The much-feared performative male, a prominent archetype among Gen Z men, has taken our culture by storm. On August 1st, a crowd of 300 gathered in Cal Anderson Park to judge Seattle’s first performative male contest, in which contestants ironically donned jorts, sipped matcha, and discussed third-wave feminism in hopes of being crowned the “most performative.” These displays embodied the essence of the performative male: someone who attempts to attract female attention by putting on a facade they believe women will enjoy. 

With contests poking fun at performative males from Chicago to New York, we are seeing a new consciousness of performative behavior emerge with criticism in tow. For years now, harmful behaviors like performative activism and performative accountability have rightfully come under fire, with public figures often causing more damage to marginalized communities through empty words and emptier actions. In recent years, AT&T elected to sponsor LGBTQ+ nonprofits to exhibit its inclusiveness, while also financially supporting homophobic legislators through its PAC—a phenomenon all too common with corporations during and outside of Pride Month. Performative males also deserve their fair share of criticism; they present women with a false and sometimes predatory image of themselves. However, in recent years, the scope of criticism has widened, now including much more than just explicitly bad behavior. A major catalyst of the performative male contests was a collection of TikToks recording men in public who appeared intensely engaged in advanced classic literature, accusing them of pretending to read for attention. And what started as a means of teasing seemingly pretentious men has spread to any readers caught with a print book in hand, leaving them subject to internet scorn for reading in public. Over time, this supposed performative behavior earned a name: performative reading. While I believe that criticism of performative activists and corporations has merit, what happens when the same performative lens is applied to reading? How much of performative reading is really performative? And how can we know for sure where to draw the line?

Categorizing reading as performative or nonperformative implies that we can know the intent behind someone’s actions just by looking at them, and that once we have determined their intent, we can be sure of the outcome of their actions. Everyone absorbs literature in a different way, just as one can either memorize flashcards or practice problems to study for an exam and still effectively absorb content. Reading is similar; some people need to engage physically with the text, while others can skim a page and still understand what they have read. Believing that the only way to truly assimilate a book is in the privacy of your own home with highlighters and sticky notes assumes that everyone reads the same way and requires the same level of engagement with a text to understand it. If someone can read at a cafe table on a busy street, perhaps they aren’t reading performatively. Maybe they have no issue reading amid distractions. Moreover, even if someone is reading partly for attention, who is to say they aren’t assimilating what they’re reading? When reading, the brain isn’t distinguishing between a “pure” or performative motivation, and though a “performative” reader could be more distracted by their surroundings, this doesn’t prevent them from being able to process the words in front of them. They might just be reading to be seen reading, but they are still reading. 

There is certainly a line where reading becomes purely performative. Out of a hundred people reading on the subway, at least some of them are probably pretending to read for public validation, but I’m not willing to define where that line is. I can’t be sure that the person with a book open in their lap, doing everything but reading it, isn’t a literature professor who intended to read but has instead chosen to people-watch. The popularity of short-form content has conditioned us to make assumptions based on a five-second video, but making assumptions about people’s reading habits specifically can be performative in and of itself. If you are choosing to record and post someone reading in public, you are either asserting that you always engage with literature at a higher level and can thus recognize when others aren’t, or that you would never stoop to the low of performative reading. In this way, critics of performative reading are often performing themselves. A performative reader and someone who shames performative readers are both attempting to appeal to the same group of intelligent readers, but only one can be seen reading. 

I don’t believe that humans are meant to act performatively, constantly watching over their shoulder to see if others approve, but the act of performing for others is not bad on its own. It is once performative behaviors begin to have a negative effect on others—such as in the case of performative activists robbing support from those making a real impact—that they become harmful. Reading for public validation, however, does not seem to have any real effect on my life or anyone else’s. In fact, labeling reading as performative or nonperformative in the same fashion as performative activism is only making reading a less desirable and accessible activity. “Performative” readers are pushed out of online literary communities, like BookTok or Bookstagram, as they see themselves being looked down upon for trying to appeal to a public that they potentially haven’t even thought about. The rise of negative performative behaviors has put every community on edge, leading many to believe that any performative behavior is ill-intentioned. Though reading to be seen rather than to truly absorb a book may defeat the purpose, I just don’t believe it is more harmful than the judgment being introduced in literary communities by criticizing “performative reading.” 

This topic is of personal significance to me, as I have always been an avid reader. The Little Golden Books hooked me, and I’ve been reading anything I can get my hands on ever since. For a brief stint in middle school, I concluded that I had better things to do than read, and settled for reading just one book that made me the most insufferable person ever (The Catcher in the Rye); but for the most part, I abandoned reading for about two years. In high school, I got back into reading with a passion, feeling all the more enlivened by the welcoming spaces online that allowed me to interact with other readers. If I had tried to get back into reading with the culture the way it is now, I would have had very little desire to join online reading communities. Not only is there heavy criticism of performative reading, but also judgment of which books people read—whether they are culturally significant or intellectually stimulating enough—which goes much beyond the usual debates surrounding controversial books. Many friendly and welcoming virtual communities don’t act this way, but when videos mocking performative readers become more widespread, fewer people will want to engage in these spaces, or even read. By policing each other’s reading experiences under the guise of protecting literary culture, we risk losing not just “performative” readers, but also genuine ones who may never discover their love for books. 

by Lauren Vandivier