Elizabeth King: The Problem With Authenticity

PART 1 of 4

The issue:

We find ourselves in an age of personal branding and marketing, of relentless social media and networking, of the end of privacy and the promulgation of a self-crafted identity. An accepted social construct has emerged that allows for endless calls to forget your fears, to embrace your dreams, to listen to your inner voice. And yet in the midst of this media circus we often punctuate the conversation with desperate cries demanding, both for ourselves and of our audience, authenticity.

Merriam Webster defines authentic (albeit in its fifth definition) as “true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character.” I suppose this spirit or character is that which we refer to when we talk about “finding ourselves.” In fact, the very phrase I’m trying to find myself has become ubiquitous in popular culture.

The problem is, though, if you’ve been living in the United States in the past sixty years (and I’m choosing that number arbitrarily for the sake of argument), you’ve been living in a largely inauthentic reality. We live on inauthentic mortgages and credit lines based on inauthentic incomes. We eat mass produced foods that are mere shadows of their original, artisinal selves (think bread-turned-Wonderbread, pasta-turned-Chef-Boyardee, yogurt-turned-GoGurt, Sunday Dinner-turned-Hungry-Man). Our governments operate covertly, allowing us glimpses of their functionality, creating a façade to hide from us international intelligence that one wonders, frankly, if it we’d have any business being exposed to the truth there, anyway.

Our families are more broken than ever and those families live in homes that hope to replicate the great Georgian plantations and the Cape Cod lifestyles of 150 years ago—please excuse the Tyvek and Pergo. We “stage” our homes. We lock our doors.

And then there are ourselves. We botox, dye, and tuck every square inch of ourselves. We binge and purge. We mull over our personal brands. If we stray from the “brand message”, we perceive that we compromise our income-building opportunities. We filter.

And yet we grandstand about authenticity. So? So the problem with authenticity is that it asks that we actually be exactly what we claim to be.

By Elizabeth King
Elizabeth will be exploring the issue in depth in a four part series.

Follow Elizabeth King on twitter. elizabethonline

A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Elizabeth holds an interdisciplinary major that incorporates Economics, Mathematics, Art History, and Studio Art. Elizabeth began preparing students for the SAT with in Boca Raton, Florida. Since then she has taught students in conjunction with some of the country’s most prestigious education firms, including Judi Robinovitz Associates/Score at the Top, Arete Education, IvyWise, and EBL Coaching.

Elizabeth is the author of Outsmarting the SAT, a collection of the strategies and teaching tactics she uses every day to help students maximize their scores on the SAT. Known for her enthusiastic and direct teaching style, Elizabeth has successfully led students to score gains of well over 100 points on every section of the SAT and has helped others progress from the 50th to 95th percentile on the ACT. Additionally, she has prepared sample Writing section questions for a major test prep company’s international materials, written and taught a customized 9th grade home school curriculum, and has served as a proctor/facilitator for several online high school students.

Elizabeth is also a candidate in the UCLA Extension’s Certificate in College Counseling program and has helped students develop essays and applications that have been accepted at the nation’s most prestigious schools. Elizabeth has appeared in several regional theater productions and has been a member of several Manhattan vocal studios for years. She was also a proud recipient of a Mount Holyoke College Class of 1905 Alumnae Fellowship and a Mount Holyoke College Bardwell Fellowship.

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Tags: Authenticity

14 Responses to “Elizabeth King: The Problem With Authenticity”

Maruxa Murphy

02. May, 2009

LOVE this! This is a great article that can really help folks understand what it takes to be authentic. Thanks for the challenge.
Tom Morris

02. May, 2009

Excellent start on what will be a magnificent series.
MaryAlice Peoples

02. May, 2009

I couldn’t have said it better. So I won’t. Fantastic observations and reflections, Elizabeth! Looking forward to Part 2.
Timothy J. O'Connor

02. May, 2009

She has put into concise words the discussions I’ve had late night out in the evening air with friends over the years…about the “soap bubble” of non-reality most Americans live in, sponsored by hype, marketing, branding, the Jone’s and much more. Needless to say, these types of conversations are not always met with enthusiasm.
Mario Vittone

03. May, 2009

Well, I’m hooked. Looking forward to parts 3-4.
Mike

03. May, 2009

I like Elizabeth so much because she is exactly what we all need right now, “An authentic breeze of fresh air in a world of stale, been there, done that blowhards”. I hope she blows the smoke out of the room, clears the air, breaks the mirrors and knocks some sense into all of us. Rest assured though, she will emerge as the star she truly is.
Ken Peters

03. May, 2009

Accusing the average American of being a victim of their own crass consumerism has become a stale cliche.

Blanket statements fail the most basic tests of formal logic, and you’re making a blanket statement that spans the entire culture. Yes, many people have over-extended themselves on everything from mortgages to flat screen televisions. Yes, the most recent generation has been reared on MTV’s “My Super Sweet Sixteen” and “CRiBS”, and HGTV’s many home improvement shows, and other shows that reinforce the stereotype of conspicuous consumption. But I wholly reject the assertion that American culture as a whole is based on shallow materialism.

