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