Reality Check

Is trying to show how authentic you are the realest thing you can do?

Katy Perry is a pop star with a new album to promote. Katy Perry is a woman on a quest for authenticity. These two facts intersected frequently this past spring and summer, though perhaps never more acutely than on June 10, when the singer sat down with Dr. Siri Singh, psychoanalyst to the stars, for a therapy session. Over the course of an hour, Perry spoke openly about her childhood traumas (growing up Christian), her ongoing mental health struggles (depression) and her complicated relationship with her public image (her indelible connection with cupcake bikinis and artificial hair hues). What Perry really wants is to reconnect with Katheryn Hudson—the person behind the pop megabrand. “That is a little bit of why I cut my hair, because I really want to be my authentic self, like 100 per cent,” she confided to Singh, though technically nothing about the conversation was confidential; Perry’s therapy session was broadcast on YouTube as part of a 96-hour live-streaming event—a round-the-clock reality show slash personal exploration slash promotional event. #WorldWideWitness.

A couple of weeks later, the Katy Perry authenticity tour arrived at Glastonbury, a festival more commonly associated with Pitchfork music snobs than Perry’s bubble gum fan base. There, she performed a mix of classics (“Teenage Dream”!) and some of her new “purposeful pop” songs, all while dressed in a bejewelled body stocking emblazoned with a cartoonish eye. Eyes are central in the imagery of Perry’s Witness tour—a somewhat heavyhanded flick at her new-found woke-ness. So are “real experiences,” which are presumably what she was chasing when she ended her Glastonbury set by diving into the crowd. “I’ve lost my shoes in a mosh pit but found my soul,” Perry declared, sounding a lot like your aunt on Facebook. Everything about her recent authenticity quest smacks of desperation and artifice—the only real question