How The Therapy Of Self-Love Has Become A Marketable Idea

Self-care or self-love is undoubtedly a new way for people to assert their existence. Anything other than self-love has become an altruistic service for someone else. It is only through self-love that people look into their selves. However, with the increasing demand of self-love and self-care, its initial therapeutic element is now a marketable idea. Self-care rather than being a therapy to destress life is now being sold in showrooms, websites and other money-making platforms. Self-care is no more about a healthy and peaceful life, but an idea to brag about through template t-shirts, expensive gifts and excessive online exposure. How did this change happen, is not rocket science to contemplate and discuss about. It is just a minute of introspection and sensibility to work on recklessness, which ironically is the basic meaning of self-love and care.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• With the increasing demand of self-love and self-care, its initial therapeutic element is now a marketable idea.
• Self-care rather than being a therapy to destress life is now being sold in showrooms, websites and other money-making platforms.
• Self-love always means to love yourself the way it is and take care of it. It never meant to spend on decorating it with material goods.
• Self-love is about arranging things in life and not about buying more that are not even required.
  

The increased need for self-love

The foremost reason why self-care is now being sold in markets is its increased requirement. It is a marketing tactic that the more the demand the greater is the market. In today's scenario, where the balance of work and personal life is the most difficult yet important task to do, self-love is imperative. If a person’s life is not ‘intercepted’ by the idea of self-love, she will continue her monotonous life like a machine. That is why self-love is required to at least continue living like a machine but for a longer time. Astonishingly, self-love is popular not only among working people but also among school and college students. Overall, the fact is that the benchmark of success is too high that everyone in the race is already enervated. The only way to continue the race is by taking intervals, introspecting and restarting with a clear and determined mentality. This is what self-care or self-love provides. It is the space where a person can loosen her tie, drop her bag and stretch her legs until the next sunrise and new hope shine on her face.

Also Read: To All The Body-shamers, Self-love Is The Weapon We Will Fight You With

But the reality has changed the simplicity of self-love into ornamented time and space. Gradually, the relaxation of self-love in a minimal space has advanced into extreme expenditures for expensive material goods and celebrations. Because people are so much in need of the space, they cannot differentiate between real self-love and brand of self-love. Anything that attracts people or excites their repressed guilty desires becomes a medium of self-love. Money or anything does not count until the wishes are fulfilled. Therefore, for the needy the markets of self-love - the showrooms, clubs, online websites, ‘guilty mistakes’ and so on- acts as a mirage in the dried desert. It is not real or reasonable is a known fact, but mirage still has a magical but false existence and so does the self-love markets. People need it and are ready to pay whatever it costs; after all, 'self-love' is important and trending.

Self-care is no more about a healthy and peaceful life, but an idea to brag about through template t-shirts, expensive gifts and excessive online exposure.

Self-love is overrated

The other reason why self-love is losing its meaning is the overratedness aligned to it. Self-love is nothing that a person cannot do on her own. It does not necessarily require a day-long shopping, or expensive night outs or self-love massages. All that is needed is a time for the mind and heart to make sense of life and put it into order. Besides, if self-love could only be found in an expensive jacuzzi, then self-love is not available for everyone. The humanistic idea of self-love that prioritises the importance of human, would divide people based on the money they have in their pockets through the concept of cheap or expensive self-love.

Image credit: Medical News Today

This bifurcation of self-love in the garb of ‘individual choices’ is ultimately manipulating its meaning. If self-love could be bought easily in the market, no one will pay heed to whatever is going inside one’s body and take efforts to improve it. There will always be a bunch of people who will buy self-love through ample money and be happy until it expires. Such buyers have converted self-love to a market where only the rich are valued. The result of such self-love is only transient peace and useless expenditure. In fact, the people who actually devote time to their body are underestimated or differentiated from another group of self-love buyers. It is no more in the concept that self-love is taking care of yourself, body and thoughts and not expend it along with the wallet in money-minting shops.

Self-love: A market of fraudulence

The philosophy of self-love is now a voucher for special discounts in markets. They attract people by making them feel that the ‘fight is worth spending’. Such markets are again susceptible to fraudulence like any other markets. Often the price of common goods is higher than the usual rate or the goods and services are a fraud. But once a person is blindfolded by the buttering advertisements and quotes of self-love, everything becomes fair. Blinded by the pleasure of a ‘cheat day’, people flock to self-love markets and spend enough to later realise that they have been actually cheated.

Blinded by the pleasure of a ‘cheat day’, people flock to self-love markets and spend enough to later realise that they have been actually cheated.

This is not self-love

How is this self-love? Self-love always means to love yourself the way it is and take care of it. It never meant to spend on decorating it with material goods. It is inevitable that the idea of self-love will soon be redundant and become equivalent to reckless expenditure. It will ultimately increase more stress and the vicious cycle of self-care will repeat all over again! Self-love is about arranging things in life and not about buying more that are not even required. The difficult truth that requires confrontation is that people lack the courage to see the disordered life and put in efforts to resolve it. It is easier to walk into malls and empty the wallet than facing and contemplating about the puzzles of life. The result is that we are marching towards escapism rather than facing reality and, opposite to our assumptions, life is still the mess that it was earlier.

Rudrani Kumari is an intern with SheThePeople.TV 

Image credit: Wondrlust

Also Read: The Awakening: How I fell in love with myself again. Because I needed to.