INFLUENCERS DISTORTING “SELF CARE” TO PUSH OVERCONSUMPTION & CONSUMERISM | Influencer Insanity Ep 11

someone's got to say it who would want to submerge themselves in essentially red dye not one but two gigantic highly scented bath bombs mixed with cherry blossom bubble bath and Cherry soap especially during that time of the month are you crazy I'm getting a headache and an itchy infection from here they discourage being thankful for what you already have they are teaching us that the only way to be happy and to care for yourself is to buy more more more more more and it's never going to be enough hello and welcome back to another episode

of influencer insanity where we feature all the ridiculous things that influencers will post on social media just to bring ourselves back down to reality a bit look at things through a critical lens and really give ourselves a reality check as the viewers and consumers of social media content today's episode is in the same vein as episode one about restock influencers and episode two about the Stanley Cup phenomenon and how influencers are contributing to a grotesque level of overc consumption and consumerism but today we're focusing on how that pertains to the self-care content that we see

so much of and how apparently now self-care means having 101 skincare products and enough bath bombs to give you a raging UTI it's no longer about actually taking care of yourself it's about how many products can an influencer shove into a 60-second Tik Tok video to push you to buy something that you might not actually need everything is pink everything is curated they're typically showing off some massive collection of skin care or beauty products it's all the things you would imagine lotions potions candles desserts bubble bath face masks that kind of thing and I think

that all those things are super girly and fun and enjoyable but they're also not the only way to take care of yourself in fact what's being featured in these kinds of self-care social media posts is a pretty superficial consumerism centered depiction of what self-care is and I think the influencer ification of self-care is really skewing our perception of what it means to show yourself love and care so I've got a lot of over-the-top unhinged influencer examples that I'm going to show you and we'll break those down one by one and then later I'm going to

give you a whole bunch of lowcost or no cost ways that you can practice self-care in a way that is perhaps more beneficial than bath bomb's Galore and I think it'd be awesome if we can use the comment section below to share even more ideas too but first i'm partnering once again with the paed app on today's video and I think that's a perfect fit because we're talking all about ways you can take care of yourself and one way you can do that is to take care of your relationship too paired is a relationship app

designed to help couples strengthen their communication and deepen emotional connection unlike other apps that focus on dating or conflict resolution par is about nurturing and deepening existing relationships it offers daily activities interactive games and conversation starters along with expert back advice providing couples with the tools to stay connected and communicate effectively helping them navigate the challenges that come with long-term relationships the thing about the pair app that really drew me in was the variety of topics available and how it's a great supplemental tool to keep the conversations going with your partner my husband and I

have been together for eight years and at some point you start to think that you know everything there is to know about your partner or like what else is there to talk about you know but there's always more to uncover even things that you didn't even think to ask your partner about there are so many topics through the paired app that I never would have thought to initiate conversations about otherwise for example share one way being with AJ has improved your relationship with friends or family how would you feel if AJ became friends with one

of your exes how has he helped you reframe a negative thought recently matching couple tattoos cute or cringe and there are endless games questions quizzes about nearly every topic you could possibly think of communication conflict sex money work family parenting the list goes on the paired app is such a great tool to get you talking and encourage you to prioritize each other every single day if you would like to maintain and deepen connection with your partner through the paired app you can use my link in the description box below and that's going to give you

a 7-Day free trial plus 25% off paired premium thanks again to the paired app for sponsoring today's video okay let's take a look at some of the more extreme examples of self-care content that I've been seeing lately here's a creator that has made appearances in my restock influencers video and the lying influencers video and here she is about to take us along her full day of self-care routine [Music] that does look really relaxing I can't even hate on it I can't lie it looks nice I mean who doesn't love a whole day of pampering and

fun drinks and shopping and a bath it's all pretty innocuous and to be fair I like watching this kind of content however please remember this is a commercial this is a matter of flashing one product after another in Rapid succession to communicate the message even subliminally that these are the items you need to have to live a better life or to take care of yourself but ask yourself do you really think these people live that life or is it all for show is it all for the camera is it all for the sake of showcasing

these products to make the viewer intrigued so that they go to these people's Amazon storefront to buy it so they can make a commission forget TV commercials and billboards these are the commercials of today's age and they're deceptive because a lot of the time you might not recognize that you're being sold to because the sales pitch isn't coming from some highly produced commercial in some studio set it looks like it's coming in the form of snapshots of somebody's real life but what if we start to think about influencers houses as the modern-day Studio sets do

you really think that their houses look this immaculate all the time do you really think that this woman was just going through capturing little snapshots of a normal day so effortlessly no be real with yourself there are likely tripods and lighting kits and multiple takes and thoughtful planning and execution and editing it really is no different than a TV commercial if you actually think about it but it's harder for us to recognize it for what it actually is because it's coming to us through social media and we have this idea that social media is just

for sharing whatever's going on in your life right so when we see videos like this of a perfectly curated seemingly luxurious life our first reaction is to go oh my God look at that everything is so perfect for them why aren't things that perfect for me when really we should be going oh that was a really aesthetically pleasing commercial to watch when's the last time you watched like a Neutrogena or a L'Oreal commercial on TV and like felt bad about yourself because you were comparing yourself to it so much and oh my gosh look at

their lashes with that mascara it's so beautiful on the TV why can't my lashes look like that when you know that it's like cged on or what ever like super highly edited in a studio production of course there might still be some comparison going on there but it's easier to separate yourself from it when you're seeing a commercial ad it's not as easy to make that distinction when you're just scrolling on social media and the stuff is being fed to you as if it is reality and the more that we can train our brains to

