‘Wellness’ Has Gone to Sh*t
Lorde’s “Mood Ring” as a Reading of Wellness Culture
The level of authenticity in the realm of ‘wellness culture’ has rapidly decreased over the recent past. What was once a method of improving your quality of life has been warped into something much messier, a direct result of the need to commodify.
In Jia Tolentino’s essay “Always Be Optimizing,” she describes a persona that she coined the “ideal woman.” This figure is the epitome of youth and luxury; she’s a beautiful woman who exists only in carefully curated spaces, constantly keeping the company of friends/partners whose shine reflects onto her.
In Lorde’s track “Mood Ring,” she sings from the perspective of a character that I consider a manifestation of an ideal woman. However, the character is struggling with feeling confused as to why her internal thoughts are inconsistent with the ‘ideal’ lifestyle that she’s actively trying to lead.
The character is pleading to make sense of her inability to authentically feel anything, but she’s doing so without making any real attempt at self improvement. Instead, Lorde’s character sings about turning to consumable goods to soothe her anxieties, temporarily patching issues that are much deeper.
The title “Mood Ring” refers to the popular pieces of jewelry that promised to accurately reflect whatever mood the wearer was experiencing. These cheap rings and necklaces stamped with gaudy, colorful stones were a huge pillar of culture in the early 2000’s, a period of Lorde’s childhood that she refers longing after in the song. The mood ring is an early example of relying on a material object to reflect internal feelings, the exact phenomenon that Lorde is critiquing and her character is guilty of; they represent a collective nostalgia for reality before being plagued with complexities of adulthood.
The music video for the track “Mood Ring” is centered around the group of women below:
The song begins with the lyrics:
I’m tryna blow bubbles but inside
Can’t seem to fix my mood/Today it’s as dark as my roots
If I, if I ever let them grow out (ah-ah)
They are accompanied by these two images.
Immediately, we are introduced to a woman with synthetic blonde hair, minimal makeup, piercing green eyes, and dark eyebrows. The closeness of the character’s eyes to the camera creates uncomfortable tension between the watcher and the woman, the pained and lifeless look within them is front and center. The opening lyrics establish the character’s incapability to improve her mood, comparing the darkness she’s feeling to that of her hair if it wasn’t constantly stripped away by bleach.
The stills above are extremely intimate with the character; this is one of the only moments in the video that the camera is positioned off center, a visual representation of her individual lack of security. This stylistic choice directly contrasts with the perfectly centered shots of her when she’s accompanied by the other women.
This section of the video is paired with a consistent vocal melody of elongated ‘ahh’s from Lorde; the vocals sound like polished whines or sighs that become masked by a warped sound effect and finally, are replaced by the opening lyrics and bouncy, campfire-esque guitar strings. This sonic furthers the goal of establishing these characters as naturally and effortlessly cool, an agenda that’s additionally supported by the stylish, trendy minimalist aesthetic that the visual layer provides.
The setting of the video never changes; the women remain in the confines of this sheer-walled tent, being teased by the shadows of the outside world. They keep themselves busy by indulging in tasks such as blankly flipping through the pages of a book or brushing their hair.
The bare, beige setting is similar to where you would imagine an expensive wellness retreat houses their guests, a space that models modern minimalism. The choice to keep the women exclusively in this setting is representative of how women are most well received when they exist in the exact ways and spaces that the collective chooses to confine them to.
Tolentino’s description of the ideal woman conveys a calm and cool aura; she remains effortlessly gorgeous and gleaming while doing what is expected of her with “genuine enthusiasm.” However, this trait is not upheld by all the characters; the women are constantly stone-faced and unamused by what’s in front of them. While none of the characters appear fulfilled, Lorde’s character is the only one who makes direct eye contact with the camera, as though she’s the first to openly express wanting more than what this role is providing for her.
There are several shots within the video that display the women using their bodies to create shapes that mimic some watered down idea of yoga or spiritualistic ritual. Their bodies are placed closely together, sometimes even holding hands or resting on top of one another. Yet, these shapes are missing the warmness and healing properties that yoga offers; there’s a stiffness within every inch of their bodies, making them appear despondent and disconnected from both one another and the larger shape they’re contributing to, somehow making even the silkiest of fabrics seem constricting.
In “Always Be Optimizing”, Tolentino alludes to the fad of workouts that are mostly tailored towards female audiences, focusing on female sexuality and the body types valued by mainstream media. These exercises promise results of slim bodies as opposed to bulky strength and bigger asses instead of bigger shoulders. Typically, these Barre or hot pilates classes are extremely expensive, ensuring that only a certain demographic of women have access to them. Yet, their high demand remains because they aren’t just offering a healthy body, they act as a ticket to the persona or lifestyle that people strive towards. If you own a membership to a yoga studio, you are a woman who has things figured out, who only eats organic produce, who always wakes up early and never has an unproductive day.
Our modern perception of ‘wellness’ has morphed into an aesthetic rather than a state of mind or body. When you step outside, you are constantly reminded that you — just as you are — are not good enough…but you can become better, and there are a handful of brands ready to help get you there.
