Be Real: The Art of Being Authentic Online

A Scholar’s Roots: The Body Positivity Movement

As an undergraduate, Brathwaite initially intended to pursue a path to medical school. She had always been interested in women’s health, and, while working in a nutrition lab at Cornell, she began to help with their website for women’s cardiac health intervention. Her engagement with the digital space led to a key realization: She could study health outcomes and think about media in an academic setting. Brathwaite swiftly pivoted to a major in communications. In a research methods class during her junior year, she designed a study about body image and Instagram use—a project that would set the stage for her career to come. 

A part of Brathwaite’s academic research focuses on the body positivity movement, a political phenomenon that has experienced a rise and fall in the past decade. “It started as an online grassroots movement that had its history in the era of civil rights,” she says. The fat positivity and Black is Beautiful movements in the 1960s urged acceptance of people whose appearance was outside of what was represented in mass media. 

For Brathwaite, it was the beginning of seeing authenticity as part of a social movement. The movement’s origins in civil rights, she argues, has been at best watered down and at worst elided completely by posts on social media. “Body positivity isn’t just some hashtag that you use on a selfie, or including people just to include them,” Brathwaite explains. “It’s not an appearance-based social movement, but a movement that’s accepting of all people.” 

Body positivity reached its peak during the height of the COVID pandemic, when social media displayed the power of heightened visibility. Social media users began to engage with content produced by traditionally marginalized people. Being body positive meant loving and supporting one’s authentic self, full stop—without airbrushing or alteration. 

“Because of this momentum, we did see change in terms of consumerism and representation,” Brathwaite says. “But at the same time, you saw people posting about things that were what they called ‘body positive,’ but were not necessarily what you would consider real body positivity.” She cites influencers selling makeup and weight loss pills, and companies utilizing body positivity in their rhetoric, but not having adequate representation in their advertisements. Was it real, or was it all in service of making money?

Authenticity, 2026-Style

Max Beebe (A.B. ’26), a communication and media major, took Brathwaite’s class last fall. Before his introduction to the subject, he speculated that authenticity just meant being “real.” But now that the course has ended, he finds much more nuance in the concept. 

“To me, authenticity is about whether the version of yourself you’re presenting online is still an honest representation of who you are,” he says. “Where I think authenticity starts to break down is when people intentionally mislead others or create a version of themselves that doesn’t really exist offline.”

Brathwaite has her students reflect on the course’s content by writing papers on a weekly theme, which often make them think critically about their own social media habits. In class, she and the students continually return to a common thesis. “With social media, self-presentation and impression management is everything,” she says. “You can virtue-signal and benefit from the inclusion of the social movement” by generating content that is performative and for personal gain, even when the user is not a true believer.

Literacy, a How-To Guide

In this fast-paced digital world, what is a social media user to do? Brathwaite wants her students to leave the course with a critical understanding of self-presentation. 

“What you’re seeing is somewhat of a simulation,” she says. “It’s what people want you to see.” She promotes social media literacy, knowing that many people—herself included—will always interact with various platforms.” 

Brathwaite believes that social media use is here to stay, even with all of its pitfalls. Her students are immersed in this world, and she doesn’t necessarily want to steer them away. Rather, she says, “I want them to understand how to be a little more adept.”