Column 05: Is everyone editing themselves?
On the versions of us we keep, and the ones we quietly erase
I’ve been thinking about how much of ourselves we hide. Not dramatically - not with grand lies or reinventions - but in the small, everyday edits we make without noticing. The pauses before we reply. The sentences we soften. The impulses we swallow.
It struck me the other day that every person I know is walking around with at least two versions of themselves: the one they show and the one they curate. Sometimes they’re almost identical; sometimes they barely recognize each other.
Maybe it starts with wanting to be polite, wanting to be liked, or wanting to avoid the kind of attention that feels uncomfortable. But little by little, we sand down the edges. We learn which parts of ourselves feel “too much,” and we dim them. We notice which traits receive praise, and we brighten those. Before long, we’re editing without even meaning to: a small trim here, an omission there - a personality shaped like a paragraph under revision.
And lately, I’ve begun to notice an entire aesthetic built around this editing - not just personal, but cultural. Everywhere I look, someone is teaching us how to become a sleeker, smoother version of ourselves: “How to be the chicest version of you”, “How to master effortless elegance” and an occasional “How to be the smartest one at the table”.
It feels as though the world is offering endless tutorials on how to become a better self - but a better self according to whom?
There’s something almost eerie about it. A quiet revolution of self-curation, subtle enough to feel natural, pervasive enough to feel inescapable. Not the loud reinventions of the past - the dramatic (movie-ish) glow-ups, the bold declarations - but a soft, glossy refinement. A smoothing of the roughness, the unpredictability, the inconvenient edges that make us human.
We call it taste. We call it discipline. We call it aesthetic. But I can’t help wondering if it’s just another form of self-erasure - a way of sanding ourselves into palatable shapes.
What fascinates me is the tone of these articles: they aren’t commanding, they’re coaxing. They promise a version of ourselves that feels just out of reach but tantalizingly achievable. As if a better life were simply a matter of better lighting, better habits, better sentences.
It’s very seductive, of course. Who wouldn’t want to be the “effortlessly chic” one?
But I wonder what we lose in the process - what happens to the parts of us that don’t fit into the template, the ones that resist polish. Is this a form of ambition? Or a new kind of conformity dressed up as self-improvement? A collective leaning toward the same quiet, curated perfection?
Sometimes I worry that we are becoming supporting actors in our own lives - performing refinement instead of living it, editing instead of existing. We’re told to be unique, but the instructions are strangely identical. And then it scares me: what if the most interesting parts of us are the ones we keep trying to rewrite?
Gosh, I loved reading this. I just want to be a damn person. Imperfect, approachable, the kind of person who makes other people feel okay to be themselves.
The inconvenient edges. Don’t they make us, us?
Self erasure really is just that, erasing parts of ourselves. I think it’s beautiful that we live in a time where we know we can heal some of our trauma and become a little more composed. But isn’t there something deeply endearing about the imperfections that make our friends who they are? The friend who struggles with vulnerability but gives in subtle ways that quietly reveal such a huge heart. It makes you melt.
Maybe we can pay attention to the parts that hurt us, but stop there. Start accepting ourselves and our vulnerabilities instead of trying to sand them down.
I get intensely shy around new people. I get nervous and anxious and I want everyone to feel happy and at ease. I don’t think people expect that from me. From the outside I look fairly put together, but as people get to know me they realise I am a bit of a hot mess. And funnily enough, it’s that part of me that allows me to connect with almost anyone.
I’m learning to let that part be. It is me. A friend of mine once told me it was endearing and it changed my perspective of it.
I have always felt ashamed of my scattiness, my hot messiness. But that very thing that makes me cringe, is what the people who are meant for me, love about me. My complete lack of coolness. hahhaha
Thanks for writing this <3
We have become so innately performative, it's scary. You absolutely nailed it, the analogies to refering our existence as double lives. It is indeed alarming that we want to sabotage our personalities for being someone we don't even recognise, parts of us that make us who we are just to conform to a standard.