the.com/realness

means The quality of being genuine rather than performed — what's left when pretense is stripped away.

from Built from 'real' (from Latin 'res,' meaning thing — as in, an actual thing, not an illusion) plus the abstract-noun suffix '-ness.' 'Real' entered English through French and Latin legal/philosophical vocabulary, originally distinguishing actual property or things from mere ideas of them. The word 'realness' itself is old and plain, but its modern charge — as a prized social virtue, a thing you either have or don't — owes a lot to ballroom and queer Black and Latino culture in the 20th century, where 'realness' meant performing an identity so convincingly it read as authentic, no contradiction intended between 'performed' and 'real.'