Isabella Orr

One of the only downfalls that I feel comes with being an English major is the unfortunate fact that it has turned me into a book snob. This fact is one that’s hard to carry in an age of rapid decline in literacy rates and of constant TikTok slideshows of the same banal books. I should be happy that people are reading and putting in effort to broaden their minds by spending time away from screens. However, I brace myself every time a BookTok book pops up on my FYP (for you page), exercising restraint to not leave a comment in all caps: “THIS ISN’T FULLY GENUINE!” My biggest problem with BookTok in particular is the performative males. You know the ones: men who think that drinking matcha, listening to Clairo, and even being around a book will help them either find a relationship or achieve inner peace. Usually, it’s the former, but sometimes it can be the latter. There’s nothing wrong with men reading; to villainize such an action plants the idea that men shouldn’t want to better themselves and their brains with all the wonderful information and ideas that books can contribute to society. Whatever their objective is with the charade, though, they should start picking out better books. 

The Problems with Their Books

Picturing a performative male conjures up images of baggy jeans with a carabiner clipped to a belt loop, glasses that may or may not be for show, and a distressed tote or satchel that contains books they “read” as well as their journal. You usually see them at coffee shops or sitting on benches between classes, some iced drink in their hands and a book whose pages they haven’t turned in half an hour, stealing sneaky glances to see if you’re impressed that they’re holding a book. However, they can spawn where you least expect them. Although we didn’t have a name for them then, a few semesters ago, I had an older performative male come up to me, armed with a cappuccino and stories about his time gallivanting about Europe. He talked my ear off about Alexander Pope and his own photography poetry for an hour. I still look back at that interaction with a shudder. 

The first thing one should understand about performative males is that rather than read books, they use these books to boost their engagement and make it seem like they care about women. Their author and book choices always make me groan. On social media especially, I feel that there are very specific kinds of books they choose to present themselves with: books either written by women, which obviously means that all women love them, or books written about women, which should be considered flattering, such as Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Joan Didion’s The White Album, bell hooks’s All About Love, and Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, to name a few regulars. Here are my problems with each of these books.

Slyvia Plath’s The Bell Jar has remained a staple of ninth-grade English syllabi for decades, with teachers focusing on issues of mental illness and societal and gender expectations in the 1950s, as well as the genre of the coming-of-age story. Esther Greenwood is a perfect example of a woman misunderstood by the men in her life and the society around her, mirroring similar circumstances of her author, but these men who don’t actually read the novel would see her as a manic pixie dream girl. However, by not reading the novel, they fail to find out that Esther, while still going through her own mental health struggles, exhibits both a homophobic and racist personality throughout her story. As The Bell Jar is considered a feminist read, men pose frequently with it on TikTok, thinking that it automatically makes them a savior of womankind. They don’t understand that if they want to find like-minded women using this book, then they would actually need to read and be able to discuss said book. 

Joan Didion’s The White Album chronicles life in California in the late ’60s and early ’70s through a series of essays, speaking to the personal and professional experiences that shaped her life in California. Didion is well known for her mainly digestible essay collections and fiction, ranging from topics of grief, to motherhood, to how much Hollywood has changed. However, due to its title, her book could be mistakenly thought of as being about The Beatles’ ninth studio album and is thus picked up by performative males because of this. For example, an avid Beatles fan once popped up on my FYP on social media, enraged by his issues with a book about The Beatles as he held up The White Album. Once he was educated by the comments, he quickly issued an apology then leaned fully into Didion’s minimalism and brutal honesty. Although this guy claimed to have read the book, if others actually took the time to read it rather than pretend, they would be graced with Didion’s gorgeous prose and a critique of performative behavior, something that would whoosh over their heads because, of course, they’re doing this for themselves and not to parade their uniqueness to prospective paramours. 

One would assume if men were reading All About Love by bell hooks then they would be mature enough to understand the nuances of a woman’s feelings when in long or short-term relationships, or women’s feelings in general. However, this simply is not the case. Her book of essays focuses on love as both a choice and action that someone can take to better themselves and others. The fact hooks’s work has become a symbol of a performative male ironically supports her argument that the patriarchy tends to suppress male emotions, instead rewarding them for behaviors that exaggerate masculinity. Yet posing with her book is a way for men to perform in a way they think women want, rather than considering their own thoughts and feelings. One of the main takeaways from hooks is the idea that to truly find love (whatever that means to you), you need to work on yourself first to then be able to be a good person for your partner. Her book has been criticized for its surface-level takes on the patriarchy, but there’s no better place for men to start if they don’t realize the harm that the patriarchy causes to everyone around them, including themselves. 

