(the Papilio genus of butterfly presents a facade of the unpalatable Danais genus for survival)
In an era saturated with misinformation, the phrase “fake it until you make it” feels less like empty motivation and more like a social reality. While society claims to value sincerity above all else, access to opportunity is often reserved for those who can convincingly perform it. Due to authenticity’s manufacturability alongside society’s demand for it, artifice is one of the most necessary skills to possess in this day and age.
Bring It To The Ballroom
Society demands authenticity in every aspect of life. All jobs require certain criteria for hireability; however, when social issues like racism and homophobia arise, not all individuals are given the means to acquire the necessary skills or experience. This can be seen in New York’s drag ballroom culture of the 1980s.
It’s important to remember this was amid the height of the AIDS crisis, a time when the mainstream opinion viewed gay people as a serious danger and had no problem allowing the epidemic to ravage the community. Throughout the decade, gays were regarded as second-class citizens and barred from many social spaces, employment, and their own families, so the only solution was to build their own safe space from the ground up. Marginalized groups, predominantly the LGBT+ community and Afro-Latinos, held couture balls where they’d be given a category, most of the time within the realm of extravagance and opulence, but also several other categories pertaining to the more “realistic” white and heteronormative realm, and attempt to present themselves as such.
[People at a ball possibly presenting Femme Queen Realness and Butch Queen Realness with a sailor twist]
These balls coined the term “realness,” drag that was so seamless it blended with the reality it mimicked to the point that bystanders wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Eleganza extravaganza entails high fashion worthy of walking a real gala, butch queen realness entails gay/bi men passing as straight men (& vice versa for femme queen realness), and business executive realness entails impeccably tailored suits and swinging briefcases with a walk to match. In the documentary Paris Is Burning, drag queen Dorian Corey stated, when discussing ‘business executive realness’,
“In a ballroom, you can be anything you want. I am not really an executive, but I’m looking like one, therefore showing the straight world I can be one if I was given the opportunity to.”
Dorian Corey
What made the ballroom scene so radical wasn’t just the performance, but the community built around it. Contestants were organized into ‘Houses’, or chosen families led by a House Mother or Father, that took in queer youth who’d been rejected, kicked out, or abandoned by their biological families. For many, the House wasn’t just a team to compete with; it was the only family and outlet they had to be truly seen at all.
Within the ballroom, these groups could portray a version of themselves in areas of life where they’d be otherwise discriminated against, and feel the joy of being perceived in such high regard, even if only for a moment. And while these balls may not have guaranteed the shot of acceptance from the general public, the ballroom scene’s use of artifice provided the community a sense of dignity, a dignity that’d been systematically stripped from them.
“No, The Other Korea…”
While ballroom culture used artifice as a means of survival for those denied opportunity, modern industries have learned to utilize the same performance of authenticity for mass consumption, national imagery, and profit. Artifice cannot replicate the genuine, but it can garner a false sense of intimacy.
After the Korean War, the newly formed South Korea was in desperate need of a way to differentiate its national identity from that of its northern neighbors, considering xenophobia towards Asians was quite high at the time.
Enter K-Pop.
I don’t know how we got here either, just hold your gunfire until you’ve heard me out, okay?
The K-pop industry, a small sect of the industry, was formed as a psychological warfare tool to show the stark differences in the South’s ‘free’, ‘prosperous’, and ‘emotional’ culture rooted in capitalism and the North’s ‘militant’ and ‘old-fashioned’ culture rooted in communism. By the 1990s, only a few decades after the “end” of the war, South Korea saw an opportunity in the entertainment industry’s growing grip on the cultural zeitgeist.
The music business was booming, and could be used to assist in portraying North Korea as the ‘less refined’ version of the two, subliminally discrediting the North’s legitimacy.
What the South probably didn’t expect was that what was meant to be a small asset within their giant propaganda machine turned out to blow up astronomically in popularity and arguably led to K-pop becoming one of the nation’s biggest “exports”.
The music industry is known for artists destroying their own careers for any number of reasons, more often than not, associated with controversial personal beliefs or actions that break the illusion of the ‘perfect celebrity’. With the need to maintain control over the national image in mind, South Korea saw its western counterparts’ flaws and formulated a perfect business model to counter such short-lived careers; total exhibition of idols with predetermined lifestyles, and more often than not, predetermined personas. K-pop managers realize their artists won’t succeed if their audience does not like the idol themselves, so virtually all idols’ actions, words, and decisions are built on the performative personality given by the company. Companies create an image for groups; each member representing a distinct personality archetype, that also blends with the other members in order to create a false dynamic that is so enthralling, fans constantly want to observe their interactions through content like performances, dance practices, or even down to the most mundane parts of the idol’s life like….. taking time off work, ironically making their ‘rest days’ a continuation of the performance (e.g., the BTS Bon Voyage, Time to Twice, or Born Pink Memories series).
This extreme level of “intimacy,” while effectively entertaining, is ultimately still false, yet for many, it reads as authentic. Because of the flawless integration of artifice and intimacy, empires of artists have boomed, armies of fans follow into what is one of the nation’s most lucrative industries, and South Korea now has a seat beside powerhouse countries at the global roundtable.
Are We Really That Surprised Though?
In a society that claims to value authenticity above all else, the reality is far more complex. When access to opportunity is dictated by appearance, behavior, and proximity to dominant norms, artifice becomes not a deception, but a survival tool. From the ballrooms of 1980s New York to the meticulously curated personas of K-pop idols, performance has allowed marginalized groups and industries alike to navigate systems that would otherwise gladly exclude them.
While artifice can never fully replace the genuine, its ability to simulate intimacy and credibility grants people a chance to be seen, heard, and valued. In a world where authenticity is demanded but rarely attainable for all, the act of “faking it” is not a moral failure; it is often the only path toward finally being allowed to even possibly “make it” in the first place.