http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9819140/site/newsweek/

I saw an article on MSN’s portal site via the link “Q&A: Why self-help books aren’t so helpful.” I read it and found it totally confounded me.

Newsweek reporter Dan Brillman’s opening paragraph says, “The number of self-help books (including diet and fitness titles) in print has more than doubled since 1972 and the genre has expanded into TV with a boom in reality shows that promise body, mind or family makeovers.” The image to the right shows a Jenny Jones-esque before and after shot of a woman who goes from shabby to glamorous.

I’m thinking, “Right on. This is going to be about the marketing value of make-overs and how we never see the folks who were made over six months later, when there’s no camera crew on site showing how a trailer park mom can no longer afford the clothes, make-up, and hair products required for the remarkable transformation. In short, the immediate make-over is unsustainable and done for tv ratings. Bring it on.”

It doesn’t go there at all. Instead, author Micki McGee focuses on self-help for careers, saying, “You have to constantly be inventing and re-inventing yourself, trying to remain marketable in a rapidly changing economy and an increasingly competitive context.” Most of the article has to deal with career anxiety, ageism, and how people are made to feel that purchasing cutting edge technology makes them cutting edge in the job marketplace.

I can’t tell whether I’m annoyed with Brillman or McGee. When I think of self-help, I think of Deepak Chopra and Dr. Phil McGraw (not that Dr. Phil), not Harvey “Swim With the Sharks” Mackay. It’s hard to tell whether the bait-and-switch is on Brillman and Newsweek for making you think McGee is going to criticize daytime talk-shows, or if this excerpt only shows McGee’s view on the workplace, or whether McGee is missing the boat on the whole topic.

The real problem? America’s rampant careerism. Our culture defines who you are by your career. Your social worth is largely based on how prestigious your job may be, and in turn how much money you make. We’re made to feel that a career must come first. So the problem starts much earlier than McGee lets on. McGee’s solution (in the context of this excerpted interview anyway) isn’t very specific:

NW: So what is the solution?
MM:The solution is the kinds of political organizing and political activism that have been emerging over the past five years. The answers lie in people coming together, and addressing the fact that American families and American working people need some kind of social safety net to be rewoven. We have to work on that collectively. It’s not something that we can do by organizing a more hectic schedule or getting the most recent device, so that we can do more things at the same time.

Please Ms. McGee, be more vague. Ironically, McGee says two questions later:

And people so want help and are so looking for ways to improve their lives to create a better world for their families, and their children, for their grandchildren, that it saddens me, and sometimes it makes me angry to see that the answers that are offered are so flimsy.

And one more quote from Ms. McGee before I go off:

NW:How are TV makeover shows emblematic of the self-help industry?
MM:People are feeling the necessity to put their best foot forward visually with a makeover phenomenon because they need to look young and fresh in the labor market.

Does everything have to do with the labor market? To summarize, Ms. McGee seems to be suggesting that Americans feed the neurotic self-help industry because of an unstable job market that makes us think we need to be the best, brightest and most attractive in order to have a good, stable career. I don’t think I’m going too far when I suggest that “good career” translates into income. We buy books on how to get ahead because we don’t want to be ugly and poor in other words.

Where to begin? First, it’s seeded so much deeper than this. We’re taught from kindergarten on that we’re all unique and have special talents no one else has. Later, the American Dream gets drummed into our heads that if we work hard enough and persevere, we can get anything we want. We see how materialism — the house you live in, the car you drive, the clothes you wear — has a direct bearing on how you’re viewed in society. Finally, we’re shown how you either need to go to college to get a good, solid job or you can become a sort of second-class citizen and go into the labor force. From there on out, you’re on your own — to the victors, the spoils!

Through all of this, we have the illusion that we — each of us, our own unique individual — have complete control of our destinies. In fairness, McGee hits this head on (”Assuming that everything is in the individual’s control is one of the great fallacies of self-help literature,” she says) but this should be thesis of the whole article, shouldn’t it? I mean, does the housewife watching make-overs on Jenny Jones really give a damn about her place in the labor market?

