Harshee's Lit Lounge

Dear Diary,

I’m sitting in the back of this MUN conference and I feel like a total glitch in the system. I’m wearing this black blazer I bought online in a rush—it’s three sizes too big in the shoulders, so I look like a kid playing dress-up in her dad’s closet. Every time I open my mouth to question a delegate, I expect someone to tap me on the shoulder and say, “Okay, joke’s over, please leave the building.”

If they find out I’m just an eighteen-year-old who spends half her time crying over Philosophy homework, it’s over. I’m faking it. But the terrifying part? It’s actually working.

Adolescence to the working world is frequently more of a masquerade than a graduation. The phrase “dress for the job we want,” which implies that identity is something we can pull over our heads like a cashmere jumper, is what we are told to do. However, for many people, particularly those who struggle with Imposter Syndrome, this fashion tactic feels more like a tactical trick than a confidence boost.

The psychology of “faking it” functions at the nexus of the sociology of performance and enclothed cognition. It is the idea that we could eventually fool our internal chemistry into feeling capable if we could imitate the outward signs of success.

“Faking it” is fundamentally a survival strategy. High achievers often fail to internalize their success, according to psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes, who coined the term “Imposter Phenomenon” in 1978. “The performance” fills the gap between the perception of “fraudulence” and actual success.

Enclothed Cognition: Certain psychological phenomena are activated by the clothes we wear. In a 2012 study, people who wore a white lab coat they believed belonged to a doctor performed better on tasks involving attention. We live up to the expectations that come with wearing the dress.

The Feedback Loop: The world treats us as if we are confident when we “fake” confidence. A cognitive dissonance arises from this external reinforcement: “The world thinks I am capable, but I know I am not.”

The Energy Cost: It costs a lot of money to keep up the charade. The “imposter” is very aware of their appearance, speech, and behavior to ensure that there are no “tells” that reveal who they really are.

The paradox of imposter syndrome is that it is mostly people who are actually doing the work who are affected. Because of the Dunning-Kruger effect, a real “fake”—someone who is actually incompetent—is rarely plagued by fear of discovery.

Rather, it is the ambitious eighteen-year-old, the newly promoted manager, or the PhD candidate who feels the burden of the “costume.” For these individuals, the “Fake It Till You Make It” dress is a prosthetic for a lack of belonging. It is a bridge of silk and wool spanning a canyon of self-doubt.

But is it really “faking” if the outcome is genuine? There is a case to be made that identity is not something that resides in a deep, inner soul, but in a series of habits and performances. In “faking” the dress, the posture, and the vocabulary of a professional, we are not deceiving; we are running lines.

With time, the neuroplasticity of the brain hardwires these learned behaviors into the system. The “costume” becomes the “skin.” The horror of the eighteen-year-old in the too-large blazer is not that she is a liar—it’s that she is in the awkward transition of becoming the person that the blazer signifies.

We are all, to some degree, wearing a version of the “Fake It” dress. The point of overcoming Imposter Syndrome is not to get to a place where you don’t feel like a fake every day, but to understand that everyone else is also in the wings, reading their lines. The minute we understand that we are all putting on a show, the mask becomes irrelevant and no longer haunts us. We are not faking it until we “make it” – we are practicing until we become it.