When Did Ordinary Things Start Feeling Performative?

The other day, I put on my glasses before leaving the house and had a thought that was so ridiculous I almost laughed at myself.

I hope people don't think I'm wearing these because they make me look smarter.

The irony, of course, is that I genuinely need them. Without them, street signs are blurry and restaurant menus become a guessing game. There isn't anything performative about correcting my vision.

And yet the thought still crossed my mind.

It wasn't the first time, either.

I've had the same feeling while reading a book in public, wearing sneakers with an outfit, carrying a notebook into a coffee shop, or pulling out my Kindle while waiting for an appointment. These are all things I naturally do and genuinely enjoy, yet every now and then I become strangely aware of how they might look to someone else.

Not because anyone has actually said anything.

Because somewhere along the way, we've become conditioned to wonder.

I don't think this feeling exists in a vacuum. If you've spent any time on TikTok recently, you've probably come across the word performative more times than you can count. Almost every hobby, habit, or personality trait has been examined through that lens. People debate whether reading is performative. Whether drinking matcha is performative. Whether journaling, knitting, buying flowers, visiting museums, using film cameras, or carrying a tote bag are genuine interests or carefully curated identities.

Even Reddit, a platform that prides itself on being more anonymous than image-driven, has endless discussions asking whether certain behaviors are authentic or simply another form of performance.

It's fascinating because the conversation rarely stays focused on influencers. It inevitably spills over onto ordinary people simply living their lives.

I don't think social media created the desire to be perceived a certain way. Human beings have always cared about how they're seen by others. What has changed is the vocabulary we've developed around it. We've become so accustomed to categorizing people into aesthetics, archetypes, and personality types that even completely ordinary choices can start to feel like statements.

Reading isn't just reading anymore.

It's "book girl."

Wearing glasses isn't simply wearing glasses.

It can feel like you're signaling intelligence.

Sneakers become an aesthetic. Tote bags become an aesthetic. Owning a record player becomes an aesthetic. Suddenly, everyday life starts feeling as though it's being quietly narrated through internet labels we never consciously agreed to.

The strange part is that those labels can make us question motivations that were never particularly complicated.

Am I reading because I enjoy reading?

Or because I've internalized the idea that readers look interesting?

Am I wearing these shoes because they're comfortable?

Or because somewhere online someone decided they belonged to a certain type of person?

When you stop and examine those thoughts, they fall apart surprisingly quickly.

I read because I love books.

I wear glasses because I'd like to see where I'm going.

I wear sneakers because walking around in uncomfortable shoes has never appealed to me.

Those habits existed long before algorithms started assigning personalities to them.

What I've slowly realized is that authenticity isn't determined by whether something has become popular online. It's determined by why you're doing it. The existence of a trend doesn't invalidate genuine enjoyment. Just because thousands of people post about reading doesn't make every person reading in public a performer.

If anything, I think the opposite is true.

The more we worry about looking performative, the more we stop ourselves from openly enjoying ordinary things. We hesitate before pulling out a paperback on an airplane. We second-guess wearing the glasses we actually need. We wonder if buying fresh flowers, visiting a museum, or writing in a journal somehow says more about us than it really does.

Most of the time, it doesn't.

Most people are too busy wondering how they're being perceived to spend much time thinking about us.

Maybe that's worth remembering.

Because I'd hate to live in a world where we become so afraid of looking curated that we stop doing the small, ordinary things that genuinely make us happy. Sometimes a book is just a book. Sometimes glasses are just glasses. And sometimes the most authentic thing we can do is stop imagining an audience that probably isn't paying attention in the first place.