emperor has no clothes and and that our culture has crossed a threshold in which many will not be forced to choke down another big lie to get through the day. We have reached the fiction saturation point. This is a beautiful and tragic piece. Can we make Applegate into a verb. Was Hollywood Applegated? I think not. Just another act for the crowd with no reality threshold or fiction saturation point.
I work beside a plastic fantastic body shop.
I see on a daily basis the fakery, and it is obvious, and very unappealing to a man.
The puffed out "duck" lips, the perky chest, the cheeks from hell and the botoxification of the face.
All of it is not pretty, both for the women, and their mental health if they believe these chop shops make them prettier.
We are humans, we make judgements on first impressions. When we see a faked out face, we assume a faked out personality. Ladies, we men regard personality just as strongly as looks, and fakery is hard to hide. Just like when a man sucks in his guts, he has to let it out some point........
I call it The Cult of Authenticity.
It is anything but.
You’ve got me thinking! As always, excellent piece, and if you hadn’t said it was Madonna, I’d never known. Also, gross and sad.
As I read, and it really started to hit me at the end, “authentic” is another word that has been subverted because we live in a fundamentally dishonest culture. A culture where, in the name of kindness or inclusion or not shaming, we are socially engineered to lie to ourselves and others in the name of a perverted sense of authenticity.
The contrast may be so striking for me because I used to live an inauthentic, double-life. Now, I spend an hour a day in a room with other people, like myself, whose lives depend on our capacity to be honest. I get to experience the real in all its glorious, painful messiness every time I sit in my chair. I watch dying people get well, and recovery begins with the capacity to be honest.
Perhaps that’s part of what we need--a shift toward rigorous honesty, even if the truth hurts.
You can't tell it's madonna right?? even though the internet says it is i'm still not sure!
It’s bizarre! To be fair, in my minds eye she’ll always be the Madonna in black eyeliner and lace gloves who sauntered across the screen on MTV. Just like a part of me will be the awkward preteen who sang along. But that picture is alien, unrecognizable! I read your piece and went to get a haircut. My gal couldn’t believe it was Madonna either! ... and then I asked her if I was being inauthentic by wanting to talk about covering up the new streaks of gray in my hair. 🤣
I had a part in here saying *Spare me the "you dye your hair" or "you wear lipstick" ... its not the same.* i stand by that. it's not the same. there's a line. i'm not sure where it is. But you are also not going around saying "I don't dye my hair"... it's the pretending its real that is the problem. I think.
God, are the internet and social media not almost full time purveyors of your incisive observation. And we will soon enough be unable to discern the authentic from the inauthentic when AI firmly establishes itself as the reality of our realities. Everything will be authentic, or it won’t and we won’t know the difference anyway. Could be hard. You know me, I think.
Thats dad talking
i'm aware.
As always, I love your writing, and it inspires me to get back to mine in a more serious way, and perhaps even put it somewhere publicly (i'm still haunted by being judged by the coaches in gymnastics, I feel my writing is too vulnerable). But for now it's still secret. As I read your article, it reminded me of my journaling this morning… How I've had moments recently when I was on Instagram scrolling down, which I typically don't spend much time doing, (terrible for ADHD) but after 20 minutes yesterday, I realized: holy shit! This is like looking at the credits of a movie after it's over. It's just the same thing over and over; recycled videos, recycled memes, people trying to be authentic and convey some kind of special (authentic) wisdom, talent or specialty through their IG posts. I can't even go on TikTok, don't get me started. I felt exhausted after 20 minutes and having this epiphany, asking myself what does all this mean? How is this helping society? How is this helping me? Why am I on Instagram? I have gotten help from TikTok videos that are for organization, and I leave it up to that…the rest just seems like a mind-numbing entertainment time vacuum. As a professional artist and photographer… it was heavy hitting this morning thinking about social media. And that I've spent most of the last three years thinking about the art I want to make - ideas in my head. But I'm unable to take the actions to sit down at the canvas. Something happened to me during the pandemic and I haven't been able to crawl out of it. This action paralysis, this social media in my face all the time just because I have a smart phone & it became a habit while being forced to isolate. Back to your article… It's getting the wheels turning in my head, that I CANget back to my artwork and self portraits and enjoy my life and get relief from this expression through a talent given by God. Do I really need to be visible in the digital world as an artist? Everyone keeps telling me everything's online now… But how do you get a gallery show? If it's only seen on Instagram? That's ridiculous. I want to go to New York City and walk the streets and meet other artists in person and have get-togethers and get our canvases and materials out and just make shit! I guess at some point I can hire someone to do digital marketing for me, right? It's just so time-consuming. All these posts with people giving advice, with their fake lives, fake advice, this entire false narrative that comes from every angle… And if I see artist profiles, it only makes me feel worse, because I question myself: why am I on a screen, looking at others making their work instead of just listening to music and making my own? That would be authentic. So thank you for this food for thought that has lined up with my personal journaling this morning. I feel like I'm on track with reality - the reality I want to live in.
