you should be performative

how taylor swift, the vampire lestat, & dua lipa performed their way to ruin, catharsis, success...and how you can too

When I started milquetoast, I wanted this to be where I wrote all my spicy musings, and through that I would become the hottest, most intellectual version of myself. (I did not.)

But I will.

So far I’ve mostly posted writing advice, so if you came for only that, I’m sorry, and I’m finally performing what I promised myself, and here is why you should be performative too, including three case studies of my favorite cultural icons, and the learnings and warnings from each.

dua lipa and success

It’s no secret that Dua Lipa is the hottest girl in the world. There’s a TikTok trend where people complain about perfect she is. There’s a viral video about how she is actually one of the best interviewers today, stunning Ocean Vuong, Hernan Diaz, and other high brow novelists by her sincere and thoughtful questions. There’s her rom-com-worthy meet-cute with her now husband, Dua Lipa’s Husband.

When interviewed, she said she believes in vision boards and manifestation—writing things like headlining Glastonbury and working with Tame Impala—both of which she achieved smoothly as butter on her perfectly hot abs.

But once upon a time, Dua was terrible at dancing, then somehow ascended the ultimate hot spectrum to become the most envied girl in the world, so…

her viral panned dance performance in 2017

how the hell did she do it?

I confess—I don’t believe in manifestation, despite Dua. Why would I do visualization, daily affirmations, or a vision board, when so far I’ve gotten everything I’ve wanted? That sounds bad, but I think I’ve figured out why.

I’m an author, and as I’ve progressed in my publishing journey and also on social media, I found out that nobody tells you that part of being a creative is being a public persona. This act of performance connects writers, artists, musicians, and content creators, and if you’re not one of those things I listed—if you’re a CPA, a burnt-out financier, a student, or someone simply just figuring it out—that’s fine. In fact, even better, because we can all learn from professional performers.

After all, we all perform a little, don’t we?

You get Dua Lipa hot (or whatever you want) by just…living it. You don’t need manifestation or vision boards. You just do it. You may have to accept that who you’re projecting is not 100% who you are, but that’s okay. Because performing it will make it real.

You may be thinking, “This sounds like terrible advice!” and maybe it is, but here’s an example of how Dua Lipa helped me:

The other day I felt like old pasta salad, so I thought: What would my life look like if I were the hottest, smartest, most enviable version of myself? What would Dua do? I put on a cute outfit, did a face of makeup, and went to a coffee shop to cosplay a hot, put-together reader.

In the moment it skeeved me out. I was like: this isn’t me! Who tf is she? Why does she have the audacity to have such a life?

But I remembered that Persona Katie wasn’t me, so I took a few photos of her, read this amazing, tragic book (The Good Parts by Evann Normandin), and you know what? Afterward, I looked at the photos I found that the day was great, despite the AQI 100 air quality and how everything had an orange cast from the Canadian wildfires, but it was nice to look at the sun and eat a cute pastry that tasted a bit like warm ass. It didn’t matter that it was all a performance(!) because in my memory and my camera roll, it became real.

I don’t think the original Dua was as hot and smart and wonderful as we all think she is, and maybe part of it is a performance, but if that’s how we perceive her and how she perceives herself, even if it’s not “real”—isn’t it now?

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the vampire lestat and catharsis

I have watched Season 3 one of the greatest shows of modern television, Interview with the Vampire. If you haven’t, Lestat is a hot queer rockstar vampire and the season takes a look at the rise of his stardom. (No spoilers ahead.)

If Dua Lipa is the performer who tried and succeeded in her delusion, then Lestat is the natural performer—who peacocks because that’s who he is. But! He is also someone who thinks: If I pretend everything is fine, then everything is fine. But the season progresses, he starts to realize: but wait, why isn’t everything fine?

Right there is the danger of performance.

You may be thinking: doesn’t this exactly contradict the point you were making with Dua? And the answer is: yes. Two things can be true at once. Performance can give you the life you want, but it can also bury all kind of shit.

he is also his hottest, sluttiest self

I think this season and his arc works because he is peacocking and performing his persona at a scale never-before-seen in his 300-year life. Before, it was just for Louis, his other paramours, and a bit for Théâtre des Vampires. Now he’s a rockstar in the year 2025, and this season brilliantly uses his literal act of performance to shine a light onto the persona he’s maintained and the person underneath. In other words, being perceived is a high stakes pressure cooker for the masks and codes and coping mechanisms he’s developed.

So even though you can use performance to hide your problems, when you spend enough time in a spotlight, you will be forced to confront them.

Honestly, my takeaway from the show is that being a performer is actually really wonderful in that way, because like it or not, I think we all hide things, and being perceived as that persona can eventually help you achieve confrontation and catharsis.

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taylor swift and ruin

I’ll admit: I am a jaded Swiftie. She was (and is) my #1 artist on Spotify. I’ve spent hundreds of hours talking about her, listening to her music, and psychoanalyzing her mental state because I’m a writer and I’m sick in the head. That’s why I’m qualified to say the thesis of Taylor Swift’s persona is in her song mirrorball:

“I’ve never been a natural, all I do is try, try, try.”

But her relationship with performance is more than just thinking she isn’t an inherent performer (most of us aren’t) because she’s developed a persona she both loves and hates.

Being the awkward and never-picked girl-next-door worked when she was an up-and-coming underdog, and it garnered sympathy points when things didn’t go her way. It made her likable. It is the key to her billion-dollar empire because more importantly, it also made her relatable to the millions of other awkward, never-picked girls (me), who grew into millennial women with disposable income to spend on her album variants, really ugly merch, and mega tour (me).

So Taylor Swift loves Taylor Swift^™.

However, her whole identity was formed on being the outcast, and now, ten years later, cosplaying an awkward underdog reads as a victim complex when you’re a billionaire and the powerful musician in the world (but #whitefeminism?)…and people are noticing. And her failing is, I think, in not being able to pivot away from the persona she’s spent ten years with. Many people now hate her for this tone-deaf performance, but she just can’t seem to get away.

So Taylor Swift hates Taylor Swift™.

Even with her latest album The Life of a Showgirl, an album theoretically about her persona itself, it feels inauthentic because we Swifties know she is just cosplaying self-reflection and her supposedly tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of her immense empire and privilege reads as just another phase in her master plan to take over the world.

I could go on about her for a whole article (comment if you want that!) but basically…I think she’s lost the plot, and the downfall of her empire is happening now and will be unavoidable if she doesn’t pivot.

how the hell is this relevant to me?

The wonderful thing about performers like Taylor is that she is the most extreme edge case.

We’re all performers in some way, and Taylor Swift shows us that having a persona is fine, but you also need to be self-aware of who you are and the context you exist in. You need to be adaptable. You need to not let your persona crush you if it is no longer serving you.

so…why should you be performative?

1. You can be as hot as Dua Lipa if you act like it.

2. You may be forced to confront your Traumas like Lestat, and come out a better person (or at least, a more healed person).

3. You should be self-aware, or you will fall like Taylor Swift.