Why 2017 is the year of authenticity?
2016 was a year of political turmoil, the insurmountable deaths of icons and public figures, where the cries of Syrian children became silenced, where black lives mattered more than ever and where social media became more of an addiction than smoking and alcohol put together. All of which have been permeated in some way by inauthenticity or fake-ness.
2017 needs to be different, this is the year we strip our facades and show our true colours, the year we rid our fake tan and let plastic surgeons go bust. Fake-ness comes in many different forms and pervades many different facets of life. Fake-ness is sneaky and is there to trick and fool you, why would we want something so damaging to enter 2017.
Unfortunately this inenauthenticity has been 2016's common cold. Donald trump physically embodies this inauthenticity, through his policies, his salesman rhetoric and his fake tan, with that he managed to blunder his way through one of the most watched elections of all time.
Social media was plastered and is still covered with women and girls who set up an unrealistic representation of their lives in order to gain social status, likes and follows. Women and men who feel the need to keep up with the trend to maintain oneself to a unrealistic and perfect state.
Black lives matter has been 2016's slogan since the election results a really enlightening moment for the world and not in a good way. We uncover the reality of this facade that the US has kept up for years this idea of a progressive state which we see now is completely fake and untrue.
Finally the Syrian crisis, so much talk in the media around Syria so many pleads for help across the world, yet Syria is still in the same position it was 5 years ago. Children are still dying, people are still killing and the dust has truly never settled since the turmoil began. So for me these fake campaigns, documentaries aren't really there to help but are there to make out something is being done, while the world just watches in silence.
So we see that the pervasiveness of this unenauthenticity has clearly penetrated too much out our lives in a big way for us not to ignore it. So this year 2017 will be the year of authenticity, where we strip everything synthetic and feel empowered by our natural selves. Where we embrace our skin, our backgrounds, our talents, our talentlessness, our passions and beliefs, our ideologies and even our flaws.