Is it possible to be fully authentic?

Anyone who has spent time around teenage girls or formerly was one understands the brutal insult of being called “fake.” The accusation implies a person is two-faced, duplicitous, or concealing their true self in some way: They’re inauthentic.

The concept of authenticity — knowing who you truly are and behaving in a way that aligns with that vision — is important for many people, not just for teens coming into their independence, but for anyone questioning how they show up in relationships, with family, or at work. To live authentically might mean bucking expectations set by your parents and pursuing a career of which they might not approve. It could be an aesthetic choice, like a sense of personal style or a haircut. Being authentic could mean feeling fully at ease and present around a group of people without the sense that you must perform to fit in.

The social media era has made concerns about authenticity even more fraught and confusing. Platforms like BeReal and the myth of deinfluencing pushed the notion that a “realer” version of yourself is there for the taking. Brands supported social causes to appeal to consumers’ values — because what you buy is a signal of who you are. The drive for authenticity is so pervasive that Merriam-Webster named “authentic” their word of the year in 2023. “Authentic is what brands, social media influencers, and celebrities aspire to be,” the dictionary’s release said. Since then, digital ink has been spilled concerning “authentic leadership,” an “authentic Yosemite experience,” Lady Gaga’s “authentic” performance of Harley Quinn. Even Mark Zuckerberg has been touted as being more authentic lately.

The quest for authenticity is hardly a shallow pursuit. Research shows people with higher levels of authenticity had greater self-esteem and satisfaction with life. Even those who post more authentically online report greater levels of life satisfaction, research suggests. When people feel disconnected from their true selves and follow along with what others expect from them, they report negative well-being, according to a study.

Living in accordance with your true self isn’t a switch you suddenly turn on. In fact, your personal authenticity can and will change over time as you grow and your values change. Not having a clear understanding of who you are deep down is completely normal, too, says Katharina Bauer, an associate professor of practical philosophy at the University of Rotterdam. “It’s fine to be confused about this,” she says, “because this can also be part of the process ... of transforming or changing or finding new ways or [making] new decisions.” It’s also impossible, nor is it appropriate, to be 100 percent authentic in every context — you might not want to tell your boss they have bad breath just because it’s what your true self would do.

So how to be an authentic person in a world that seemingly demands realness at all costs? It’s about determining what feels truly you at any given moment while understanding you’re still a person who exists among many different communities.

The desire to accurately display a unique inner self is a relatively new phenomenon, Bauer says. Before it was ever associated with the self, Bauer explains, authenticity was understood as a means of determining authorship: “This is an authentic painting by Rubens” or “this is an authentic document signed by the governor.” During the 18th-century Enlightenment, as people placed more importance on individuality, emerged “this idea that you do not have to correspond just to normative standards, external standards, societal standards,” Bauer says, “but there is something authentic about yourself that has its own normative force.”

Over time, people had more space and permission to explore alternative ways of living that fell outside the socially prescripted limits, Bauer says, which can prove “emancipatory” for those coming into their identities.

Just as many ideologies and social movements do, authenticity inevitably became a consumer product. As early as the 1920s and ’30s, advertisements marketed items as one way to discover your true self, Bauer says. This advertising tactic has been used for decades: a car that’s fit for the rebel you really are, a body spray that can help you play up your uniqueness. A product’s authenticity also became a selling point, with consumers yearning for the most authentic Italian restaurant, French wine, or an insider’s tour of Marrakech.

By the ’90s, being “real” meant bucking convention. “Selling out” was the death-knell to authenticity. “You’re abandoning some value for the money that you can make off of” your art, your services, your passion, says Michael Serazio, a professor of communication at Boston College and author of The Authenticity Industries: Keeping it “Real” in Media, Culture, and Politics. The band Nirvana, for instance, crossed the divide from counterculture to mass appeal, with Kurt Cobain telling Rolling Stone, “I don’t blame the average 17-year-old punk-rock kid for calling me a sellout.” A sense of righteousness underscored this ideal of authenticity: There is a purity to your work when it isn’t beholden to commercial stakeholders.