Lastly, Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. This take of mine will be short because I genuinely despise this book and had to force myself to finish it. It is one of the most misogynistic books I have ever read in my life. If anyone reading this article ever sees a man, in particular, reading this book, please run very, very far away. Men who post positive thoughts on this book or even try to defend it by calling Murakami a genius should be looked at with suspicion because the way that this author writes about women and men’s view of women is extremely shallow, essentially viewing the women in the story as sex rather than full-fledged people. Just because some people consider it a classic doesn’t mean it’s good.

Rounding Out Their Reading List

Performative problems should not require performative solutions. The books I listed above, while popular, speak to the evolution of trends on social media and ideas perpetuated by the culture around us. As this article is published, the trend of the performative male has slowly wound down and will most likely be replaced in the next month or so by some new book or character that people feel intensely about. Still, if men want to parade around their books, I have some to recommend that would help them fare better mentally, emotionally, and academically than they are at the current moment—as long as they actually read them. 

As a companion to The Bell Jar, men should pick up Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. While written in 1985, its themes and messages still ring true in the current day and age, especially the fear surrounding the nonconsensual removal of female rights and bodily autonomy as well as the apt descriptions of the world in which they exist. It remains an appropriate read for the political status of the world today and is a digestible yet terrifying read that would allow book-holding, self-professed males to understand that women are still set back because of the patriarchal and societal expectations created before and during The Bell Jar’s time. 

If they still want to go the Didion route, read My Year of Magical Thinking instead to gain a deeper understanding of the author and her struggles rather than choosing a book by its cover. It chronicles her husband’s passing and the way in which she dealt with it while raising her sick daughter in the aftermath. Beautifully written and extremely haunting, Didion’s work mixes her pain with acceptance and strives to make her readers understand what happened to her husband medically and the hole his absence caused in her life. Reading this book would help create a more nuanced perspective of Didion herself and how relationships change over time—aspects that might help these men choose wisely about the next Didion they want to read.

Angela Davis’s Women, Race, and Class, while less about love and relationships, would allow a more intersectional perspective on the way in which capitalism is connected to race and gender, as well as the racism that occurred throughout the women’s suffrage movement. Reading theory, especially theory written by a woman about the ways in which systems of power created by men have harmed women for centuries, would broaden minds toward how society has always worked against women and what they could do throughout their day-to-day lives to examine these biases, both in regard to capitalism and the patriarchy. 

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Even with this trend of men using books to garner attention from women, it still shows how badly people want to engage with each other about literature.

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Get rid of the Murakami immediately. Pick up I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman instead. It’s literary fiction that chronicles the life of a female narrator who exists in a world completely devoid of men and her escape from the caged society she was brought up in with other women into the real world. Rather than read about a tortured male character, sad because he can’t sleep with his best friend’s girlfriend, read about a woman discovering that even in a world without men, the society they escaped to still runs on the same issues that men created in the first place.

Reading to Engage, Not to Perform

I want to reiterate that there is nothing wrong with anyone reading—ever. Reading is an activity that creates new visions of the world, presents information in fun and creative formats, and allows people to learn about whatever they want due to the variety of books published. Even with this trend of men using books to garner attention from women, it still shows how badly people want to engage with each other about literature. However, the problem with performative male reading lists boils down to the fact that men are viewing these books purely at surface level. Because they aren’t taking time to understand and appreciate what has made these books so well known, they lack the genuine desire to genuinely be able to discuss them with whoever is willing. Actually spending time reading the books they peacock so proudly would do them a world of good, because then they could come up with takes and critiques that allow them to engage deeper with the material and broaden their minds. It’s not performative to exist as a man who cares about literature. In current times of declining literacy rates and absolute nonchalance, to actually care about reading and sustainable information-seeking should be celebrated, not shamed. 

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