B-Side

Performative

When Did Trying Become the Thing We Punish?

In the last two weeks, I’ve heard the word performative more than I’ve heard it in the last two years. Podcasts. Comment sections. Group chats. Someone does something visible — posts about a cause, shows up with flowers, speaks carefully in a difficult conversation — and the verdict comes fast: “That’s so performative.”

It’s become shorthand for fake. For trying too hard. For performing authenticity instead of actually being authentic. And once the label lands, it sticks. Nobody defends the person who’s been called performative. The trial is over before it starts.

But I’ve been sitting with this word for a while now, and I’m not sure we’re using it the right way.

Everything Is a Performance

Here’s what I keep coming back to: isn’t everything performative to some degree?

When you get dressed in the morning, you’re making decisions about how you want the world to see you. When you choose your words in a hard conversation — slowing down, picking carefully, holding back the first thing that comes to mind — that’s a performance. A deliberate one. When you send a text that says “hey, you just crossed my mind” — that’s an act. You chose to do it. You composed it. You hit send.

None of that makes it fake. It makes it intentional.

I think we’ve confused performance with dishonesty. We’ve decided that if something looks like it took effort, it must not be real. As if the only authentic version of a person is the unfiltered one — the one who says whatever comes out first, shows up however they happen to feel, and never adjusts for the room.

But that’s not authenticity. That’s just carelessness with a better reputation.

The Food Bank Problem

Here’s where it gets tricky.

Say someone volunteers at a food bank on a Saturday morning. They sort cans, stock shelves, stay for three hours. And then they post a photo about it on Instagram. Caption. Filter. Hashtag.

Performative? A lot of people would say yes. They’d say the post ruins the act. That real generosity doesn’t need an audience.

But here’s what I keep thinking about: the food bank still got the help. The shelves still got stocked. The people who needed those cans still ate that week. Does the Instagram post undo any of that?

Or take something smaller. A friend sends flowers after a loss. Not because they felt a deep emotional pull — but because that’s what you’re supposed to do. It’s the gesture. The protocol. Does the fact that it was learned behavior instead of a spontaneous overflow of feeling make the flowers less real to the person who received them?

I don’t think it does. I think the flowers still showed up. And sometimes showing up is the whole point — even when the reason behind it isn’t poetic.

The Authenticity Trap

What bothers me about the way we use performative is that it punishes effort. It says that if you’re trying to show up better — if it looks a little rehearsed, a little polished, a little too put-together — then it doesn’t count. Only the raw, unedited, first-impulse version of you is the real one.

But I don’t believe that. I think the version of you that pauses before responding is more real than the version that fires back without thinking. I think the person who sends the text even when they’re not sure it’ll be returned is performing something worth performing. I think getting dressed with intention and choosing your words with care and showing up when you don’t feel like it — all of that is a performance. And all of it is real.

The question was never whether something is performative. Everything is. The question is whether there’s something underneath it. Whether the performance is covering an empty room — or whether it’s the front door to something genuine that just hasn’t found its voice yet.

Give It Room

Some people are still learning how to show up. Their version of care might look stiff. Their generosity might come with a caption. Their words in a difficult moment might sound like they read them in a book somewhere.

That’s okay.

Because a person who’s trying to be better — even clumsily, even visibly, even in a way that looks like a performance — is still closer to the thing than the person who’s doing nothing at all.

I’d rather someone show up performatively than not show up at all. And I’d rather give them room to grow into it than shut them down for trying.

We’ve all been the person who didn’t know how to say the right thing, so we said the rehearsed thing. The safe thing. The thing we thought we were supposed to say. That wasn’t fake. That was us doing the best we could with what we had.

And sometimes the performance is how the real thing starts.

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