Last week in this column I wrote about talent and how I think it is an unhealthy societal construct that stops people from trying or pursuing things they do not feel they have some ''natural'' aptitude for.
Authenticity comes into this argument, too, and while I mentioned it briefly last week, it is a subject that deserves its own time and space.
Typically, we tend to divide most, if not all, elements of pop culture into the authentic and the inauthentic.
To make it very simple, we would usually consider a rock band like Nirvana to be authentic, while we would consider a boy band like One Direction, or a pop singer like Britney Spears, to be inauthentic.
Or, people typically consider boring farts like Wordsworth to be paragons of authenticity, while the authors of much maligned ''chick-lit'' are inauthentic nonsense-spillers.
Basically, this model of authenticity implies we should take some elements of culture seriously, and some we shouldn't.
Essentially, we think some art comes from a place of pure talent and inspiration, and is designed to broaden our knowledge of the human psyche, while other art is simply a manipulative moneymaking venture.
The problem with pure talent and inspiration is that it does not exist.
You can feel as overcome as you like by the sight of Tintern Abbey, but that on its own is not going to write you a poem, and it is certainly not going to get said poem published and distributed.
Without going too far down this path, in a capitalist society you cannot really get anywhere further than your own head without commodifying at least some part of your artistic endeavour, be it your poem or your singing, dancing, performing self.
The trouble with authenticity is that we think of things as being completely one or the other, when it really does not work that way.
There are elements of genuine inspiration in almost everything, just as there are equal, if not greater, elements of construction.
A band like Nirvana gains its authenticity stamp because it seems as if these guys are writing their own music and performing it because they just have to; their thoughts and feelings just beg to be shared with the world.
On the contrary, pop artists often do not write their own music and so it seems you are not seeing the real them.
But just as a team of songwriters deliberately and consciously decided Britney was going to dress up like a schoolgirl and sing her songs into a lollipop, so did Nirvana make the conscious decision to turn up the overdrive on their guitars and slouch about in ripped jeans and cardigans.
Nirvana's image is no less considered than any pop stars, it just does not make as much money and Kurt Cobain took himself a lot more seriously than Britney.
When it comes down to it, the content of pop songs versus rock songs, and the content of highbrow literature versus paperback novels, is not really that different.
What most art has in common is that it considers what people are experiencing in their day-to-day lives, and what people would like to experience that they are not necessarily experiencing already.
What is different is that sometimes what is expressed is personal, and sometimes it is set up by people other than whoever is performing it, or it is designed to appeal to a certain demographic.
The sentiment is no less genuine, and neither is the delivery.
What rattles me about authenticity is that believing in it is a way of taking people and what they like less seriously.
You can criticise inauthenticity as much as you like, but it will never change the fact that we are all out here performing our public personas with as much deliberation as the publicity department at Sony, every day.
Millie Lovelock is a Dunedin student.
