the stickiness of consumerism

that clothing haul cannot cure our deepest discontent

I swipe open the TikTok app with my thumb. I’ve hidden it off of my home screen, to deter myself from constantly tapping it. The screen opens, a devastating soundtrack plays. A woman my age stands up to her knees in mud, in tears and disbelief that her home has been swept away by hurricane Helene. She tells a story of her neighbor drowning in the rushing water. I swipe up and away from the devastation and am greeted by the voice of a cheery influencer asking me to watch her latest clothing haul, a pile of plastic packages stacking high as she tosses them on her bed. My heart pounds. The dissonance found in the content of this app makes my anxiety skyrocket. It feels like a nightmare. But I cannot look away.

It’s as if I have to hold space for it somehow, to bear witness that their pain is real and deserving of grief. It almost feels like a duty to not swipe away. But the rage and hopelessness that builds in my system because of it, day after day, is taking it’s toll.

In the midst of global warming, genocide and political unrest, we continue yearning for the clothes and aesthetics we do not have. We open social media to numb it all out, because there is no place left to put the feelings. We need more things to cover up the hurt. We buy more for instant gratification, to numb the growing dissatisfaction and unbearable heartbreak. “You need these jeans for the 2024 fall season” she says, spinning in a circle to show off her new jean and top pairing— shining naturally with a magnetism so strong you believe every outfit in your closet should worn only once before it’s considered old news.

We believe we can buy our way out of feeling…out of our humanness. Consumerism culture is sticky. It allows us to believe we can buy our way to safety, protection, love, and even self acceptance. Buying endless jeans or face serums can distract us from our struggles, but it also risks trapping us in a cycle of constant desire. The wrong kind of desire. Our hunger is needed elsewhere.

This consumer culture feels more dystopian than ever. I’m not sure if that’s actually true, or if it’s finally striking a nerve in my own personal journey since downloading the TikTok app in 2020. The app I now have to hide from myself in a folder on my phone, because it has the power to consume half of my days. It’s quite literally rotting my brain. I feel my attention span slipping away, my confidence dissipating, the urge to become indifferent and disengaged building more and more each day.

I’ve never been a things person… a brand name, or luxury person.  I wish I could say it’s due to my awareness— but it mainly stems from not being able to ever have or afford much. When you grow up without, you stop longing for things you know you’ll never have. There was always a hard line between myself and a girl who carried a designer bag, and it stopped bothering me in my early teens. I didn’t hunger for it. Once I did have money of my own, my longing for things was replaced by the high of buying a plane ticket and seeing the other side of the world. Everyone’s journey with consumption is different. Everyone is looking to fill something unique. The holes I’m looking to fill may be different from the next, but we’re more similar than we like to believe.

When I started using Instagram for my business in 2017, I chose to only follow artists and creatives who inspired me, and rarely saw anything other than that on my explore page. The algorithm felt more in my control back then. I’ve never followed celebrities, or models, influencers, or gurus… and the algorithm gods never forced them in my path. And to be honest, it wasn’t something that had interested me. I’ve been somewhat sheltered. Until now, I’ve been spared.

I’m beginning to understand that my lack of obsessive consumerism and quiet confidence was tied to this very simple sheltering. I never once worried about a skincare routine (probably should have!), if the pots and pan set in my kitchen cabinet matched my aesthetic, or if I had a body that was consumable or a haircut to match it. I didn’t care to own perfumes, contouring makeup, or fancy facial tools. I didn’t diet, didn’t over exercise, didn’t compare myself. I just sat in my happy delusion and worked. I gathered inspiration from the artists and creatives and visionaries that filled my feed. I lived in happy delusion.

It helped that I was young, carefree, and the ads of aging and perception were far from my reach.

I’ve noticed a subtle shift in the way I perceive myself, and it’s gotten slippery over the last three years. When I open my TikTok app, I am no longer in my safe, curated world of art and makers. I am inundated with influencers, plastic surgeons, brand ads and campaigns. What started with ordering a few facial serums and tools— ended with me being unable to look in the mirror or take a photo of myself, because my face dysmorphia has gotten to the point where I truly believe I am hideous.

My lips aren’t pouty enough, my eyes are wrinkled, my brow isn’t lifted and my cheeks don’t sit high and puffy on my face. I fight the urge to research a plastic surgeon. I make appointments and cancel them, still holding out for my feminist ideals to stand true. It’s easier to uphold those when you’ve always fit the standards being set. As the lines on my face deepen and collagen fills my under-eyes less, it’s much more difficult to remain true to the original plot. Still, I don’t want to contribute to the system that is harming me and so many others. But damn, that fight is a daily one.

I long for the days when this subconscious beauty standard and consumer culture could not access my life. I miss feeling inspired by these online spaces, rather than isolated by them. And this is coming from a skinny, white, mostly attractive young woman. Someone who has fit into these standards most of her life. It pains me to think of how difficult it must be to have always been outside of them, the daily fight it requires to love yourself in a system designed to encourage anything but.

I feel sick thinking of all of the women whose entire lives have felt this way because of media culture, including instagram. I often wonder if I’ve contributed to it. I feel shame for the ability to live in my bubble, without it, for so long. I feel angry that it’s touching me now. I’m angry it impedes on any of our lives at all. Especially during a time where our attention and resources are so precious.