Either McGee (or the article) fails to address the key questions that should be making people think: why do we feel we need to buy self-help books at all? What is it about our culture that makes us feel that we’re too fat, too dumb, or we’ve somehow been less successful than we want?

As a culture, we send and reflect mixed messages: you’re a unique individual, you can succeed if you try hard enough, and you shouldn’t be satisfied with who you are or what you have. I mean, how many super models have confessed to being terribly depressed despite having money, looks, and fame? Something’s broken here.

How much of this is driven by sheer commercialism? It benefits me to make you feel ugly if I’m selling something that promises to make you look pretty. There aren’t many products out there made to make you less successful, less sexy, less smart. So then we get clever marketing schemes that are tailored to specific groups — are you a hard working corporate exec that has a lot of money but you’re so busy raking it in that you don’t have time to sufficiently manage your portfolio? Or maybe you’re the 1% of the 1% who actually need a pick-up truck this tough? (that ad’s my favorite — you’d think direct marketing would work better for such a select group, rather than taking out a 30-second spot to broadcast to millions during Sunday football) It’s all based on making you feel lousy or inadequate — after all, you don’t sell many trucks if the voiceover tells you what you already have is probably okay for your daily routine.

So back to the article, it seems curious for McGee to emphasize the workplace so heavily. Life is not work. Work is not life. The issue is one of identity — both national and individual. You can spend a lot of money trying to figure out who you are and who you want to be — plenty of folks are willing to help you find out, for a fee of course.

I don’t really know where I’m going with all of this, but I find I’m still annoyed. Maybe it’s because a few years ago I figured out that working sixty hours a week was bullshit, and I was looking down the barrel of another forty years of bullshit. I had always loved reading and writing, yet my schedule didn’t allow time for me to read. Write? Are you kidding? I realized I was a far way away from what I had envisioned myself doing with my life.

So I jettisoned that career and went back to the basics. Reading. Lots. Writing. Lots. Money? Not so much. It’s hard. It might not work out down the road. Some people think I’m nuts for abandoning what wasn’t a half-bad career. Other people think following my heart is inspiring. In truth, it’s neither. It is what it is. I want to go to back to school so I can get a career that is related to reading, writing, and teaching. It’s highly competitive. Again, it may not work out. But I know that I’m not going to stop reading and writing. Ever. I won’t let a job take those things away — my friends and loved ones would never dream of making those kind of demands. And that’s all that really matters.

I’ll leave you with some Clash lyrics that cheer me up, and I gently implore you to resist something, somehow, in some small way you can call your own.

All the power’s in the hands
Of people rich enough to buy it
While we walk the street
Too chicken to even try it
– lyrics from “White Riot

Are you taking over
or are you taking orders?
Are you going backwards
Or are you going forwards?
– lyrics from “White Riot

What the hell is wrong with me?
I’m not who I want to be
– lyrics from “What’s My Name”

The offered me the office, offered me the shop
They said I’d better take anything they’d got
Do you wanna make tea at the BBC?
Do you wanna be, do you really wanna be a cop?
– lyrics from “Career Opportunities”

Face front you got the future shining
Like a piece of gold
But I swear as we get closer
It look more like a lump of coal
But it’s better than some factory
Now that’s no place to waste your youth
I worked there for a week once
I luckily got the boot
– lyrics from “All the Young Punks (New Boots and Contracts)”

The voices in your head are calling
Stop wasting your time, there’s nothing coming
Only a fool would think someone could save you
The men at the factory are old and cunning
You don’t owe nothing, so boy get runnin’
It’s the best years of your life they want to steal

You grow up and you calm down
You’re working for the clampdown
You start wearing the blue and brown
You’re working for the clampdown
So you got someone to boss around
It makes you feel big now
You drift until you brutalize
You made your first kill now
–lyrics from “Clampdown”

Now every cheap hood strikes a bargain with the world,
Ends up making payments on a sofa or a girl.
Love ‘n hate tattooed across the knuckles of his hands,
Hands that slap his kids around, ’cause they don’t understand how,
Death or glory, becomes just another story.
– lyrics from “Death or Glory”

That’s a long post, now innit?

Current Mood – Rebellious |
Currently Listening To – Bob Dylan – “Biograph, Disc Two”