Turn Your Life Around in These 3 Simple Steps!
An Incredulous Look at One of Instagram’s Many Self-Care Accounts.
Over the last few days of mindless Instagram scrolling, I’ve become aware, and subsequently fixated, on one of the platform’s advertised posts. Generally, I am pretty immune to such adverts, indeed perhaps this is the idea- they assimilate easily into the contents of your own feed, all the better for disguising their underlying intentions to squeeze you for profit.
Nevertheless, this post caught my eye: depicting the page’s recommended step-by-step daily routine in colourful, cutesy pictures it initially seemed nothing more than another vaguely aspirational facet of Instagram’s infinite pool of wellness content.
I suspected it would glimmer at the surface for a few days before being submerged by a new ad for skinny tea and sinking desolately to lie among the rest of Instagram’s fleetingly popular and superfluous sponsored posts.
The ad’s presence, however, proved persistent and eventually I found myself reluctantly, but inevitably, falling prey to the app’s advertising strategy and clicking on the advert’s source, which led me to @thefabstory.
The format of the page is doubtless engaging-easily readable, attractive posts proffering highly digestible, condensed mantras, lists, challenges and diagrams, almost little bite sized chunks of life coaching for the page’s followers. Honestly, I am probably more vulnerable than most to such ploys, enticed by the idea of being congratulated for the smallest or laziest of victories.
Ah yes, I can sit back in my chair smug in the knowledge that not only have I fulfilled ‘Drink water!’ but also ‘Have a great breakfast!’ today (although admittedly the latter is open to a considerable amount of interpretation and I’m not sure if a bowl of AllBran makes the cut these days).
Indeed, it is not the page’s wealth of such painstakingly obvious and inane affirmations that irked me but that intertangled among these highly attainable goals are ones that are quite the opposite-far too complex to be condensed down into an endearing cartoon and certainly not the kind of thing that you can merely tick off today’s ‘To Do’ list.
Spend five minutes perusing @thefabstory and such instances are numerous. In equal parts hilarious and horrifying is the checklist: ‘4 ways habits to fight addiction!’ (each post, by the way, is punctuated with a shrill exclamation mark), with one of the solutions being: ‘hang out with your friends more!’.
Of course, I am in no way disputing the solace and help one can find in their friends but phrased ever so simply in chirpy language whilst neglecting to be any more specific about the nature of the addiction it addresses, the post completely minimises the fact that addiction is an incredibly complex, varied and painful experience.
Whether they intended only to cover more manageable addictions like your ‘addiction’ to coffee or Instagram I do not know, however I somehow doubt that America’s opioid crisis will be remedied by merely advocating for: ‘more brunch dates!’
There are countless examples of the account’s gross oversimplification of human life and lack of consideration for people whose lives are not already almost perfect. Short and sweet is a checklist of confident habits for shy people: ‘Accept yourself. All of you!’ (as if it were that easy). Then there is @thefabstory’s recommended daily routine, which is the advertised post that first enticed me.
The routine certainly has some good, although hardly revelatory, suggestions, including getting some fresh air and (again) eating a ‘great breakfast’. Yet then there is a ludicrous 2 hours allocated to merely reviewing your ‘To Do’ list, followed by the suggestion that you make an evening meal of 5 ingredients or less.
Perhaps, I am blinkered by my insatiable love of food and whilst I understand that this step is probably one of the least ridiculous in the routine, I am of the view that if a desirable and virtuous life includes limiting oneself to few ingredients, count me very firmly out.
Of course, one could argue that this speaks to the accessibility of the account: people both time and money poor are rightly likely to welcome a simple, faff free meal which removes the pressure of having to create some Insta-worthy creation that manages to incorporate every hue of the rainbow.
The fact, however that the routine only involves 2 hours of work per day suggests its target audience are not the cash strapped and overworked.
A few days after the initial routine post @thefabstory releases another routine for ‘9–5ers’, perhaps a sign of recognition at the presumably quite minuscule minority the former applied to. That one of the steps is to ‘clench your fists’ quickly dampened any hope that this second routine would serve of any more practical use.
It is clear that much of what @thefabstory recommends is preposterous, yet some of it is actually dangerous. Most of the page’s content I enjoyed mocking; a hapless collection of hilariously inconsistent, naïve and rather patronising posts. Then there were those that unsettled me far more profoundly.
There is a short pictorial quiz with three outcomes, the one you arrive at being the one you should newly incorporate into your routine. One of these outcomes was intermittent fasting. Then comes the carb replacement challenge. Then the post urging followers to exercise daily. In quick succession emerges the warning: ‘don’t indulge!’.
I don’t think I have to do much to explain how problematic this is. Intermittent fasting has sparked rafts of concerns from healthcare professionals about the physical and psychological effects it may have. Carbs (like most food groups in moderation) are good for you and their constant vilification serves to encourage unhealthy eating habits that reward self-deprivation.
Exercise undeniably carries huge range of benefits, yet it is a privilege and not everyone is able bodied enough or has enough time or access to resources to do it daily. ‘Don’t indulge!’ struck a particular chord in that it resembled reminders I have formerly had on my phone in ill-advised bids to dissuade myself from eating more than I thought I deserved.
I am lucky to appreciate now the toxicity of such sentiment, but for those who aren’t this is validating hugely detrimental practices of restriction and punishment.
We are all long familiar with the dubious ethics of Instagram- @thefabstory is certainly not the first of the site’s many troubling accounts. Nevertheless, like most things I think, Instagram contains within it the capacity for both light and dark and as many toxic pages that exist, I like to think there are twice as many hopeful ones. What is terrifying about @thefabstory however is that it promotes such questionable content all under the brightly coloured façade of self-care and empowerment.
Life is far too messy to be pulverised down into scant and sanctimonious step by step routines and dos and don’ts lists. Of course, whilst this is what can make it all the more difficult, it is within this mess that indulgence, joy and spontaneity exist, and thus where a great deal of life’s tiny wonders lie.
