Do You Want It, Or Do You Want To Be Seen Having It?

Do you actually want it, or do you just want to be seen having it?
It’s a difficult question to answer.

Especially now, when almost everything we do has to be displayed and presented to an audience. The restaurant visit, the holiday, the book you’re reading, the hobby you suddenly became very passionate about, they all become a performance. If nobody knew you had it, would you still want it?

Imagine you wake up tomorrow and you are no longer being perceived. No stories, no posts, no one to accidentally or intentionally make jealous. There is no way to prove where you went, what you bought, or what you were doing on a random Wednesday evening. Would you still go? Or does some of the pleasure disappear when there is no possibility of being perceived?

Sometimes, there is a kind of wanting that is genuine, that comes from somewhere deep inside ourselves and holds strong regardless of whether it is seen or not.

But more often, there’s a particular kind of desire that doesn’t seem to exist only for ourselves. We want the thing, but what we might want even more is the image of ourselves that comes with owning it.

We want to be the person who reads that book, does that workout, knows that café, wears that brand. The activity itself becomes secondary to what it says about us. We have always expressed ourselves through our clothing, accessories, and interests. For women especially, appearance and self-presentation have long been tied to social status — and now, that performance no longer ends with the people we encounter in real life. We also have to make ourselves presentable online.

Simone de Beauvoir was writing about this long before we posted online. In The Second Sex (1949), she examines how femininity is shaped not simply as something innate, but through social expectations and through the position women occupy in relation to others. She also writes about clothing, adornment, and appearance as part of the way femininity is performed and socially recognized. Read through the lens of our current online lives, her work raises a question that feels remarkably familiar: how much of the way we present ourselves is really for ourselves, and how much is shaped by the knowledge that we are being looked at?

This feels particularly important when so much of our lives is now presented for everyone to see and judge. There is something very specific about the pressure to make yourself desirable. You don't just have to live an interesting life, you have to look like you are living one. When do you separate the things that make you look good from the things that actually make you feel good?

Your interests become part of your personal branding. You might not choose things that genuinely make you happy because you find them less cool, less chic. Somewhere between enjoying something and displaying it, the line starts to blur.

The issue here is that when the desire to be seen with the thing is bigger than actually owning it, the fulfillment runs out quickly. You purchase it, you have it, you show it off or mention it casually to others, and then you have nothing left. Only the thing, but no satisfaction.

It was never about the thing, but about the performance of it all.

This is what so much advertising and consumer culture is built on. Products are sold through the promise of becoming a more desirable version of yourself. It's the future image of who you could be with it. More enviable. More desirable. More successful. More you.

We curate ourselves all the time. And there’s a cost attached to that. We choose the restaurant that looks best in pictures, the holiday that looks spontaneous despite having been planned months ago. We don't just consume anymore. We start chasing optics over substance, doing something for how it appears rather than for how it makes us feel.

Where does wanting end and performing begin?

Maybe you really do want to become a reader. But do you want to read, or do you want to be a person who reads? Do you love running, or do you love the identity of being a runner? Would you still dress up if nobody was going to see the outfit? Would you still take the trip if there were no camera? And perhaps the most crucial question: would you still do it if no one could ever know about it?

There is something almost odd about doing things that cannot be documented. Going to a concert and keeping your phone in your bag. Cooking something and not photographing the finished plate. It sounds almost wholesome, which might be exactly why it feels so unfamiliar.

We have become used to having a kind of evidence for everything we do. If there is a photograph, it happened. If nobody saw it, did it really count?

There is a strange fear underneath this: the thought that something didn’t happen if it isn't recorded. But maybe the opposite is true. Constantly capturing an experience can stop us from actually experiencing it. You are no longer just at the concert. You are also thinking about how to get the best video, about how the concert looks. You aren't just having dinner. You're deciding whether the plate is photogenic enough. The audience is present even when nobody is physically watching.

This isn't to say that we’re above any of it, or that we shouldn’t share our lives or celebrate special moments with others. Being seen feels good. Sharing things is fun. Sometimes the picture is part of the memory.

The problem is less the perception itself and more when we can no longer tell the difference between performance and desire.

Maybe, before wanting something, it’s worth removing the audience from the equation. Buy the thing because you like it, not because you know it makes you likable.

Because perhaps the coolest thing you can own right now is something that doesn’t lose its value in silence.



by Julia Petersen