Lifestyle Gurus. Chris Rojek

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СКАЧАТЬ 1983; Bauman 2003). Just as advertising relies on insecurity by promising to solve an array of social problems, the self-improvement industry thrives during periods of social and economic uncertainty. From this standpoint, self-improvement is essential to remaining employable in a volatile and competitive labour market where job security and life in general is less predictable and controllable than it had been in the past. It is also part of remaining desirable at a time when divorce is rising and marriage is less certain and secure: ‘It is no longer sufficient to be married or employed; rather, it is imperative that one remains marriageable and employable’ to stay ahead in an uncertain world (McGee 2005: 12).

The consumer of self-help is conceived as what McGee (2005) terms the ‘belaboured self’, undergoing constant self-improvement in their quest to remain socially and economically viable. Hence, the rise in makeover programmes designed at reinventing the self by improving one’s skills, confidence and physical appearance. Makeover programmes, and lifestyle media more broadly, are predicated on solving ordinary problems through specialist knowledge (‘know how’) and practical advice. Makeovers in the form of a new wardrobe, kitchen, garden, face or fitness regime are designed at solving larger lifestyle issues: marriage, divorce, employment, raising children and boosting self-esteem. They find their expression in the popular lifestyle programmes Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, What Not to Wear and 10 Years Younger, to name a few. Much of this advice is highly gendered, priming masculine courage and feminine beauty. However, following the increased participation of women in the workforce and the introduction of no fault divorce in the late-twentieth century, lifestyle media increasingly caters to both genders on the topics of health, wealth and relationships (Lewis 2008). The idea of the ‘ambush’ – friends and family members nominating a contestant for a makeover – highlights that no-one is immune from society’s critical gaze (McGee 2005: 17–18). What self-improvement literature shares in common is the idea of the individual as uncertain and insufficient, in need of development with the assistance of those gurus who have mastered lifestyle issues.

      The self-help movement, which achieved tremendous growth in the late-twentieth century, was part of this process (McGee 2005: 11). The movement’s basic principle was that we create the world through our thoughts. While this idea can be traced back to Stoic philosophy, the rise of self-help was largely due to psychological understandings of the self as autonomous and the idea of self-actualisation: the notion that the self is something to be discovered, realised and improved upon (Goldstein 1940; Maslow 1950, 1954; Rogers 1961). The rise of self-improvement culture in the West has been framed as a corollary of individualism in so far as the challenge to traditional religious, political and civic structures in late modern society was marked by an emphasis on the individual. This move towards the individual was evident in the growth of psychoanalysis in the mid-twentieth century – what was termed ‘the triumph of the therapeutic’ (Rieff 1966) – but it was also part of a culture that emphasised self-fulfilment and self-actualisation over determinism. In contrast to the doctrine of essentialism, which saw the essence of the self as determined by a set of biological or social characteristics (e.g. gender, race, ethnicity), self-actualisation conceives of the self as autonomous and a ‘reflexive project’ in need of perpetual development and fine tuning (Giddens 1991). These models of selfhood emphasise the role of reflexive awareness and choice in decision-making processes. From this standpoint, lifestyle choices, and the self more generally, are an individual undertaking arrived at through considered reflection and weighing up alternatives. Feeding into mythology of the ‘self-made man’ and the American Dream, the appeal of self-help literature is that it emphasises the individual’s capacity to achieve success and social mobility; although the barometer for achievement is more amorphous with self-help characterised by subjective understandings of success (e.g. feelings and well-being) rather than external, measurable achievements, such as buying a house or receiving a promotion, as was typically the case with the ethos of the American Dream (McGee 2005: 19).

      The common thread weaving these ideals is one of empowerment. By empowering readers with the belief that they have the capacity to change their lives, self-help literature achieved global and commercial success in a series of bestsellers including Think and Grow Rich (1937), The Power of Positive Thinking (1952) and The Secret (2006). These texts present the idea that ‘self-concept is destiny’ (Branden 1995). As Hill writes, ‘You are the master of your destiny. You can influence, direct and control your own environment. You can make your life what you want it to be’ (1937: 185). Or, as Peale (1952) explains, ‘When you expect the best, you release a magnetic force in your mind, which by a law of attraction tends to bring the best to you’. Self-help takes the basic truth – that our mind shapes our reality – and exaggerates it by attributing relationship, career and financial success to ‘positive thinking’ (Peale 1952) and the ‘law of attraction’ (Byrne 2006). What this literature overlooks is the role of luck, habitus and positional power relating to class, status and group membership in co-creating your life’s trajectory. We have the capacity to influence our thoughts and actions, yet we are also situated in society and constituted in relation to others, as Mead and Cooley’s theories so convincingly point out. Despite this, the industrialisation of lifestyle saw few barriers to spreading its message. In principle, the notion that motivation comes from within rather than through relations with others, and is not impeded by boundaries of class, race, ethnicity, age or nation. The aim is to join the adventure of self-discovery and create ‘lifestyle citizens’ who can move fluidly and confidently, through various spatial and social settings, with the same, singular poise and effortless aplomb (Raisborough 2011). Lifestyle citizens have the psychological confidence and civic know-how to enter most conceivable life situations and adapt to all ranks and walks of life. They are not restricted by national boundaries or personal hang-ups. Indeed, they are most accurately defined as citizens of the world.

Attention, Capital and Celebrity

While advice manuals have existed for hundreds of years prescribing how to live ‘the good life’, today’s lifestyle gurus offer advice on how to achieve acceptance, approval, social impact and self-validation as made manifest in happiness, financial success and well-being. There is a shift in orientation here from ‘being good’ to feeling good. The Ancient Greeks’ concern with moral virtue is replaced by a type of moral emotivism in which feeling is perceived to be the barometer of success. The primary cause of this doctrine – which reduces all moral judgements to ‘expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling’ – is liberalism with its emphasis on individual rights and freedom over a determinate conception of the human good (MacIntyre 1981: 11–12). The central idea driving this doctrine is that it is our individual right to select moral values that accord with our feelings. The self-help movement develops this doctrine further. Here, our moral values are based on the pursuit of subjective self-esteem and validated by having meaningful social value in the sight of others and one’s capacity to generate attention capital.

      The term ‘attention capital’ was coined by van Krieken (2012). It emerged in relation to an investigation of celebrity and refers to ‘the accumulation, distribution and circulation of the abstract form of capital that is attention’ (van Krieken 2012: 10). The clear parallel is with money. As with monetary value, attention is desired, subject to variation in value (inflation/deflation) and the laws of demand and supply. The analogy helps us to think of lifestyle citizenship as a type of coinage. By the term lifestyle citizenship we mean a deterritorialised form of social belonging based around shared values of openness, tolerance of difference, recognition of personal vulnerability, planetary responsibility and devotion to personal well-being. The analogy also usefully reiterates the importance of the just-in-time principle that underlies lifestyle management today. The internalisation and display of lifestyle attributes that convey acceptance and approval, which translate into the attainment of impact, are means of exchange that can fluctuate in value. Although lifestyle gurus typically urge that motivation must come from within, their position as guides and role models confirms the continuing importance of significant others in learning how to succeed in the school of life.

It is by no means an accident that many of the most popular and influential advocates of lifestyle citizenship are celebrities. Super-stars СКАЧАТЬ