http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1044992,
00.html Book review: Authenticity: Brands, Fakes, Spin
and the Lust for Real Life. Authentic, in this sense,
seems to mean stuff you couldn’t possibly be accused of
wanting because you saw an ad for it.
An authentic life, then, is a life supposedly free from marketers’ manipulations. But can this be achieved? It seems to me that an “authentic” life is as studied a life as anything else: it requires that you be just as aware of what you wear, eat, drink and listen to as anyone else—probably more so. (If my father buys white Nikes, it’s because that’s what they have at the shop. He didn’t not buy white Nikes because he saw an ad for them during Friends, or because he knows they’re a multi-national organisation.)
(Rob Walker makes a similar point in a related article in Slate.) 13:20