In the digital age, there’s been a dramatic shift. Authenticity is increasingly communicated through a personal brand, which is necessary in order to gain a following and further career aspirations. As my colleague Rebecca Jennings wrote, “The internet has made it so that no matter who you are or what you do — from 9-to-5 middle managers to astronauts to housecleaners — you cannot escape the tyranny of the personal brand.” The precarious labor landscape requires workers to constantly market and promote themselves to make money, Serazio says. “Trying to survive in this economic space has made it harder for us to feel like we’re our true selves,” he says, “because we’re always slaving away to try to get by.” What we’re selling, ostensibly, is ourselves. The “real” version of ourselves.

Among his students, Serazio finds the term “selling out” to no longer carry the negative connotation it once did. Instead, authenticity is a means to help influencers sell out: The more authentic an influencer, the more trust they garner from their audience and the more products they can promote and sell. “Influencers are valued for who they are, that’s their market product,” Serazio says. “When they lose their authenticity, they don’t have as much to fall back upon. Because what they’ve been selling to their followers and what they’ve been selling on behalf of brands is, ‘This is who I am. This is the real me.’”

Even the social platforms themselves claim to promote authenticity. One study found that every time a new social media network emerged, it claimed to be more authentic than the one that preceded it. Facebook branded itself as inherently more authentic than MySpace because users signed up with their real names; Twitter claimed to be more authentic due to the real-time nature of tweets.

Now, with the emergence of artificial intelligence and the abundance of image- and video-doctoring technologies, “authenticity” is highly valued and in seemingly short supply. From “fake news” to deepfakes, media literacy of the last decade has struggled to keep pace with the deluge of ways to contort reality. “People are constantly questioning and contesting any claims of authenticity or realness,” says Brooke Erin Duffy, an associate professor of communication at Cornell University.

We are at a unique point in time where there is so much to challenge, from someone’s behavior to their supposedly high-end purse. As a result, we’re collectively more focused on authenticity than generations past, Serazio says. The reason could be technological: “The more that we live in and through our screens, the more we are constantly trying to figure out who the real self is,” Serazio says. Is it the Tumblr version of you? Or is it the professional version of you? And how do you marry all of those versions without spiraling into an identity crisis?

Most people have an intuitive sense of whether they’re being true to themselves and acting in ways that align with their values. “Only you know when you’re being authentic or not, right?” says Elizabeth Seto, an assistant professor of psychology at Colby College.

Many people have undoubtedly felt like the outsider in a friend group, club, or professional setting and understand the soul-sucking energy of attempting to fit in. When we finally find that social circle or community where we are not only understood but safe is when we feel most “real.” One of Seto’s studies found that the more people believed they had free will, agency, and control, the closer they felt to their true selves. “That’s a difficult thing,” she says. “You have to find that right environment or context ... to support being your true self and letting your authenticity essentially grow.”

Authenticity has its limits. The way we behave at a bar with friends isn’t the same as how we might act when serving on a jury. “It’s not to say that we need to contort and not be ourselves in our authenticity,” says Patricia Faison Hewlin, a professor of social-organizational psychology at Columbia University’s Teachers College, “but we do want to be mindful of the context.”

Being selective with whom we show our true colors can be protective, Hewlin says. If we’re unsure of how a new colleague might react to an aspect of our identity or values, we might not be as vulnerable with them until we have a better idea of their beliefs. This calculation is especially consequential for marginalized populations, for instance, that may not feel safe being open about their gender identity. “Some would say the fact that I have to test the waters means that that’s not being authentic,” Hewlin says, “and I would say that is being so self-protective, so authentic, when it comes to one’s well-being.”

When weighing whether to let our guard down around a person we don’t know well, Hewlin suggests considering the significance of the relationship and how important it is to be authentic in order for the relationship to thrive. Since we’re unlikely to have a deep and profound relationship with our kids’ swim instructor, we might not need to be overly vulnerable with them. “Some of us are not as open and might need to take the time to really ask ourselves these questions about what they want in their relationship,” she says, “as well as whether or not these people they are engaging with will actually value or risk their authenticity.”

