Читать книгу Lifestyle Gurus - Chris Rojek - Страница 11

The writings of Smiles, Beecher and Beeton were immensely influential. Still, in terms of what was to come, they were more in the nature of being first runs in the territory of lifestyle architecture and engineering positive intimacy. The period from 1875 to 1914 was the epoch in which the household management and cookery book came into its own as a genuinely global phenomenon (Driver 1989: 13–14). It was also the period when women’s magazines and problem pages, in which journalists acted as counsellors for anguished individuals seeking advice, began to cater for a mass, global consumer market concerned with intimate life (Bingham 2012: 51). The first ‘Agony Aunt’ is thought to have been Annie Swan, in Women At Home (1892–1920). At the outset, these pages were coy about intimate questions. They drew upon reserves of folk ‘common sense’ to address the marital difficulties, child-rearing challenges and the veiled desires of their readers. Sexual matters were seldom referred to directly. This changed after the 1920s. Partly under the influence of the emergence of the mass sex survey and psychology, the Victorian moralism and strictures against what could be imparted in ‘problem pages’ was relaxed. In the UK during the 1930s, journalists, such as the American agony aunt ‘Dorothy Dix’ (the working name of Elizabeth Meriweather Gilmer) in The Daily Mirror, and Anne Temple, in her ‘Human Case-Book’ column in The Daily Mail, began to adopt a more open attitude to issues of carnal desire, sexual problems and related topics of an intimate nature, sent in by readers (Bingham 2012; Bingham and Conboy 2015: 139–40). It was not that morals were abandoned and an ‘anything goes’ climate on sexual, emotional and other intimate matters was initiated. On the contrary, the advice given by journalists tended to reinforce moral rectitude based on the class based stereotype of behaviour appropriate to women, drawing upon inviolable Christian precepts and parable. All the same, the new media frankness about intimate and lifestyle matters signalled the growing power of women in the public sphere. This carried over into book-length works dealing with intimacy and lifestyle. For example, The Marriage Book (Various 1930), a 766-page manual published in 1930 by the Amalgamated Press included chapters on ‘Happiness in Marriage’, ‘The Love Art of the Husband’, ‘The Love Art of the Wife’, ‘Choosing a Career’, alongside more traditional chapters on ‘The Healthy Family’, ‘Cookery’ and ‘Home Dressmaking’. Interestingly, The Marriage Book was published without an identified author, as if it were a folk oracle of common sense and wisdom, liberated from the shackles of Victorian prudery.

The agony aunt, recipe aunt or marriage advice aunt, perpetuated in magazines of the interwar period established a culture of presumed intimacy and informality (Rojek 2016). It saw itself as part of what we now call, the informalisation process, loosening the reserve and hierarchy while, of course, at the same time holding true to the template of respectable society (Wouters 2007). The rise of lifestyle journalism emerged in the 1950s and 1960s when the emergence of consumer culture, coupled with increased periods of leisure time, led to a demand for information about optimal time use, not only in the area of household management, but also in respect to the general presentation of the self. During this period newspapers and magazines introduced sections dedicated to health, food and travel. This new journalistic field addressed its audiences as consumers, providing them with information and advice about goods and services that they could use in their daily lives (Hanusch 2013: 4). As a precursor to the self-improvement movement, lifestyle media provided practical advice that people could apply to improve their lives from recommendations about what to eat and where to travel, to tips about how to live a healthier, more fulfilling life. As print media and television developed so too did lifestyle journalism, providing content to fill the growing number of pages in newspapers and channels on satellite and cable television (Cole 2005: 33). Though criticised by some for being frivolous in comparison to ‘hard’ political reporting, lifestyle journalism is now mainstream. Prestigious journalistic institutions, such as the BBC and the Guardian, regularly feature lifestyle media and advice columns where anonymous readers seek advice from an experienced individual, who emulates the agony aunt method of counselling, about how to navigate personal problems. A case in point is the British newspaper, the Guardian, which features a weekly column entitled, ‘Dear Mariella’ in which Mariella Frostrup, a self-described agony aunt, ‘offers words of wisdom’ to readers (Guardian 2018). Departing from the more generic concerns of lifestyle media, much of this content focuses on intimacy, including sex and relationship troubles of various kinds (e.g. familial, marriage, lovers and friends). There has also been a rise in ‘how to’ articles dispensing practical lifestyle advice on a range of editorial concerns from health to beauty, fitness, fashion, food and travel. Lifestyle gurus tell us what to eat, what to wear, who to love and where to travel. Though generally lacking certified credentials, these popular experts present themselves as user-friendly ‘information providers’, providing information and advice about the management of the self and everyday life (Hanusch 2013).

Lifestyle media is instructive, but it is also marked by commercialisation, having a strong market-orientation and connection to advertising (Fürsich 2012). This raises ethical issues about the impartiality and objectivity of lifestyle advice and ‘expert’ reviews; it also reflects a time when the boundary between commercial and private spheres have become more intertwined. Market values, such as rationality and cost-benefit analysis, are increasingly applied to the management of intimate relations. Eva Illouz (2007) terms this process ‘emotional capitalism’. Here, the intimate sphere is subject to commercial principles as a site of ongoing production, a place for reinventing a ‘marketable self’ (McGee 2005: 22). The emphasis on reinvention has been theorised as a new form of ‘immaterial labour’ (mental, social, emotional) required for participation in an insecure world and labour market (McGee 2005: 24). In twentieth-century America, for example, the market for self-improvement products (e.g. books, videos, seminars and the like) rose following women’s mass entry into the paid workforce, which generated competition and challenged traditional gender roles and cultural expectations of men and women. This period was coupled with economic uncertainty as a result of reduced wages, outsourcing and downsizing. Scholars have shown how following the breakdown of tradition, intimate relations are characterised by both choice and an increased sense of fragility (Giddens 1992; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 1995; Hochschild 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.