We live in a culture infested with fabrication, one where people manipulate the idea of authenticity to garner attention and celebrity. It's little wonder so many are disinclined to believe something categorically outrageous as real.
Enter Lady Gaga.
As one of her "most fascinating people of 2009," Barbara Walters interviewed Gaga, inquiring, "What's the biggest misconception about you?"
"That I am artificial and attention seeking, when the truth is that every bit of me is devoted to love and art," she responded.
Within the interview, Walters refers to the "outrageous outfits, sexually charged songs and blood-soaked performances" characteristic of the artist, suggesting to some that Gaga must be as synthetic as the latex gowns she so famously includes in her wardrobe.
As interesting as it is to debate Gaga's authenticity, what's more culturally significant is why some doubt her and how pseudo-authenticity permeates society, affecting the conceptions we have of ourselves.
Karen Wright, writing for "Psychology Today," explains why people justly hesitate to accept anything as real: "... contemporary culture seems to mock the very idea that there is anything solid and true about the self. Cosmetic surgery, psycho-pharmaceuticals and perpetual makeovers favor a mutable ideal over the genuine article. MySpace profiles and tell-all blogs carry the whiff of wishful identity. Steroids, stimulants and doping transform athletic and academic performance. Fabricated memoirs become best-sellers."
Though critics are often portrayed as dissatisfied, despondent and impossible to please, the opposite is to blindly accept that which society gives us and be considered naïve. The media has fostered within us skepticism of anything regarded as genuine, thus we reflexively dismiss and disregard everything touted as real.
Most of the time, we don't even know if the food on our plates was grown on a farm or in a laboratory. If we are what we eat, is it even possible to be "real" anymore?
In 2000, a graduate student named Brian Goldman approached Michael Kernis, a social psychologist at the University of Georgia in Athens, about studying individual differences to understand authenticity.
As an effect of reading and analyzing tomes of philosophical and psychological work, the two put forth their definition of authenticity: "The unimpeded operation of one's true or core self in one's daily enterprise."
Goldman and Kernis also identified several components of a genuine person: selfawareness, self-evaluation and behavior.
Much of authenticity is self-derived and juxtaposed against competing media or social imagery: what we think about ourselves, the capacity to recognize our strengths and weaknesses and the ability to distinguish how we act from how society says we should behave.
The lattermost component, this non-conformist behavioral mindset, is embodied by Gaga, whom some use as an example, asking to what extent non-conformity is a natural or imposed reaction to our surroundings.
Wright presents the argument of the true self, whether it is inherent or invented: "Socrates believed we discover it; the existentialists say we invent it." The inventiveness of authenticity lends itself to the possibility of contrivance. Anyone who individualizes must confront the criticism of leading a synthetic lifestyle, much in the same way some works of art are considered contrived.
The abstract artwork condemned at one time can be appreciated in another. What once is considered "unnatural" can become "inspired," even celebrated.
Wright addresses the complexity of being authentic, "Our headspace is messier than we pretend ... and the search for authenticity is doomed if it's aimed at tidying up the sense of self, restricting our identities to what we want to be or who we think we should be."
Human personality is a multitude of behaviors, a complex web of wants, needs and goals, some of which are fleeting while others remain more permanent. Too often we trivialize and judge ourselves or those around us as illegitimate, as walking contradictions because what was believed yesterday seems absurd today.
The appeal of an authentic person is their honesty, their intent to present an uncensored self to the world.
"Amid a clutter of counterfeits, the core self is struggling to assert itself," Wright says.
The core of Gaga?
"I aspire to try to be a teacher to my young fans who ... feel just like I felt when I was younger. I want to liberate them of their fears," she said to Walters.
These fears are exactly what inhibit us from being our genuine selves.
Whether real or not, Gaga's frankness suggests it would behoove us all to indulge in a little bad romance.
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