Someone once remarked that virginity was a concept invented by men strictly for the pleasure of taking it away from women. If so, authenticity works the same way: no one ever earnestly designated anyone else as authentic. Designating someone as authentic either acts as implicit commentary on the comparatively-inauthentic designator or sarcastically points out the phoniness of the designated. In truth, authenticity is an empty concept, something that, like obscenity, can’t withstand scrutiny. A friend and I once had a long and discursive conversation about whether the authentic New Yorker was the one who grew up in the city or the one who arrived there to reinvent himself. The entire premise, of course, was fatally flawed.

Not to sound too bullshit-academic — rereading that first graf, it’s probably too late — but authenticity becomes most freighted (I have never hated myself as a writer more than this instant) when it’s waterlogged with the idea of place. Here’s something Tom Lee wrote the other day, for instance, about Utz’s Carolina BBQ-style potato chips vs. Utz’s regional mid-Atlantic delicacy, the crab chip:

I realize that regional pride might propel some of you toward Crab Chips. But you’re better than that. Crab Chips are a mirthless joke, an exaggerated accent, a story they tell to tourists.

As Joe Biden would say, whoa whoa whoa, yo, Richie. Hang on a second. I understand that Tom is merely expressing disapproval with the crab chip, but this goes a bit too far. As a crab-chip enthusiast, I’m implicated here in a deep way. Not only is my taste at issue, but so is my DC-transplant identity. All I really wanted to do was throw some Old Bay on my chips. Instead, I’m exposed as a rube, conned by a snake-oil-flavored chip salesman into going along with a self-parodic flock of arrivistes. I even live near the Chili Bowl, for Christ’s sake.

To be clear, Tom is guileless and I read his post through a rather distorting prism. But let it be said: identity is a trap and authenticity is a mistake. Let’s take instead the advice of the late Bernie Mac in House Party 3. Kid felt status-anxiety when he was about to meet his fiance’s upscale parents, and so he came to his Uncle Bernie for advice. "Boy," Bernie Mac sagely intoned, "you gots to be yourself. ‘Cuz if you yourself and somebody don’t like you? Fuck ‘em!"