Over the Summer and now into this Fall, the performative male phenomenon (also known as the performative male meme) has gained traction all over social media. Participants in the meme don cardigans, tote bags, and wired headphones, holding onto Labubus, Clairo vinyls, and assorted feminist literature with an odd sort of tenderness. The purpose of the meme is to criticize certain men who merely put on a performance of being interested in more feminine-aligned interests, which could be fashion, music, or literature, but is not limited to those three subjects. Over time, the meme has spawned into a societal critique, with some people choosing to dress as performative males as a joke, and some people actively criticizing the meme and how it makes light of men who use fashion, music taste, or feminist literature not as a way to support women, but simply as a way to secure themselves a girlfriend.
There’s been many essays on this phenomenon, from people of all different viewpoints. I think that this trend of critiquing the “performative men” in our society actually hits at a deeper truth in our society: we’ve become so used to inauthenticity, that even a possible display of individuality comes off as playing pretend.
In my freshman year I took a seminar on Shakespeare, where we were required not only to read and discuss some of his plays, but also to act out certain scenes and put on an end-of-the-semester performance. Amid annoyed muttering from myself and my peers, my professor made a statement that has stuck with me, “Most people don’t think they can act, but they do every day”. This was followed by a quick rendition of “All the world’s a stage/And all the men and women merely players/They have their exits and their entrances/And one man in his time plays many parts,” from Shakespeare’s own As You Like It. Shakespeare may have lived a couple hundred years ago, but he got this right. I think we very rarely see anyone in their authenticity, and I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing.
Of course, there are problems with pretending to be someone that you’re not. However, I think more often than not our performativeness comes from a desire to maintain an emotional equilibrium in our environments, or a desire to cover up parts of ourselves that we keep reserved. We can be quick to shame others for not being their authentic selves 24/7, but are we even our authentic selves for that long?
I think that in a lot of our daily aspects, from classes, to work, to relationships, humans refrain from being too authentic, because with the goodness of authenticity also comes the bad. I also believe that we too quickly condemn someone’s good behavior as being a performance, instead of reinforcing it. I’d say that very few people want to live in a world where people’s flaws are constantly being revealed (although that does seem to be common nowadays).Â
The performative male meme has brought a debate into the pop culture conversation about what it means to be authentic or to put on a performance. Honestly, maybe we should let those guys enjoy their matchas, and their indie music that they stream through wired headphones. Our media sources and our culture constantly tell us that we are never authentic enough to ourselves, and if we try to be, that it’s all fake. At the end of the day, I think the moral of the story is that you should do your best to be a decent human being, and don’t feel ashamed for the things in life that you enjoy.Â