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Wellness presents itself as forward-thinking – with its wearable gizmos and performance apps – and yet it is based on one of the oldest principles of patriarchy: that women are dirty and that a woman’s virtue depends on being perfect inside as well as outside.
I find the homogenisation of wellness – as if we can all afford to make the same choices; as if we even want to – equal parts infuriating and concerning, particularly when it comes to the demonisation of basic foodstuffs, like bread, pasta and cow’s milk, which are cheap and easily accessible staples for many households. The
The early noughties were a seismic time for pop culture. It was, quite frankly, a brilliant time to be a teenager: loads of telly, bonkers fashion and no social media.
Screw all my choices, she appears to say, for there are too many to make; tell me how to think and how to live. Tell me how to get it right.
A woman’s flattening happens when one of those fragmented parts absorbs the rest of her identity. This can be physical: a woman with big boobs is isolated into just those boobs. Cultural: a single woman is a roving and lonely soul. Sexual: a woman who has an affair with a married man is nothing more than a slut. Racial: a woman who is not white is defined only by the colour of her skin. And biological: she becomes someone who has either produced a child or not. A woman can be fragmented without being flattened, but she is rarely flattened without being fragmented first.
‘Once upon a time,’17 says Zadie Smith, ‘we used to fear that the robots were coming. But what if we are the robots?’
brings eudaimonic (purpose-based) happiness, rather than hedonic (pleasure-based),
In this sense, the existential philosopher and millennial woman have much in common. I’m emblematic of a generation who, shaped by the siren call of social media and wolf cries of fake news, agonise over their life purpose or truth.
it still adheres to the idea that beauty is currency for women. Rather than shift that narrative, the advert merely attempts to shift the definition of what is beautiful.
