I'm a shameless self-promoter
Trying to make something real
Last week, I wrote about how photography plays an important role in the performance of self.
When Gwyneth posed for the photographs featured in her NYT profile, Gwyneth was performing her selfhood. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, and I struggle to see how anyone could be the subject of a photograph and NOT perform her selfhood. When we are conscious of being perceived by others, we are performing. If I arrive early to a dinner reservation, I’m performing for the hostess and my fellow diners as I wait for my friend to arrive. When my friend arrives, I perform my self for her as she walks across the room. Performance is not the antithesis of authenticity - it’s just the slice of selfhood we want to share in any given moment. My facial arrangement is going to look different to the friend meeting me at dinner than it is to my four-year-old loudly reporting a sibling grievance. Neither facial arrangement is false, and neither represents my full selfhood.
Self-promotion is a form of performance that many creatives love to hate. Last week, Rebecca Jennings wrote about it for Vox, and I empathize with much of the weariness she expressed. I’ve written before about how I’d delete Instagram if I didn’t fear that doing so would negatively impact my career, and sometimes the work of online performance and self-promotion feels like a drag. Just like ALL forms of labor can sometimes feel like a drag! And of course, we’re all beholden to a few tech companies in charge of algorithmic visibility and we’re all fighting various screen addictions and the most privileged of us have unfair advantages when it comes to the ability to be seen online. Self-promotion is fraught because capitalism is fraught.
But pieces like Jennings’ tend to encourage us to imagine a hard line between soulless money grubbing and altruistic sharing of pure art. I don’t believe such a line exists, nor do I believe in the binary I just mentioned above.