PHONY

My 13 year old brother and I actually had a conversation of some true substance over this past Thanksgiving break. A miracle in itself that we actually spoke, myself, Matthew, and my friend Daniel, 16, from New York City talked about our town and the people that are in it and tried to make some comparisons to other places that we’ve been. We mentioned the “je ne sais quois” of the teenagers in France and the wildness and originality of Amsterdam. When Dan asked about Port Washington Matt’s eyes went up and to the side and I sat just thinking about some of the main characteristics that come to mind when thinking about my peers, my own friends. It hit me, “we are all kind of phony”, I said. Daniel asked us to explain more and Matt responded with, “Yeah, we’re all phony. Not real.” The minute he said that I knew that we had been taken on the wrong track.

You cannot define phony with the word unreal. The idea of phony is real, it has more realness and credibility then many other aspects of our society. It exists and its there and obviously if it was one of the first words that comes to my mind about our town then of course it has some true significance. The images that people are portraying to each other, although they might not be true to the person’s identity, they are real and can be seen throughout the world.

The word real is so vague. My take on it is that if you are concerning yourself with an issue or a thing or an idea then it must be real. Maybe its not plausible in terms of factors of our life but it is still real.

Many of us can admit that we try to make ourselves something that we are not to please those around us and make a reflection that is presentable and accepted in terms of our society’s standards and beliefs. Often, these portrayals are not accurate to the person that we really are. The aura or image that we are giving off is fake. Fake, although not ideal, is a much better word to use to describe the word phony.

What is phony? Phony is the row of girls in your math class all wearing the same jeans, the same bag, and the same shirt. Besides their faces, you have no way of deciphering a true difference in person between these individuals. One could almost consider them as one. Phony is the girl who claims she loves to drink yet spends every Saturday night at parties with friends while she pretends to sip her drink or sneaks out to the bathroom every couple of shots. She is trying to act in a way that she obviously does not enjoy and does not want to do just to appease her friends. This is a prime example of how the phony images that many of us display can truly affect the way other view us, the way we feel, and our behavior. This is not to say that girls are the only victims of the condemned phony image, boys are just as guilty, but this stereotype of lacking originality is one the girls are constantly associated with and one that we have yet to overcome.

Phony is the misleading and defrauding of those around us. By pretending that we are something that we are not, whether it is in terms of physical characteristics or behavior, we are denying our true identity and who we are inside. Although we often think that our efforts to disguise ourselves are convincing we all know that deep down there is one part or another of us that we can call phony.