I love a good story.  I love make-believe.  I frequently lose myself in a good book or film.  I believe in making the best of ourselves and can even appreciate the technique of faking it until you make it.  So why does affectation dance on my last nerve?  A few days ago in a coffee shop my attention was drawn to a group of three women.  Actually, it was drawn to one of the three, whose manners were designed for precisely that purpose, so I didn’t feel bad looking.  The way she held herself, the way she laughed, everything felt contrived and it made my lip curl.  Being in the company of someone with artificial behaviour sets my teeth on edge (a proper visceral reaction which probably says something about me).  But if reality is just our perception anyway, where is the line between real and fake?

I’ve been struggling to write this blog, to define why it’s so important to me (I guessed that posting “Authenticity = Good, Affectation = Bad” probably wouldn’t cut it).  Not getting much help from the friends I tried to rope in hoping to pinch their thoughts, I went back to the beginning and checked the dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary defines affectation as “behaviour, speech or writing that is artificial and designed to impress; a studied display of feeling”, whereas authenticity is “the quality of being genuine”. So let’s start there:  affected behaviour doesn’t impress me, it’s authenticity that takes courage.

Looking around I see plenty of successful, inauthentic people.  So does it matter?  In the way that my reaction says something about me, the need to behave in such a studied and false manner tells us something about those who do it.  On my kinder, more generous days I can appreciate the possible insecurities behind it. But generally it just irritates me and I see it as a form of cheating.  OK so now I’m starting to understand:   perhaps I don’t mind ‘faking it until you make it’ because that’s a technique designed to help you feel better about yourself, whereas affectation is more to do with getting others to feel better about you but based on a falsity.

All of us present different sides of ourselves at different times, the side most appropriate to the occasion.  And it’s human nature to want to impress (possibly something to do with a primal need for security within a tribe or such like), but forming a genuine connection with another is hard enough without affectation undermining the value of our real selves.  How can you connect with someone who only presents ‘a studied display of feeling’?  But mainly it’s just annoying to be around.  An irritating interruption to the business of getting to know each other.