A certain strand of popular psychology supposes that we all hold within us everything we need to be emotionally fulfilled, but that we have over time become estranged from our authentic selves. Layers of fear, doubt, and false performances for the sake of others have built up over time, according to this school of thought, obstructing our ability to show who we truly are. Those who believe in this version of the self urge us to be vulnerable, take off our masks, and let the world see what we really look like.
A more conflicted model of identity was expressed by the Québécois novelist André Berthiaume when he wrote in Contretemps: Nouvelles, “We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.” In the complexity of Berthiaume’s perspective, it is difficult to identify the boundary between the true self and the identities that we perform for the sake of others.
When we choose to wear masks, the decision to do so is a reflection of our own priorities. Even when we feel pressured to perform an identity for others, the agreement to begin the performance represents something of ourselves. Human beings are social animals. We always construct our identities in relationship to others. There is no single true self that exists underneath that, because the needs to relate to others is at the core of how we experience ourselves.
Besides, there are many layers of masks that we wear. Physical masks that we use to cover our faces are the most concrete and static sort, but we also wear masks when we put on makeup, when we adopt facial expressions, or when we use certain kinds of language, knowing the impact they will have on others.
We feel unmasked when we believe that someone has seen through one of our performances of identity, to peek at a more true version of ourselves that we had hoped to keep hidden. Who is to say, though, which version of ourselves is the mask? Who is to say that the performance we create for others is not more true, and the privately held version of ourselves the deception?
The emotional validity of being unmasked can only be judged by the person who feels it. When we feel that our identity has been exposed, then it has been exposed… from our perspective. There’s always another way to look at it, however. Masks can be worn in multiple layers, and some of them we wear to conceal ourselves from ourselves.
