Beauty Memes, Role Reversals & Self-Care

all that conforming leaves very little room for the effort that’s required to be who we are. I have no idea how many woman-hours are spent applying makeup, straightening hair and looking at the shape of our own biceps and butts in the mirror. But anecdotally I can tell you, from witnessing morning rituals in all their guises at the gym every day, i

Lifestyle media center on exhortations to remodel the self and interior life—not simply to become thinner, be better groomed, or have more successful dates, but to make over one’s psychic life or subjectivity to become a “better” version of oneself, that is, confident, happier, more resilient.

The ideal woman looks beautiful, happy, carefree, and perfectly competent. Is she really? To look any particular way and to actually be that way are two separate concepts, and striving to look carefree and happy can interfere with your ability to feel so. The internet codifies this problem, makes it inescapable; in recent years, pop culture has sta

The root of this trouble is the fact that mainstream feminism has had to conform to patriarchy and capitalism to become mainstream in the first place. Old requirements, instead of being overthrown, are rebranded. Beauty work is labeled “self-care” to make it sound progressive.

The aesthetic turn in the self-help literature of the late twentieth century, like the emergence of the belabored self, is in part a consequence of the changing nature of the labor market and the blurring of the boundaries between the commercial and intimate spheres.