{"id":5209,"date":"2026-10-31T12:22:32","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T10:22:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iuliavs.ro\/?p=5209"},"modified":"2026-11-01T17:53:08","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T15:53:08","slug":"pretul-si-masca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iuliavs.ro\/en\/pretul-si-masca\/","title":{"rendered":"The price and the mask"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who am I when no one is paying and no one is watching?<\/em><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Recently, in different contexts, I came across a phrase in Spanish: me tengo bonita<\/em>. Roughly: \u201cI keep myself pretty.\u201d The words can express care for oneself, attention given to the body, the pleasure of feeling good in your own skin. But in the context where I met them, another idea came along: I take care of being beautiful, and he takes care of paying. The house, the bills, maybe the spa too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around the same time, more and more often, I kept hearing another line online: you’re just larping<\/em>. Meaning \u201cyou're playing a role.\u201d The word comes from live-action role-playing, where people dress up and live, for a few hours or days, the life of a character. Online, it has come to describe someone posing in an identity they don't actually inhabit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two seem to have nothing in common. One is about beauty and money, the other about play and identity. But both led me to the same question:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who am I when no one is paying and no one is watching?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don't think the role is the problem. Nor is beauty. We have always played roles, and caring for the body can be a deep form of self-respect. The problem begins when I forget it's a role. Or when I forget I've set a price.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The old mask: a role that knew it was a role<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

People wore masks long before the internet. In many cultures, the mask was a sacred object.<\/a> Whoever wore it became, for the length of the ritual, the ancestor, the spirit or the animal it stood for. In Romania we have something of this too: the goat dance, the bear dance, the masked figures who walk between the old year and the new.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the beginning of the 20th century, the anthropologist Arnold van Gennep described rites of passage in three stages: separation, transition (the phase he also called liminal<\/em>) and reincorporation. Victor Turner later developed the idea of liminality<\/em>.<\/a> It is that in-between space where you are no longer who you were and not yet who you will be. There, the role and the mask don't hide you. They help you cross.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What mattered was the frame<\/strong>. You knew when the ritual began and when it ended. The community knew you were playing. The mask was put on, and taken off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modern live-action role-playing has kept, without necessarily knowing it, something of this structure. Players step into character at one signal and out at another. In Nordic larp communities there is even a term for what happens at the border between person and character: bleed<\/a><\/em>. The character's emotions sometimes seep into the player, and the player's into the character. Some organisers use this deliberately, as a transformative experience. And many of these practices pay special attention to one particular moment: stepping out of the game and coming back to yourself.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the game lost its frame<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The internet kept the costume but removed the frame. There is no longer a signal for the beginning and one for the end. The role is played non-stop, in front of an audience you cannot see and that does not necessarily know it is a game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As early as the 1950s,<\/a> the sociologist Erving Goffman described social life as a stage. We have a front stage<\/em>, where we play our roles, and a back stage<\/em>, the wings, where we can relax. Goffman did not see this as a lie. He saw it as the ordinary way people live together. But on social media, the back stage becomes a stage too. The make-up-free morning, the kitchen, the crying can all become content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why do we play roles online?<\/mark><\/a> There is no single answer. Here are a few that often overlap:<\/p>\n\n\n\n