Editor’s Letter: Keeping It Real

Greg Hudson May 2, 2017

OUR MAY 2017 ISSUE, FEATURING COVER STAR ZAC EFRON, IS NOW ON STANDS.

Aside from the unfortunate period when I was an 11-year-old on the cusp of puberty with hair down to my chin — and thus constantly mistaken for a little girl, and not Jonathan Taylor Thomas, as was my hope — the last time I flirted with letting my hair grow was during my final year of university. It did not go well.

Though I control it with product, if left alone, or attacked by humidity (a constant danger in springtime Toronto), my hair is a medusa-like mass of chaos and curls. Back then, though, I had a strange relationship with hair products. For reasons I can’t fathom now, I felt that it would be inauthentic of me to do much to tame my curls. My hair was my hair, and to pretend it was any other way would be phony. Thankfully, this same unreasonable devotion to authenticity didn’t extend to my use of deodorant. Although to be fair, I was hardly the first young person to hold contradictory beliefs.

Modern society — and especially my generation — has a complex relationship with authenticity. We claim to value it, but we struggle to live it (we are not the first generation to face that challenge). We reward brands and politicians who seem to “keep it real,” as the kids used to say, but then, on social media, we present a life that is curated: on brand, but not entirely true. Call it authentic-adjacent.

But the bigger the brand, the less adjacency we accept. Recently, Pepsi released an ad telling the story of how Kendall Jenner used a can of Pepsi to broker peace between attractive protestors, marching the way cool protestors do, (only without a lame cause to kill their buzz) and a group of suspicious police. The Internet did not approve. It was a cynical, tone-deaf attempt to co-opt authentic resistance, and it made the brand seem embarrassingly out of touch. Pepsi apologized and retracted the ad.

And while my idealistic heart thrilled at my generation’s rejection of Pepsi’s failed attempt at being woke, it made me think about the work I do. Sharp is celebrating its tenth anniversary. For a decade, we’ve covered travel, cars, timepieces, and gear that our readers can afford and enjoy, but that are, ahem, presently out of my personal price range. Maybe that makes me a phony. Only, sports reporters, theatre critics, even political pundits: we’re all in the same business of writing about lives that we experience vicariously. Unlike the in-house marketers at Pepsi, our interest is genuine, and the knowledge gained through that interest is real.

It’s the same way my hair these days is totally my hair — I’m not pretending it doesn’t have some curl, I’m just authentically interested in it not looking messed up.