Just because a thought feels “real” to us doesn’t necessarily mean we should say it. People sometimes justify bad behavior or brash comments as a product of being “real,” perhaps with the refrain of, “Well, that’s just me.” If our sense of authenticity comes at the expense of others, “that’s negative for psychological well-being or for interpersonal relationships,” Seto says.

It isn’t enough to simply feel authentic; it’s hard not to want to be recognized for our realness by others. The internal and external perceptions can be at odds. To be perceived as “fake” or “real” is a moral argument, Duffy says. If others view us as authentic, they believe our internal and external selves — for example, our online and offline personas — are aligned, Duffy explains. Being fake means “you’re being inconsistent, you are being duplicitous, you are concealing who you, quote unquote, really are to a particular audience,” Duffy says. Women and people of color are often accused of such fakery, Duffy says, of trying to conceal who they really are through cosmetics, plastic surgery, and social media filters. These types of accusations are difficult to prove — how can an outsider tell when a person isn’t being true to themselves? — but the insinuation is powerful.

The more of our lives we publicize, the more muddled the notion of authenticity becomes. Duffy challenges the idea that the online self is ostensibly fake compared to the offline version. There are plenty of online communities where people feel safe to say and act in accordance with their values — sometimes it’s one of the only places people feel free to be their truest selves.

Still, the presence of an audience changes the ideal of authenticity. While we may strive for authenticity online, when we post anything for public consumption, we are focused on self-presentation, Seto says. Even if someone strives to share all aspects of their lives, good and bad, with their followers, it’s still difficult for people to discern reality from a manufactured persona. In videos where a creator is weeping or divulging painful news, they claim to, finally, be pulling back the facade to show their “real” selves. These posts are now seen as suspicious and a way to seek engagement.

Because we are constantly performing in one way or another in so many different contexts and for so many different people, we have more opportunities than ever to contort ourselves to someone else’s ideal. “It does come at a cost of trying to figure out is that who I really am or is that just who I’m trying to be for this other person?” Serazio says. Or “for the online audience that I’ve cultivated of all my followers and friends.”

To cultivate authenticity in a world where people strive for realness first requires introspection. Consider the people and contexts where you feel the most free and safe. “People should reflect about what they care about, what they don’t care about, what’s important for them, what’s their values, what’s their shortcomings as a person, and follow that,” says Balázs Kovács, a professor of organizational behavior at Yale School of Management. You don’t need to trigger an identity crisis, but you could ask yourself, “Is this really me? Do I want to be doing this? Do I need to make a change?” when reflecting on your life, Seto suggests.

For Serazio, the people he feels most authentic around are his wife and daughter — people he spends time with in person and not through a screen. To wholly feel like yourself within your relationships, you have to be together in person, he says. “There is a ton of fakery around,” he says, “But there’s less fakery if screens don’t come between us.”

Another path to authenticity might be age. In one of her studies, Seto found people believe they are acting more authentically as they age, that they are inherently living like their true selves now and their younger selves were not. Another of her studies looked at experiential purchases, like a vacation, as a means for finding your true self. “When you engage in experiential purchases,” she says, “you learn more about yourself and you feel more authentic.”

Understanding the impossibility of being wholly authentic in every single situation can reduce the burden of needing to bring your full self to each interaction. However, if you’re suppressing yourself to the point of exhaustion with any particular person, you may need to reevaluate the relationship, says Hewlin, the Columbia professor. Of course there are some connections, like with a boss or a neighbor, in which you might have to grin and bear it. But if you’re struggling to be yourself in a relationship you’ve chosen to enter, with a friend or romantic partner, it may be time to move on.

Because authenticity is so subjective, personal, and hard to discern in others, Duffy suggests taking a more critical approach when considering your perspective on genuineness. It’s worth questioning whether something is, as Duffy says, “authentic to whom, and for whom?” Only you know the answer.