At the grocery store, I’ve always walked by the magazines, unfazed by the photoshopped cover photos of models and celebrities. I don’t envy what they have. It’s always felt like this strange and distant other world, one that feels a little disturbing and inauthentic. I’ve never felt drawn to that for my life experience. In all honesty, I’ve never wanted what they had.

Influencer culture has become our new celebrity culture, and it’s hitting closer to home because of it. The lines between them and us are much closer.

On TikTok, I press and hold the ‘uninterested’ button when an influencer, plastic surgeon, or celebrity crosses my swipe. And still, I find them seeping into my subconscious. The every day person is now becoming the celebrity. To not become them means you will be left out. Their culture has become our culture, and our baseline for beauty standards and consumerism continues to skyrocket beyond our reach. Young women spend thousands of dollars a year investing in filler, botox, surgeries and new clothing hauls, rather than investing or putting those funds towards something for the future. Many have credit card debt to keep up with their appearances and beauty routines. Each face we scroll past on the internet looks less like their ancestors and more like a pouty Instagram Filter generated by AI. Girls in their teens and early 20’s are getting preventative botox, spending their days worrying about what they’ll look like at 30. “I cannot believe you’re 33!” a follower comments on my page— as if the age of 30 suddenly means you will shrivel up and become the old witch on the outskirts of the town. The standards are rapidly changing, and we’re throwing anything we can at it, to attempt to keep up. It’s difficult to see how we are contributing to the constraints when we are directly in them, fighting for our life. Fighting to earn protection.

As the world continues to share its disarray on these apps, we continue needing to be lost in something else. Our brains cannot handle the high levels of collective trauma, and so we look for a hit of dopamine elsewhere. As humans who have lived in tribes of 100 or fewer, it is not natural for our brain to process information that is happening all around the globe, at all hours of the day. That energy has to be transmuted somewhere.

When we buy more things, we believe we’re in control of a level of attainment or happiness or joy. The problem with creating a perfect aesthetic, is that the joy we feel from aesthetics is fleeting. It does not change our ability to love and accept ourselves. And it absolutely does not solve climate change, or racism, or natural disasters. That protection we’re attempting to purchase is not real. Yet we continue, creating more surface-level engagements in a world where all we long for is deeply authentic sense of relatedness.

Buying that cute outfit or getting that filler or redoing your kitchen won’t save you, or those you love, from being impacted by our state of the world. It won’t keep you from that loneliness, sitting deep inside of your gut. Spending what little we have to fill the hole in our hearts will only leave us wanting more that will never fill the despair. Turning a blind eye to our global impact on consumerism only creates more of the catastrophe we are working so hard to avoid eye contact with.

If you watch your favorite online personality in their perfect home with their perfect skin and their perfect photo dump, with gold rings and the latest designer bag, shown perfectly imperfectly on a film filter— and wonder why or how you feel unworthy… please remember you are not alone.

More importantly, please remember that striving to have these things will not quench that endless thirst of fulfillment, or ultimately change the pain we collectively feel for our world right now.

It is innately human of us to witness our world and hurt. Covering or diverting that humanness elsewhere will only lead to more despair and less connection. We are living on a planet where masses of plastic that are miles long, float through our oceans— monsters of trash created by our own dissatisfaction and overconsumption—that continues to take our precious ocean life. We’ve even casually given it a name, The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, as if it is a normal world wonder to witness and shrug our shoulders at.

You do not need that PR haul from your favorite influencer, a 500 dollar coffee machine on your kitchen counter, or a that new designer bag.

You need to go outside and touch fucking grass.

There are ways to face pain head on, and ways to avert our gaze, quietly placing a bandaid over the gaping, oozing wound. Consumerism is that bandaid. It only festers and spreads through out the system. It only ails us.

When I wander the aisles of TJ MAX after an insanely stressful week, my cart full of adorable lamps, dishes and rugs… I pause and ask myself what it is that I’m searching for in these things. The feeling I need to match, the hurt I’m trying to conceal.

There is a feeling here I’m desperate to find, one I’m searching for in the wrong place.

I put the things in my cart back on the shelves and walk out of the store, smiling. I drive to the studio and make a fresh pot of coffee. In my journal, I open up a new page and write out every feeling I’m missing in my life by not having those things.

I feel out of control

I feel panicked about not feeling safe

I want these new things to make me feel more at home

To make me feel in control, safe, and worthy

The lamps and seemingly insignificant things in that TJ MAXX cart cannot get me any of those needs.

The next day, I drive to a new yoga studio and courageously walk up to the counter. I’d like to buy a monthly pass, I smile at the warm face looking back at me.

The money I don’t have for yoga is the money I now have for yoga, because I didn’t cave to my urges of instant gratification on a bad day. I gently unroll my mat from my bag, the sound of sticky feet padding across the wood floor sends little pulses of familiarity up under my skin. The buzz of safety I was searching for.

I plan on sitting with my pain more, and want to practice buying my way out of it less.

The buying never works. The sitting and looking does.