Imagine this: A man sits down at a small, “artsy” café. Thrifted collared shirt, Birkenstocks, wired earphones dangling out of his ears, matcha in hand. Most importantly, a weathered paperback that he’ll soon flip open, ring-adorned fingers careful not to obscure the title. 

Sound familiar? You’ve probably seen these “performative males” condemned across TikTok and Instagram, using a book like a shiny trinket that’ll draw attention to them, failing to truly appreciate its literary history and thematic depth. Some particularly “performative” reads include Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, the works of Joan Didion, or Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. The ridicule across social media has quickly seeped into reality, becoming a common descriptor of strangers, imitated in parodistic contests, and ultimately revealing our social reality. 

Aestheticizing certain books diminishes our understanding of their themes and ideas. Labeling men who read feminist literature as performative or otherwise negatively discourages men from being feminists, subtly encouraging misogyny. By labeling, say, Didion’s classic A Year of Magical Thinking as performative, we discourage people from understanding Didion’s acknowledgement of grief as irrational, and we forget that our emotions and experiences cannot truly be labeled by trends or popular audios. However, labeling interpretations that differ from the norm as “disingenuous” or as evidence for “performative” reading fosters disrespect and discourages literary discourse. Individual analysis is inherently unique; it is against the very nature of critical thinking to differentiate between “true” and “false” interpretations.

Spectrums of performance and authenticity are an integral part of our perception of popular culture. Social media—now the heart of popular culture—has performance embedded in its very algorithm, with snippets of one’s identity carefully expressed through cleverly written scripts and artful editing, all staged in a tiny rectangle. Even beyond influencers, activists, music lovers, and even sports fans are constantly judged on whether they truly enjoy what they support or if they are simply a “poser.” The perception of someone’s identity relies entirely on how they choose to express their identity—by falsely expressing themselves, their identity is perceived as false and baseless. Being a “poser” violates not only the amorphous guidelines of self-development, but also restricts the benefits of self-expression. According to four studies done by Cardiff University, self-expression drives healthy psychological development and the formation of meaningful relationships. The benefits, however, “accrue only when the expression is authentic.” 

But how do we determine genuine “authenticity”? Who decides what a performance is? A “fake fan” is usually deemed disingenuous because some part of their expression violates convention—a nod to the global tradition of vilifying “otherness.” As one Reddit user puts it, a “fake” or otherwise performative fan only likes “the idea of something and very superficial elements of it.” Women interested in male-dominated sports are accused of being “puck bunnies,” “lacrosstitutes,” or “cleat chasers”: female fans only interested in the sport for attention or the attractiveness of the players. People with less alternative fashion styles wearing colorful merchandise from the rock band Nirvana are immediately accused of “not knowing five Nirvana songs.” But how else is one supposed to gain interest in something, if not through the idea of it or its superficial elements? “Even if it’s not coming from the most authentic place,” Ocean Hiller (’26) says, “who are you to dictate that for someone else?”

When it comes to reading, Ocean observed that “People only call out this notion of performance in men who resist traditional gender roles.”  Society has always found some way of enforcing norms: labeling those who don’t strictly adhere to established gender roles as “performative” is just another way of punishing nonconformity and enforcing oppressive gender norms. American philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler claims “gender … identity is performatively constituted by the very expressions that are said to be its results.” If gender is entirely performative, then labeling feminist men who like reading and matcha “performative” is utterly meaningless. It discourages individuals from pursuing one’s own interests and suppressing the aforementioned benefits of self-expression. Using “performative” in a condemnatory way disregards the nature of societal presentation and falsely presumes that the products and media that one consumes are a window into individual identity. 

The objectification of reading—diminishing it to the act of merely holding a physical book—is, for many, a sign of our dawning post-literate society. Some note that social media marks a regression to oral communication, whose delivery can rely on body language and emotional delivery instead of pure reason and logic. Literacy, according to classicist Eric Havelock, is what allowed for the development of philosophy in Ancient Greece. Writing allows for revision, optimizing the clarity and nuance of a message, and allows readers to pause and revisit certain passages, maybe contemplate their meaning. Thorough interaction with a text allows readers to identify with the written word, as it shapes and reflects one’s core beliefs, interests, and experiences. Literacy and the written word have been so transformative to our cultural evolution that the concept of moving past it is almost unthinkable. 

Reading, just like other cultural practices, will evolve alongside society: using physical books as an accessory is just one example. Ms. Hesseltine notes that students are “reading the same amount, maybe just differently.” Our constant intake of “text messages … newspapers” Google results, Instagram captions, marks the evolution of reading rather than its extinction. More than anything, this aestheticization reveals just how much we see reading and literature as a sign of intelligence and importance. Reading is, as Ms. Hesseltine says, “absolutely essential to being a living, curious human being in the world today.”