Look at a business like goop by Gwyneth Paltrow, a self acclaimed “modern lifestyle brand”. If you visit the brand’s website, you will find a WELLNESS tab where you can purchase workout accessories, vitamins & supplements, and sex toys. To the right of that, there’s a tab that encourages you to read all about beauty, style, travel, and more from the perspective of a wealthy white woman. Here’s an example of a recent post on goop’s Instagram:
The brand is not simply selling products, they are selling their primarily female audience the status of what they — and the mass culture — deem as ‘good’, ‘clean’, or worthy. While goop isn’t the only brand participating in this shade of marketing, it serves as a great example of ‘well-being’s intense evolution into a consumable good. And I don’t think the similarity between Lorde’s bleach blonde wig and Paltrow’s hair is just a coincidence.
In “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture”, Fredric Jameson states that the distinction between high art and popular culture has become useless. He credits the collapse of this distinction to postmodernism, allowing us to see both kinds of art within the other. Jameson argues that high culture or not, satirical or not, there is something of value within the texts of either form.
This music video is a reflection of a growing critique on wellness culture and how it’s being sold to consumers, stripped of any guarantee for real improvement on the problems it claims to ‘fix’. Through this song, Lorde is addressing the aforementioned conflict along with human experiences like anxiety and lack of purpose that are extremely common amongst her audience of young adults. Therefore, the video exemplifies Jameson’s argument that popular culture, while not high art, is still valuable because it is reflective of the moment.
I’m tryna get well from the inside
Plants and celebrity news, all the vitamins I consume
Let’s fly somewhere eastern, they’ll have what I need (they’ll have what I need)
The character is expressing her frustration with the lack of results she receives after trying to improve her mental state. It’s obvious that she isn’t noticing a difference because her methods of self improvement include indulging in mass media consumption and traveling somewhere with the goal to exploit their culture and natural resources.
In the context of Jameson’s argument, the abstract human experience being reified is the feeling of wellbeing, as this character is hoping to obtain that status through accessible appropriated spirituality, astrology, or ‘plant’/drug use.
Lorde specifically references flying ‘somewhere eastern’ to escape from the western principles she’s grown tired of; this line is accompanied by what sounds like a seductive, foreign wind chime. This sound effect is an allusion to the fact that her perception of eastern culture is extremely stereotypical and out-of-touch, strictly viewing this eastern land as the place that will give her the remedy to the discontinuity she’s experiencing.
The concept of feminism that Lorde is singing about, Tolentino wrote about, and brands like goop are selling are direct examples of how feminism has become intertwined with consumerism, transforming into a spectacle and a commodified good. Initially, this song can be perceived as an oblivious pop star glorifying their wealth and engagement with luxuries like overpriced vitamins and time abroad. However, Lorde establishes this project as satire through sonic elements like the stereotypical wind chime or the meaningless whispered phrase “love and light” in combination with images like this:
Or this:
Or this one, which is seen as another sparkly, meaningless chime sound plays:
Each of these images have no real meaning or significance; they imitate a recognizable ritualistic or spiritual aesthetic, but they are void of any actual impact, discrediting Lorde’s character and her naive understanding of the cultures that she is pushing herself into.
With the lyrics
“Can’t seem to find what’s wrong/The whole world is letting me down/Don’t you think the early 2000s seem so far away? (Ay-ay-ay-ay)”
Lorde is expressing a widely shared longing for the past, nostalgia for something unattainable. Without the possibility of returning to the past, living in the present, or having a guarantee of what the future holds, we are experiencing levels of extreme anxiety and stagnation. “Mood Ring’’ is symbolic of an omnipresent lack of security in what we’re doing, forcing us to search for leaders who might have the answers we’re looking for, and inducing the need to find something to believe in.
It’s very common for people — especially young adults — to partake in activities such as meditation, crystals, or astrology because they provide something larger to believe in. They can provide reasoning for what we experience in the world around us, like why we had a bad day or how we can move past a setback. The issue is that Lorde’s character isn’t able to fully immerse herself into any of the activities she’s singing about, bouncing from one vice to another without gaining any of the benefits or they offer to others.
Lorde mentions these practices in the pre-chorus:
Ladies, begin your sun salutations
Transcendental in your meditations (love and light)/You can burn sage, and I’ll cleanse the crystals/We can get high, but only if the wind blows (blows just right)”
And:
Ladies, begin your sun salutations
Pluto in Scorpio generation (love and light)
You can burn sage, and I’ll cleanse the crystals
We can get high, but only if the wind blows (blows just right, ri-ri-ri-right)
She repeats the chorus:
I can’t feel a thing
I keep looking at my mood ring
Tell me how I’m feeling
Floating away, floating away
Lorde’s character is expressing feeling stuck in this constant, exhausting loop. This set of lyrics is undeniably dark; they depict Lorde’s character as helpless, remaining frozen as she watches whatever sense of identity she once had is now slipping away. Yet, Lorde intentionally muffles the emotion conveyed by the lyrics with an upbeat soundtrack and aesthetically pleasing — though vapid — visuals.
“Mood Ring” acts as a representation of many ideas and feelings; the song brings life to Jia Tolentino’s ‘ideal woman’ while simultaneously modeling Fredric Jameson’s ideas around how we reify human experiences into commodities. The song critiques our modern perception of wellness and its transformation into a handful of empty selling points. Lorde echoes the collective desperation to find something to believe in, acknowledging that we all look for comfort in the wrong places and doing so with a springy, catchy beat.
