As humans, we often feel the need to put up a front or facade for those that we do not know or that we are not close to. It is human nature to want to impress someone or make them believe that we are composed and have our life together. Selectiveness plays a big role in this act, we select those that we believe will not judge us for having issues or problems and essentially, being human. We create this concept of “frontstage”, meaning that we delegate certain things to the “front” or outer shell of our lives that we know people will see. We keep our dirty laundry and problems in the back of the stage so that no one can see that our lives are not perfect.
In a recent reading by, Carlos Andres Gomez titled, Man Up: Cracking the Code of Modern Manhood, he discusses a frontstage vs. backstage example in his life which I think is also very relatable in many other people's lives. He exclaims that his parents put on this role for him and his sister, this role included that everything be fine and perfect and that they were in the perfect relationship. There is no such thing as a perfect relationship, everyone has issues that they face. Gomez describes a day where he walked downstairs and heard his parents fighting, previous to this day, he had no idea that they had ever had a disagreement and to hear them in an argument crushed him. His parents hid things from the “frontstage” of their relationship so that their children would believe that nothing was ever wrong.
This entire concept of feeling the need to hide imperfections and problems from not just society, but from the people that you love has a really negative effect on society today. More often than not, we care more about concealing our issues and making the “frontstage” of our lives this pretty and perfect image. When we let the “frontstage” of our lives take precedence over working on our own trials and problems, we leave room for things such as mental health issues. Model Alexis Ren, faced this issue directly, Ren is known for her Sports Illustrated body and rising social media following. While posting pictures of what seemed to be a perfect life traveling from country to country with her model boyfriend, and keeping her fans well educated on the status of her body with bikini photo after bikini photo, we all had no idea that Ren was actually struggling with an eating disorder. She spent all of her time perfecting the “frontstage” of her life and making this image the most perfect that it could have ever been, when in reality, what was happening behind doors, or in the “backstage”, was actually slowly killing her.
To this day, we are taught to conceal our problems from the world and to deal with them in a private matter. Although dealing with things in a private matter can be beneficial, we should never feel like we have to put a front up to make our lives seem “perfect”. The reality of life is that nothing is perfect, this is what makes us human. So why do we continuously feel like we have to make our “frontstage” something that we are not?
https://blackboard.boisestate.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-5788082-dt-content-rid-28683846_1/courses/1189-72857COMM160001/1183-13914COMM160001_ImportedContent_20180108011344/Andres%20Gomez%20Fear.pdf
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