Have you ever needed an idea or some inspiration and jumped on a food blog or Pinterest or a design site to get your creative juices flowing? Maybe find a little inspiration?
That’s something I do on a pretty regular basis. I poke around looking for an idea, but most of the time I end up feeling more uninspired and overwhelmed than ready for action.
The problem is I have a love/hate relationship with the concept of lifestyle.
I define lifestyle as any content from web sites to blogs to magazines to Instagram feeds that depicts the basic things that we all do in our life (getting dressed, cooking, exercising, working, making a home, planning activities, traveling, entertaining) in a hyper-stylized, curated way.
The love side is an infatuation with good design and how disparate things can come together to make something worth talking about – a good recipe, a slammin’ outfit, a family room that works, a clever party theme. These are all things I can and do appreciate.
The hate side is all the attention being paid to what we eat, what we buy, what we wear and how we do these everyday things and then styling a photograph or creating a piece of content to capture it. It makes me want to poke my eyeballs out.
Not because I don’t like those same things or do them or feel bad about myself in comparison, but because it doesn’t feel authentic to me. It feels like there must be more to this life than acquiring the right lifestyle.
With the advent of Pinterest and Instagram, it’s easy to spend a lot of time gazing into other people’s lifestyles. Right at our fingertips, we have access to millions of ideas and things promising to make our lives better. Millions of people sharing what a desirable lifestyle looks like. Millions of people flocking to home design and fashion web sites and food blogs every day looking for that magic something that’s going to make them feel complete.
How to organize a pantry for maximum efficiency
and how to DIY an IKEA mirror into a nightstand
and how to make cinnamon rolls gluten free
and how to style an out-of-season blazer twelve ways
and how to use recycling to pay for a five star vacation.
It’s exhausting. And a little insane.
I believe that our obsession with lifestyle is rooted in our need for connection. We want to learn and we want to share and we want direction and insight. We want to build a community of like-minded people and it feels good to pool information and share it.
But when I look at lifestyle content, I never seem to be completely satisfied.
It’s like trying to feed a deep hunger with Sweet Tarts. They taste good and give you a good sugar buzz, but they can’t sustain you.
Lifestyle content leaves me aching for something more. Something that can sustain me.
And what I’ve realized is this – I’m more driven by story. I connect through real, personal experiences. Which is probably why no matter how big image sharing gets, I’ll always prefer my content in the form of a book or a movie or television show.
Do you remember that moment when you realized that Oprah was just a big commercial for whatever movie, diet, book or album her guest was pushing? Lifestyle is the new talk show, informercial, celebrity magazine, driving the engine of consumerism.
And lifestyle is based on the premise that whatever you’re doing today, it’s not enough. When you peek into other people’s lives, it implies that there’s something lacking in your own. You could be making more interesting food, putting together cuter outfits, decorating your house more creatively. You could be more.
And that’s where lifestyle really breaks down for me. Not every aspect of our lives has to be beautiful, special, share-able. Sometimes dinner is just dinner and clothes are just clothes and a house is just a house. There’s nothing that compelling in how it was done. The story, what connects us to each other, is in the people we share it with, the emotions that arise and what we learn from the experience.
If we live from our gut, from our inside out, we don’t have to seek so much, acquire so much, try to make things appear a certain way. We don’t have to be more than we already are.
I love lifestyle, because sometimes I just need a new chicken recipe. I hate lifestyle, because it doesn’t align with my desire to live a connected, authentic, real, life and weed out the things that don’t serve me.
I guess the trick is to be mindful of both sides while being true to ourselves and believing we are enough. Very tricky indeed.
For at leat 20 years I have referred to many of the magazines on the market as “Stupid Women’s Magazines”. After reading one or two, you come away with the following thoughts:
My hair (cut, color or style) is incorrect or out of style.
My closets are a mess (yes, they should be!) and do not look like the ones in the magazines.
My clothing style is all wrong (and yes, I cannot afford the cute $250 summer skirt shown in the article that will absolutely CHANGE my life.
My kids are not high achievers and out changing the world at 10 which therefore reflects poorly on me as a parent.
I don’t use these “30 minute” dinner recipes which are filled with fat, sugar and high sodium contents just as much as the take out pizza and/or fast food I allow my kids to eat.
These articles cause our self-esteem to plummet and then reflect badly on us. Same as these lifestyle TV shows, ads, blogs, websites, etc.
Live your life – enjoy your life – be the best you can be – but above all, we need to STOP comparing ourselves to others. That is someone else’s life, not yours.
I stopped reading many of these magazines years ago for a reason. I do not go on the lifestyle websites. I wear the clothes I like – whether in style or not. My hair is long and dyed and works for me. I should exercise more, eat less ice cream, but I am happy with my life, my kids, my family, my house, my 10 year old car which I would no trade for the world, my house which is neat but not perfect, my job, my church and friends.
I guess that just would not sell magazines, would it.
Christine – thank you so much for your thoughts. It seems like you have really been able to separate your real life from the lifestyle content that I wrote about. I think for me because I love design, fashion and cooking as creative outlets I have a hard time totally turning off the flow of content. But you summed it up – live your life – and I could not agree more!