I’m tired of seeing it plastered all over Facebook and social media. I’m tired of educational programs trying to beat around the bush on it. I’m not talking about the election, I’m talking about the insane amount of “feel good” posts that are actually made by companies that want themselves to feel good by taking your money and selling you what you want to hear.
Unless you’re a surfer, when you say ‘radical’ it’s demonstrative that the concept it describes is in excess—it’s just too much. Too much sugar can lead to diabetes, so we avoid too much sugar. Too much feel good, self-love, leads to emotional compromise.
When did the concept of ‘you’re perfect exactly how you are, you don’t have to do anything to feel good about yourself,’ come from? Our experiences in life are formed from our actions. We didn’t become something “good enough” by doing nothing, so let’s shift this trend of companies directly profiting off manipulating your self-esteem through image dynamics to something rational.
A radical love is not a healthy one. Radical use of supplements and steroids is not a supremely healthy lifestyle. See the trend? We can’t just hype up how important this blatantly dangerous form of self-care and pretend it isn’t being marketed exactly like any other beauty trend.
Just because it’s a lifestyle they’re selling doesn’t mean it’s any better or worse than a directly tangible product. The deliberate vagueness of the product being pushed leaves a dangerous dynamic for interpretation. Advertisers know that if they make you feel negatively about yourself, you are more likely to purchase their products.
It’s like a diet that despite all evidence to the contrary, you still know that person who’s a little susceptible is being taken for a ride of false promises. All these products have come out so mysteriously for the trendy and impressionable to feel they absolutely must have to really love themselves.
After all, people that love themselves would buy a new celebrity yoga mat and drink this new super fruit juice they saw on Oprah. By marketing an idea, tying it to a lifestyle, marketing it into a trend, advertisers can plan out a market.
Do you really feel comfortable knowing all these companies pandering to how great you are uniformly adopted the self-love movement and commercialized it into a radical, trendy marketing ploy?
They don’t want you to love yourself rationally. They don’t want to see you grow personally and embrace the dynamic person you are. They don’t want to see you realize your potential.
What they want is for you to either feel bad enough about where you are that you will adopt a lifestyle to include their products, to be complacent enough that you will give them a try, or happy enough that you can still be influenced by the trendsetting pressure around you.
If they make a new standard for happiness, those that are already there or close enough will feel they have to either defend their own happiness or incorporate a new element to it to feel validated in their identity. Quite sinister, but so the world continues to turn.
If you actually love yourself, it means not just ignoring the parts you have to work on. There’s nothing about “love” that includes concealment, erasure or inauthenticity. Self-love relies on self-care. Self-care includes that ever-important element of perception checking.
We have to realize that in our culture, every portion of our life is game for marketing. Everything you post on Facebook, social medias and so on is sold off as information. Algorithms are always being used to create data profiles to account for personalities and then to sell off what makes you who you are to advertisers.
The point, nothing has to be radical about loving yourself. It’s hard work. There’s no shortcut. A trend won’t make you happier in the long run, advertisers rely on this. Society tries to sell you off in one way or another, so at the very least don’t sell yourself short and make it so easy.
Barton Kleen
Executive Editor