Why are we so obsessed with being 'unrecognizable'?

Self-transformation is all the rage — but should it be?

I’m a big consumer of self-improvement content — I’ll admit it.

A meal prep hack that will change my life? Let’s do it. An evidence-based morning routine that will turbo-charge my productivity for the rest of the day? Yes, please. A digital detox that will clear my mind and make way for my biggest insights? Sign me up.

I’m deeply and intuitively drawn to messaging that promises the dawning of a new me on the other side of a small or tedious action. What could be more alluring than the thought that your tiredness, laziness, overwhelm, etc. could be easily erased with a series of small lifestyle switches?

And the folks creating this content know that weakness well. They often promise an unrecognizable you.

They know that the human mind is relentlessly unsatisfied, discontent, always ready for an upgrade, a big change. Particularly when it comes to our selves — which are notoriously resistant to overhauling change. They know that you’re not just looking for a small improvement. You’re looking to become someone different, someone better.

What I find most interesting about this appeal to unrecognizability is its underlying assumption of the self’s otherwise relentless stability.

Without some outside routine or transformative life hack, we will keep plodding along as our ordinary selves — dutifully recognizable.

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Why we’re so scared to be recognizable

For the famous existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, this complacency was a grave mistake. According to him, we are, at our core, nothingness: blank slates, unwritten pages.

Our self-perception, in all its grand illusion, is stifling. We ought to fight off a singular, recognizable identity at all costs. The recognizable self is the pigeon-holed, deprived self.

In the face of such a claustrophobic self, we must plunge headfirst into the vertigo-inducing anxiety of letting ourselves unfold in the present. No preconceived notions, no justifications, no limitations (other than those required to keep society functioning normally).

Because if we opt out of this plunge, we instead find ourselves wading through the waters of inauthenticity, disappointment, resentment. We’ve acted in Sartre’s notorious bad faith. We’ve mistaken ourselves for objects with fixed properties and boundaries — the exact opposite of what we truly are.

And let’s not forget the social dimension here, too.

We’re not merely scared of being recognizable to ourselves; we’re scared of being recognizable to others.

More precisely, we’re irresistibly drawn to the idea of transforming someone else’s perception of us. It’s simpler (although still an uphill battle) to change my perception of myself — but it’s nearly impossible to change someone else’s perception of me.

Even worse, we rarely know what the Other’s perception of us even is in the first place. So, we want to get some control back. And becoming unrecognizable is such an enticing way to do it.

It’s why social media became such a powerful narrative tool. You can craft a persona, an aesthetic that may or may not match how you really feel about yourself (because remember, there is no actual persona under all that representation; there’s just the ever-evolving consciousness that is you.)

The self becomes, in this way, a performance for others, a charade. We start to believe that we can control other people’s perception of us. Feeling underestimated, we turn to futile attempts to prove that we’re the main character in our story, rather than simply being it.

I recently had my hair highlighted for the first time. I was excited to emerge as a new me, a new person who did things I didn’t characteristically do and didn’t look how I characteristically looked.

I took the unrecognizability bait. I wanted control over something I had no business ever getting control over: other people’s perceptions of me.

To be clear, I’m still happy I had it done — but I’m no longer deluding myself with the belief that becoming slightly less recognizable has altered my being in any way. It’s just a superficial way of engaging with the true freedom at our core.

Instead, in an effort to connect with our real potential, we’re urged to lean into our future projects, rejecting the tendency to reduce ourselves to who and what we’ve been up to this point. We should be relentlessly focused on the future, knowing that our future is ongoing, unspooling before us with each action we take. Unconcerned with the Other’s perception of us.

It’s because of this future focus that I believe a small part of Sartre would have still been a fan of the modern era’s dream of unrecognizability, of trying new things without the self-limiting belief that this isn’t what I normally do.

In its most earnest version, isn’t that freedom manifested?

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When we don’t want to be ourselves anymore

But Sartre’s attitude has somehow slipped beyond the pages of philosophy and into mainstream discourse. Perhaps, a part of us has always yearned to be unrecognizable, renewed, transformed — but now there are people shouting from the rooftops that you, yes you, can indeed become unrecognizable if you get into meal prepping or running or ice bathing or reading or investing or….

But it’s exhausting to keep up with these fads, or even the real, serious lifestyles that will, in fact, better us. In lieu of the true effort that might really promise to transform us, many of us chase something else: the sweet anonymity of escapism.

Escapism is, and has always been, rampant. We love to take ourselves out of the limited confines of our actual self. And it takes so many different forms: movies, novels, naps, extensive travel, video games, alcohol, drugs — and the list goes on.

When the work required to become a “new person” looks too daunting, we take refuge in the comfort of a manufactured world that pulls us out of ourselves nonetheless. Sometimes it’s healthy, and sometimes it’s not. But the end goal is the same: to temporarily lose ourselves. To be someone different for a little while.

And these methods are remarkably effective. Mind-altering substances are known and used for their reliable way of quieting the prefrontal cortex activity that comprises the bulk of what we call ‘the self.’ When we watch a show or read a novel, we start to identify with the main character in a way that rivals our own self-concept — we become the character.

But none of this escapism is quite satisfying enough. We know that dopamine culture can’t actually transform us; it simply offers temporary relief from the discomfort of living a life in “bad faith.” To renew ourselves requires work and investment and perhaps new ways of thinking about ourselves.

I’ll argue, though, that we shouldn’t be so quick to throw away the illusory self we’ve learned to inhabit. In fact, I find comfort and value in many of my key identities — like those of being a writer and a woman, among others.

I don’t really want to be unrecognizable; I just want to be good and successful and appreciated within the confines of those loose but cherished identities.

Perhaps a better approach than setting the recognizable self on fire would be to visualize a successful version of ourselves and then try, over time, to coax it into being — as athletes do right before a big game.

We’re not pinning all our hopes on a new exercise regime — or nestling ourselves in the sleepy hollow of escapism. We’re moving forward with purpose and conviction, shedding bad faith and inauthenticity as we go. A shimmering, achievable goal in mind.

We’re embracing the corners of our identities while knowing that they do not and cannot define us.

I am large; I contain multitudes — Walt Whitman

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