You are not alone in feeling this way. The thought of trying to keep up with social media is exhausting and can make me not want to write. Getting into the mindset of writing what I enjoy without the need to post all over social media about it makes the thought of writing again more appealing. That's why I am drawn to Substack. So far, it does seem way more authentic. Best of luck in your artistic endeavors!
Can they not see how they are making themselves look far worse? Who is encouraging them to mutilate themselves like this?
Featured in my "Today's News" (www.wildworldofpolitics.com)
Great column.
You have a way of hitting the nail on the head! Love reading your pieces!
Helluva an article, Jen. If not insightful (I might dispute your view on that point) it surely is extremely observant. I'll be thinking about what you wrote for a long long time to come.
As a subset of, or perhaps adjacent to, what you wrote about is this quest for "authentic" experience. Recently a friend of mine was talking to me about taking a northern trip. One of the draws was the idea of seeing how the Inuit live, underpinned by the notion that they are living a more real, connected, authentic life, that by seeing how they live in their traditional way she would at least witness an authentic experience, a genuine life more connected to the land.
We were looking at Iqaliut. I pointed out that they have a Walmart (they call it Northmart, but same signage) modern hotels, a Tim Horton's coffee shop, electric power, sewage system, etc.. There are no teams of dog sleds to see, no Igloos, no hunters out on the ice with spears hunting polar bears. The natives are now living pretty much like everybody else.
The only possible way to experience that culture in the way it's been romanticized is to build a time machine.
Yet this quest for the holy way of life, the authentic experience, has taken root in our current culture. Surely this impulse, along with all the things you wrote so powerfully about, signals some deep dissatisfaction in how we are living.
Thanks so much for calling out the cult of gender ideology. If we don’t hit pause, a generation of ignorant children will grow up sterile, damaged, regretful and resentful.
I was gutted when I saw her face as she was such a natural beauty. Now. Now she looks horrific in my eyes.
It even looks like they’ve turned the tip of her nose to point up.
I wonder if she did this before or after filming the latest season of The Boys.
The cultural revolt that we are living through is a revolt against the layers of fictions that we are forced to accept as we go through our day to day. People's whose lives and inextricably tied to more unalterable realities are the canaries in the coal mine helping us to understand that the emperor has no clothes and and that our culture has crossed a threshold in which many will not be forced to choke down another big lie to get through the day. We have reached the fiction saturation point. This is a beautiful and tragic piece. Can we make Applegate into a verb. Was Hollywood Applegated? I think not. Just another act for the crowd with no reality threshold or fiction saturation point.
I had same thought about Applegate... perhaps another act but more believably "authentic". I can't tell. Sad.
Amazing article. Thank you!
In my hopes, this fad of the mutability of one's sex will pass the way carnival freak shows faded away.
You truly have a talent for writing and delivering a message. I look forward to reading your next one.
Very insightful - excellent read!