Come Join The Pretentious Girl Club
Don’t tell me being pretentious doesn’t feel good. I feel fabulous when I’m being pretentious.
Before we start the essay, a little life update:
I’ve been spinning for the past few weeks. Corporate America definitely has me in a chokehold. I drag myself from one project deliverable to the next, gulping down coffee despite knowing it’ll make me anxious in 30 minutes, but at least I’ll be anxious and awake. I read an article discussing how corporate environments often create a sense of “false urgency” where nothing is truly that urgent or important. I deeply resonate with this, but what the article does discuss is how difficult it is to escape this false urgency. Knowing its nonsensical essence does little when one’s identity, self-worth, and socioeconomic status have already been tied to the never stop running machine.
I apologize for starting this newsletter with complaints. I love my readers, so I want to squeeze in much honesty as I can. Social media tends to be glamorized. I could talk about how I balance a full-time corporate job while being a part-time model, writing a Substack, and posting on TikTok daily, and somehow managing to read 10 books a month. But the truth is, there is no balance. I’m doing all of the above seemly balanced, enriched, and happy but most likely it’s not sustainable.
I promised to post once a week in my first newsletter and the above texts are the justification of my inconsistency. But hey I promise I will be back to weekly post soon (hopefully staring from this week).
Okay, now, the essay.
Let’s play pretend.
Let’s pretend to be someone who masters the virtues that we’ve not yet owned.
Let’s talk like them, dress like them, dance like them, write like them.
And eventually, feel like them, to FEEL, like them
I read Robert Alan Dahl when I was 17 and thought it was the most pretentious thing ever. I sneaked it into the classroom, attempted but feared being discovered. Being pretentious is addicting for a teenage girl; it’s a combination of a true desire to love and learn, a dazzling thrill and excitement from realization that if someone can achieve this, then perhaps I, too, have a chance, and the deep fear from self-doubt about whether all these feelings are real or just another form of escapism.
My parents are experts at catching a girl who is trying to slip away from her reality. Books got thrown away eventually.
But the reality of whom?
In one of my favorite conversations about pretentiousness, (podcast link here, you should check it out), the hosts point out that when people talk about pretentiousness, a presumed “realness” originating from their own sense of self is used to measure others’ behaviors. “She is so pretentious because she must not truly enjoy this book/movie/food/whatever.” There is a presumed mutual understanding and taste that once one acts outside of such “norms”, they are labeled as “pretentious”.
I know a few who tend to act outside of norms, yet we often call them genius.
One’s deep interest in RPG games won’t be labeled as pretentious, while the same amount of passion for classical music might. One’s interest in perfume might be seen as pretentious in a small town, but once he/she moves to a big city, they suddenly receive praise for having a niche interest. Dressing above his or her socioeconomic status can easily be called pretentious, except the moment they receive institutional recognition, the way they dress suddenly becomes a form of art. The self-expression and communication that were always there are suddenly received, not just that, but well received and well interpreted. When you realize the judgment around “pretentiousness” is highly associated with, and even determined by, institutional recognition, conventional success, and above all, socioeconomic status (class especially), you will soon learn to reject such a concept for its restricting and censoring nature.
Such restricting and censoring nature can easily be manifested both internally and externally. It is often (at least for me) the internal censorship that is hard to resist. Recently, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how much being pretentious fostered my self-expression and, at the same time, how the fear of being pretentious tied my tongue. The struggle is especially brutal for young girls. Growing up in China, a girl’s uniqueness is often not rewarded, if not punished. Of course, what I experienced is currently being experienced by girls anywhere, because it is so easy, for a young girl when she develops slightly bit of personality, to fall out of the “norm” society created for them.
So, we get asked to name 5 rock bands, name 3 philosophers, name the quarterback of this or that team back in 1997, name the producers for this and that indie movie, again, again, and again.
“Name it, prove that you are not being pretentious, prove it.”
