What Kind of Performative Male Are You, Based on Your Book of Choice?

What does the performative male ‘read?’

The quotation marks above are deliberate—as his name suggests, the performative male may well be ‘performing’ the act of reading to complete his whole vibe. Just any book will do to finish the look, but choosing certain authors or titles will have a drastic effect on your overall aura. 

Do you want to convince people that you’re a sensitive soul, or that you’re too cerebral for small talk? Or that perhaps you care about feminism enough to explain it to women? You’re in luck—here’s a curated list for every kind of performance you wish to employ:

‘I take life too seriously.’

This guy will almost always begin conversations by problematizing ‘the human condition’ and quote either Albert Camus or Fyodor Dostoyevsky to illustrate how life is either absurd, meaningless, or filled with moral ambiguity. 

In the process of arriving at an incomprehensible conclusion about life, he inadvertently proves (in his head) that he is better than you. 

His reading list: Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, whose name impresses enough); The Stranger, Myth of Sisyphus (Albert Camus, the poster boy of the absurd)

‘I care about feminism!’

He cares about women, because he’s read (or is attempting to read) the book written by that author quoted by Beyoncé for one of her songs, which should be a good thing, right? If she quoted her, then she should be an important feminist author… right? (He may or may not remember the full name of the writer, even if he has the book.)

His reading list: We Should All Be Feminists (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie), for obvious reasons; The Second Sex (Simone de Beauvoir); The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath)

‘I understand everyone.’

He picks up a psychology book once, and suddenly everyone is a case study waiting to be understood. Or maybe he’s read a bit about concepts like fluidity and arbitrariness, and now everything is a construct. (Ironically, he doesn’t see how his own performance is one.)

His reading list: Man and his Symbols (Carl Jung, because Sigmund Freud is an obvious choice); Gender Trouble (Judith Butler, because understanding gender shows such sensitivity.)

‘I wake up at 4AM every day.’

Yes, we get it: he knows the rules of power, your habits are atomic, and your life is a daily grind… which is interesting, considering that hanging out in a third wave coffee shop for an hour while reading an Elon Musk-adjacent book seems like the ultimate contradiction. (Maybe it’s part of his 20-hour power schedule.)

His reading list: The Art of War (Sun Tzu, because every day is a war for him); Atomic Habits (James Clear, because life is meant to be over-optimized); Start With Why (Simon Sinek; because nothing else matters without purpose, he says)

‘I just love niche pop culture.’

He drops names as if they were his closest friends—the more obscure and far detached from the current time, the better. Because there’s no other way to say ‘I’m so cultured!’ more subtly than referencing icons whose names you can read on a gravestone. 

His reading list: anything written by Haruki Murakami, really, because this celebrated author just loves to pepper his books with The Beatles songs or anything that Chet Baker or Duke Ellington recorded. He probably started with Norwegian Wood and is now trying to finish 1Q84.

Photos courtesy Riot Hill x Tatras, AMIRI, Zegna, Will Chavarria, Wooyoungmi