'In the future, identity will be a costume that can be plucked from a rack in the morning'
The morning goes like this:
I reach across the vacant space in my double bed, check my iPhone or iPad for Facebook notifications: Who has messaged Me? Who has tagged Me? More importantly, who has ‘liked’ Me?
I post a status update about Me. I flick to Twitter to over-share my waking thoughts, because everyone needs to hear what I have to say. I flick back, change my profile picture to one that better shows off my hard-won weight loss, better reflects the positive Me I am today – a selfie signing books at Hay. Famous Me! Successful Me!
Look at Me!
I pull on a dress that reveals my surgically altered (though probably not the way you think) cleavage. I coat my hair in products that tame my grandmother’s curls; I paint on concealer that hides my grandfather’s dark undereye circles, mascara that promises the look of fake lashes while proclaiming on its packaging ‘They’re Real’, blusher that suggests I may just be in post-coital flush. And all the while I gaze at my reflection in one of the too-many mirrors that adorn my bedroom walls, or the oh-so-convenient cameras on my iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air.
Do I sound vain? Self-obsessed? Shallow? Well, I should. I am a child of the 1970s, after all – of what ‘new’ journalist Tom Wolfe called ‘The “Me” Decade’. But compared to today’s teenagers my symptoms are slight. Compared to them I am a pretender, a charlatan, a poseur. Because, pity them, they are caught in the grip of nothing less than an epidemic. Their accusers: Jean M. Twenge, an American psychology professor and author of Generation Me and The Narcissism Epidemic, and the British scientist, baroness, and former director of the Royal Institution, Susan Greenfield, author of ID.
I picked up these books with good intentions, albeit with an agenda: as a YA novelist I wanted to know what was happening to young people’s minds and sense of self (and my own); I wanted to know if and why we were more narcissistic than previous generations, and if so whether the internet was to blame and how I might convey that; and I wanted to know if I might somehow help teenagers (and indeed myself) understand the changes through my novels.
***
Like a child savant, Twenge sees narcissism ‘everywhere’: in the pursuit of beauty, including the proliferation of plastic surgery (oops); in the veneration of celebrity; in YA novels, which, Twenge claims, merely feed the narcissism that so plagues their subjects (thanks, Jean). Citing series like Gossip Girl (for the uninitiated, this was a hugely popular book series by Cecily von Ziegesar long before we were panting over Blake Lively’s blow-dries and sharing ‘I’m Chuck Bass’ memes), she laments the celebration of vacuity, the casual sex, the self-tans. But, of course, her greatest ire is reserved for social media, which she pinpoints as ‘the second inflection point’ for the growth of the epidemic. As she sees it, the internet allows the ‘fantasy principle’ to trump the ‘reality principle’ in three ways: (a) by focusing on shallowness and surface rather than depth (in both appearance and relationships), (b) by granting access to a wide audience for one’s self-musings and postulations, and, (c) by allowing you to be someone you’re not.
***
My then teenager didn’t become vapid and vacant because she went through a phase of posting filtered Instagram selfies. In fact, the platform helped her test out new, occasionally ‘extreme’, looks and become the confident person she struggled to be ‘in real life’ in the classroom. It provided her with a sort of virtual ‘Batman effect’. This allusion to the superhero involves the conscious adoption of an alter ego in order to boost confidence, help shift one’s perspective, or, as writer Matthew Syed puts it in his podcast Sideways, ‘find out what we’re capable of’.
It’s a practice perhaps most famously employed by singers Beyoncé and Adele, whose alters Sasha Fierce and Sasha Carter (the identical forenames are no coincidence; Adele followed Beyoncé’s lead) have helped them give consistently powerful performances.
The former Take That star Robbie Williams has also spoken of the constructed, ‘superhero’ nature of ‘Robbie Williams’, and how Robbie sometimes ‘fails to show up’ for a gig, leaving a terrified ‘Robert’ to perform instead.
For others, the delineation between stage persona and self isn’t so clear. For writer, film-maker and drag artist Amrou Al-Khadi, the creation of their drag persona Glamrou – a ‘fearless performer’ – has been therapeutic, helping them confront their OCD, and a culturally ingrained belief that to be queer was to be ‘weak’. But as well as allowing them to feel powerful on stage (they describe their first drag experience as ‘pure majesty’), donning the costume imbued a confidence that eventually spilled into offstage life, helping them embrace their queerness as well as their Iraqi heritage. Or, as they put it, ‘drag has been the glue to tie all the fractured pieces of my identity together’. So, what starts out as a ‘disguise’ can turn into an expression of who you have truly become or, perhaps, have always been but felt pressured to conceal.
For Lou Steaton-Pritchard, a non-binary DJ and drag queen, while their persona Remy Melee gives them confidence on stage and, as they told me, the licence to be more ‘cheeky’, Remy isn’t so much an alter but another version of them; they co-exist. Lines, they say, in the drag world, are often blurred like this. What I also find significant is that Lou, a self-proclaimed ‘blob in a woman costume’, identifies strongly with the Pokémon character ‘Ditto’. Ditto – a lavender-coloured blob – can transform into anyone or anything, even inanimate objects, adopting their DNA in order to befriend them, or avoid being attacked, an idea that could easily be read as a cartoon encapsulation of a mirror neuron.
We could all, then, benefit from being more Ditto. And, in this version, our future self will be. They will embrace adaptation, their ability to morph to better get along with others, and to better suit their own sense of self that day. Identity will be a costume that can be plucked from a rack in the morning – not to ‘fake’ something, to hide ‘truth’, but to state it, and in doing so, empower them. Drag and cosplay will be as ‘high street’ as branches of Gap once were. Even while financial inequality remains, class will become irrelevant, gender as well. There will be (hallelujah) no more worrying over who uses which toilet.
Extracted from The Future of the Self by Joanna Nadin, published by Melville House UK
More on positive self image...
How to practice self-compassion and build a stable sense of confidence
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