Meryl Streep, widely regarded as the greatest actress of her generation, delivered the commencement address at Barnard College in 2010. In a speech full of humor and insight, she made a provocative case that pretending — far from being trivial or dishonest — is one of the most valuable survival skills humans possess. She cataloged her own 'faux expertise' in everything from river rafting to speaking Aramaic, from Turkish to simulating steamy sexual encounters. But beneath the comedy was a serious argument. Streep contended that women in particular have survived through millennia by mastering the art of convincingly adapting to their circumstances. Pretending, she argued, is not deception — it is the human capacity to imagine and inhabit different possibilities, to change who we are to fit the demands of our time, sometimes strategically, sometimes sympathetically, 'for the betterment of the whole group.'