Most of the people I know – whether they are black, white, Hispanic, etc, or conservative, liberal, etc., etc. – are not leading fabricated lives built on overextended credit. They are authentic parents, spouses, professionals, etc., doing good, being honest, and working hard to build a secure life for themselves and a secure future for their children. Many of them have the trappings of a luxury lifestyle, but that doesn’t mean their lives are not authentic. They worked hard and earned what they have, and didn’t have buy it on credit.

Don’t lump everyone into the same category. Don’t assume that if you can’t afford something that the person who has it can’t afford it either, and is thus being inauthentic and perpetrating a false personal brand. Don’t make the assertion that the approx 20% of consumers that knowingly overextended themselves on their mortgage means that the other 80% of us are irresponsible as well.

Blogs fall into three categories:

1) Small minds dishing about other people.
2) Average minds droning on about current affairs.
3) Great minds discussing ideas.

You spent a lot of time dishing about shallow Americans and droning about the sorry state of our culture. Your only creative idea for doing anything about it was for people to stop being inauthentic and start being authentic.

Seriously?

This is my first encounter with your writing, but I’m sure you’re better than tired cliches, 2-dimensional stereotypes and total lack of creativity and ideas. Don’t be lazy.
Elizabeth King

03. May, 2009

Ken,

I’m not sure if you noticed that the post is the first of 4 that develops the idea of authenticity. It is absolutely a giant blanket statement about a cultural phenomenon, not about individuals. The idea here is not to assert that our culture has fallen victim to carte blanche, unadulterated inauthenticity; instead, the purpose of installation 1 here is to just show potential moments of inauthenticity.

Much of this has come from the time I’ve been spending on Twitter, as well as conversations I’ve had with folks who find themselves stuck in the “personal branding” machine who are struggling even more to bind their “branded selves” with, well, just who they are and what they’re up to.

Perhaps it would have made more sense for me to include these ideas within the post itself, but the idea was simply to be provocative.

Thank you so much for taking the time to consider it so thoroughly and respond! More than anything, I’m looking to foster an interesting and creative discourse about something other than my day job.
Stever Robbins

03. May, 2009

Be yourself. And by the way, here are the 10 tips to fit in to your corporate mold, to be the Perfect Job Candidate, to wear the Proper Things To Work.

For no particular reason I can pinpoint, I got my toenails painted with abstract designs a few weeks ago. I didn’t really give it a second thought until last night. I was wearing sandals on the subway and several people were staring and giggling and making fun of me.

If something as trivial as painted toenails is considered worthy of ridicule, is it any wonder authenticity around anything major is so hard?

Let’s have an authenticity day. We each do something *visible* that feels authentic to ourselves, but that we’re afraid would subject us to ridicule or embarrassment or career risk. Then we all support each other in actually *doing* those things.
Ken Peters

03. May, 2009

Elizabeth,

Thanks for the response here at the blog, and the personal note via email.

I thought after I posted my initial comment that I should have probably waited until you completed all four posts, and thus your full opinion. Here’s what prompted my initial response…

It seems to have become a pass time of the media, and many bloggers, to attack Americans (American culture) as super-sized, corporately-branded zombies draped in superficial trappings of materialism. It’s a tired cliche that is inaccurate, even on a cultural level, and I’m personally sick of hearing it. In fairness, you may have additional thoughts that you’ll expand upon in your follow up posts, but for now, for this post, you pretty much left it at that.

I’m all for being thought-provoking. That’s what I look for in a blog. That’s what prompted me to visit this blog when I saw a tweet about it on Twitter. It’s easy to be critical of something, and difficult to follow up the criticism with creative and useful ideas, dialogue or solutions to solve that which you’re being critical about.

I felt your original post was unfairly and too broadly critical of our culture, and offered no solutions. That was disappointing, because I could tell from your writing that there is more thought going on than pedestrian criticism of cultural cliches.

Perhaps I jumped the gun by responding before reading all four posts. We’ll see. I’m looking forward to the next three

Best,

Ken

I think that America is still the best country in the world, and Americans are by and large good people. I think there are a lot of hard working, honest, and authentic people trying to build a better world. I hope your future posts will acknowledge that side of the coin.
How I Lost Thirty Pounds in Thirty Days

03. May, 2009

Hi, nice post. I have been thinking about this topic,so thanks for sharing. I’ll certainly be subscribing to your site.
Barbara Kite

17. Jul, 2009

Ken Peters echos my feelings and I’l be reading the next three or so posts but I have to tell you I’ve been teaching authenticity to my actors and speakers for many many years and I find they are terribly aware of all you have stated in your first missive. And are connecting to other humans and the gift they have to give rather than what will make them stand out in society.
Michel Neray

05. Aug, 2009

what will make them stand out in society is PRECISELY the gift they have to give… yes?
Jacques Werth

09. Oct, 2009

A high degree of authenticity is a reasonable goal. Essentially, it requires the practice of “total disclosure.”

As Michel indicated, authenticity differentiates you.