A lot of us lost the motive to learn outside of the mundane because eventually we internalized the need to prove to other selves, if not to others, that we are not being pretentious. But simply speaking, “being pretentious” is not easy to prove or disprove when its counterpart, “being authentic,” isn’t easy to define.
Of course the concept of pretentiousness is associated with authenticity and therefore associated with the concept of self. No matter you agree with Taylor Carman or Martin Heidegger, no matter you believe there is a “core self” or not, it is undeniable to majority of the thinkers that the “self” (even the core self) is constantly changing and therefore it is hard for us to capture a still “self” at a moment to used to measure our authenticity and therefore understand whether we are being pretentious or not. In other words, there isn’t a still core self that we are betraying when we are being “pretentious”.
(My favorite podcast Overthink also made an episode on Authenticity if you would like to dive deep into the concept)
This is possibly more true than ever as we are taking in information in a quantity that was once unimaginable therefore we are constantly learning, internalizing, and changing in different ways.
There was a video going viral on TikTok about two weeks ago centering a “philosophy salon” with group of 20 year old something dressing up, sitting in a candle lighted room with clear dark academia aesthetic. People went feral around it, made fun of it, calling those people “pretentious”, “perform intelligence”, “intellectual posturing” etc etc. I made a video later in respond to talk about how “perform is also a form of practice”, how being able to have genuine philosophical discussion is absolutely a privilege so I don’t mind people trying to get there by performing such discussions. (We should talk about how much of the curitique to kitsch has elitism embodied in them another day). But now I want to add a little bit onto it and argue that “perform is also a form a learning”.
Of course, the concept of pretentiousness is tied to authenticity and extend associated with the concept of f. No matter you agree with Taylor Carman or Martin Heidegger, no matter you believe theris a “core self” or not, it is undeniable to the majority of thinkers that the “self” (even the core self) is constantly changing and therefore it is hard to capture a still “self” at a moment to use to measure our authenticity and to understand whether we are being pretentious or not. In other words, there isn’t a still core self that we are betraying when we are being “pretentious”.
This is possibly more true than ever as we are taking in information in a quantity that was once unimaginable, which out us to constantly learn, internalize, and change in various ways.
(Philosopher’s salon hosted by Daisy Soirée)
There was a video going viral on TikTok about two weeks ago centering a “philosophy salon” with a group of 20-year-old somethings having conversation around philosophy (or philosophy adjunct), while dressing up, sitting in a candle-lighted room with a clear dark academia aesthetic. People went feral around it, made fun of it, calling those people “pretentious”, “performing intelligence”, “intellectual posturing” etc. etc I made a video later in react to talk about how “perform is also a form of practice”, how being able to have genuine philosophical discussions is absolutely a privilege so I actually don’t mind people trying to get there by performing such discussions. (We should talk about how much of the critique to kitsch has elitism embodied in them another day). But now I want to add a little bit onto it and argue that “perform is also a form of learning”.
As addressed above, we are constantly internalizing and learning information in different ways. It's not uncommon to see successful artists with several alter egos without facing accusations of being pretentious, because 1. They are successful (again, institutional recognition), and 2. They use alter egos for self-expression. What isn’t discussed enough is that an alter ego doesn’t just emerge overnight. It's always there, in the learning process. (And don’t tell me being pretentious doesn’t feel good. I feel fabulous when I’m being pretentious. I’m ABOVE THE EARTH). We all play pretend, and that’s how we learn. We create mini alter egos, we ditch them or step into them, and then create another, over and over. Looking back at human history, or simply at our childhoods, "playing pretend" is in our nature like an instinct, so what are you doing really if you are not on your way of playing pretend.
Let's not end this essay with a "fake it till you make it" type of cheap slogan. Instead, let’s conclude with some use-your-brain type of thinking. Your homework would be:
Take time to think about the classism, elitism, racism, and much more behind our judgments around who is being pretentious.
Do something that might be deemed as “pretentious” by others, making sure you have audiences (love it).
Listen to the two podcasts I linked. And if you have time, read something from the following list: