Happy New You!

Lexie Patterson

Don’t ditch the New Year’s resolution just yet, there are other you’s to be discovered. 

“We’re all playing a part; it’s all smoke and mirrors.” Cindy Sherman, Untitled #479 (1975)

 The bells chime. It’s 2026 and the annual theatre of self-reinvention begins again. As the Christmas lights come down and the turkey’s been polished off, we enter the darkest, coldest months of all. Despite the challenging bleakness of this time of the year, we insist that this is the perfect moment to pull on the lycra, join the local gym, force down a green juice, and ask for a haircut best described as brave. On top of that, many commit to dry January, abandoning the booze for a month of sobriety. New year, new you! These yearly rituals have been birthed from 20^th century mass advertising and consumer culture, when the rise of print, radio and television began to shape lifestyles. Now, apps like Pinterest are happy to sell you an entirely new 2026 self, one that requires ditching all your old frocks and buying new ones. We invest in 2026 journalling, fitness vision boards and healthy eating, desperately searching for a new version of ourselves. 

“It’s 2026, and the annual theatre of self-reinvention begins again.” Pinterest, 2 January 2026

Cindy Sherman is undoubtedly the queen of the reinvention of the self. As she performs various roles on camera, we also in the new year seek to slip between personas. ‘Untitled 479’ (1981) depicts Sherman transforming across a series of self-portraits transitioning from a traditionally masculine role in shirt, suit, and glasses, to a glamourous woman in drag, a full face of white, theatrical makeup. Similarly, the new year, new me convert reaches for the gym kit, the pottery wheel, the second-hand saxophone. We’ve got all the gear and no idea, and we convince ourselves that by having the props it means we really must be that person. As Sherman presents herself morphing and adapting with each layer of makeup she applies, the further she leans into the role, until she becomes the character entirely. Where the first persona is deadpan, by the last she’s all performance, head tilted back, shoulders forward and cigarette perfectly poised. Clearly identity is constructed and always shifting. We’re all playing a part; it’s all smoke and mirrors. 

In another series, Bus Riders, (1976), Sherman performs the characters you might spot waiting for the bus: a commuter in shades and a suit, a girl with dodgy hair extensions and a cigarette. At New Year, eager to re-set and refresh, I feel I could slip from one persona to another just as easily. Sherman transforms so completely that she no longer recognises herself, surely the ultimate aim of the ‘New Year, New You’ green-juice devotee. Transforming into Nigella or Joe Wicks, we see Sherman-like to bend ourselves into the shape of the ideals for which we strive. 

 However, the beauty of Sherman’s characters is that none of them are ‘perfect’, none reach glossy, magazine looks. Zoom in and the hair is slightly off and the socks look like they came from Grandma. They feel like real people, people you actually see on the street. That’s the point, of course. The perfect ideal we are marketed is impossible to reach. We may strive to be a Nigella, but we never really quite get there and slowly we realise it was always too gruelling a performance to maintain. 

Yet it is through performance that we often learn the most about ourselves. In a Guardian interview, Sherman confessed that she loves catching glimpses of her own performances, seeing just what she is capable of transforming into. There’s a thrill in feeling like somebody entirely new. Even if it’s a transitory phase. So, although ‘New year, New you’ is all founded on a marketing ploy to make you buy, buy, buy; there’s something in it. We’ve all tried on different personas: the gym routine that never stuck, or the emo phase that wasn’t quite us, but each one leaves behind a trace.  We learn something from all of them, however long we can sustain them. Later in the interview, Sherman recalled that when she was younger, dressing up and performance was a way to get attention from her family. She remembers: ‘I thought: if you don’t like me like this maybe you will like me like this? With curly hair? Or like this?’ Isn’t this exactly what we’re saying when we become a new self for a new year. Perhaps it is through this exploration where we uncover deeper versions of ourselves, enjoying the liberation of other identities, ones that are more fluid and perhaps more revealing than if selfhood was entirely fixed. And so, as the curtain falls on another year, the new year’s performance starts all over again.

“Yet it is through performance that we often learn the most about ourselves.” Bus Riders (1976), Cindy Sherman.