read between the lines and not take everything on social media at face value then the healthier relationship we can have with it and I maintain that it is awesome if you enjoy videos like this personally I follow this Creator I like her videos I like her stuff it's my guilty pleasure to see what she's up to and what she's doing and what cutesy little Gadget she's got her hands on now but it's okay to watch it and appreciate it for exactly what it is and just let it end there we don't have to let ourselves

fall into this negative comparison game or let these kinds of videos Drive our compulsive consumerism I promise you're still able to practice self-care even if you don't have a collection of Louis Vuittons in your closet to choose from to then go out shopping on a shopping spree where you spend over $300 on home day to then come home and sip on fancy sparkling spring water out of a decorative champagne flute in the bath with your $450 red light therapy mask on okay you don't need all of this to practice self-care this next video is titled

things that make self-care more fun [Music] standing I'm standing outside [Music] I do appreciate that this one at least is structured pretty explicitly like I'm going to show you a bunch of products that you don't really need and they aren't really necessary but they might make your self-care routine more fun I respect that because at least people know that they're being sold to some of the products she featured in here were an $80 bath towel warmer and then an $80 face towel warmer because apparently using the bath towel warmer for face Towers would just be

nonsensical but you know what else would heat up your towels that you likely already have access to a dryer if you really really want a hot towel after your bath or shower you can hook yourself up with that pretty cheaply and easily she also features a $50 facial light therapy tool and my personal favorite although it's not expensive is this little Gadget that sses up your face wash for you so rather than just emulsifying the cleanser in your hands you're now purchasing a gadget that you're dirtying up every time you want to wash your face

so many of these things are just straight up unnecessary and wasteful like these sing single use towelettes that she's showing but here's where I give my disclaimer that I don't want to talk down on anyone's good time okay I fully support you spending your hard earn money on things that you genuinely love and enjoy and if having warm towels is something that makes you feel loved and cared for and it's something that you enjoy doing then do it go for it I support you in that that's kind of how I feel about my Nespresso machine

a little bit of a side tangent the machine itself was a few hundred bucks it was a gift for my husband for my birthday but the pods that go in it are this recurring cost right it's not that cheap and having our old drip coffee machine was way more costeffective but you know what I use that dang espresso machine every single day I look forward to it I go to sleep thinking about it I wake up thinking about it it adds so much joy and dopamine to my life I will never give it up you

can't tell me nothing about my coffee machine okay I don't care that it's expensive I don't care that it's impractical you cannot put a price on the happiness it brings me so point being to that whole tangent is that products in the realm of self-care we naturally have this tendency to feel like oh we can split lurge on that because it's going to make me happy and I think there's totally a time in place for that I would be lying to you if I told you that I didn't look into getting a towel warmer at

one point I got as far as to like actually go in my bathroom and I'm looking around at the configuration I'm like where are the outlets where would I put it and I ultimately decided that the only place it would fit in my bathroom was really inconvenient I would have to like drip across the whole bathroom floor to go get the warm towel you know I just knew that I would buy it it would be a waste of money I would never actually use it but it looked really really nice in these self-care videos so

in saying that I would urge you to try to avoid impulse purchases in the name of self-care or indulging in something nice for yourself just because you saw an influencer featuring it or just because you saw an ad on social media an influencer's job is to Showcase products and to demonstrate how they would add value to your life so hopefully you feel convinced by that and you purchase from them but sometimes what's being promoted to you might not be practical or realistic or actually necessary and it's so easy to go oh my gosh I need

that towel warmer look at how fancy that is that would improve my life so much and in those instances my best piece of advice would be to just bookmark the link somewhere tell yourself if you really want it in a few days or next week then you'll buy it if it's in the budget of course but the odds are you're going to forget all about it the Temptation is gone it's not a thing anymore and guess what you saved all that money congrats but if the Temptation is not gone if you're still finding yourself thinking

about that thing day after day week after week then maybe it is worth splurging on for you but at least if you put a pause on it if you wait if you think about it if you budget for it then at least when you do purchase it you know it's something you actually want and would need and would use point being there are so many ways to take care of yourself that don't require spending money and they don't require these big expensive gadgets if they make you happy and you feel like they add value to

your life and you can afford them then great but generally speaking we shouldn't tie up our happiness or our worthiness in material possessions in fact a form of self-care could actually be setting boundaries preventing this impulse buying pausing to reconsider purchases is a great way to take care of yourself and your finances now this next example is just kind of comical if I'm being honest part of me feels like we shouldn't be taking it all that seriously because it almost has like a rage bait vibe to it episode five of this influencer series was all

about rage baiting if you want to learn more about that tactic the caption on this says that time of the month bath time and I guess we can take her a little bit seriously because she's making sure to let us know that all the products she's showcasing here can be featured in her Amazon storefront so she's definitely trying to sell us on something even if it's in a more shocking way here's what I mean by that [Music] [Music] someone's got to say it who who would want to submerge themselves in essentially red dye not one

but two gigantic highly scented bath bombs mixed with cherry blossom bubble bath and Cherry soap especially during that time of the month are you crazy I'm getting a headache and an itchy infection from here the pad and tampon shaped bath bombs are clearly rage bait making it look like you're bathing in blood is a little over the top if you ask me but these are strategic things that creators do to encourage people to become angry so that they leave angry comments it's a tactic to increase the engagement on the video to push it out to

more viewers so that more people see the products more people buy the products the Creator earns more money and commissions and I went to her Amazon storefront and I found as many of the items from this Tik Tok video as I could and I total them all up do you want to take a quick stab at how much all of this costs I'll give you a second are you ready ,000 you guys $1,000 for everything shown in this video and that's not including the cost of all of her snacks like the ice cream and the

crumble cookies that box of crumble is like $25 in itself the $500 portable projector accounted for most of that cost $11,000 for a cold bath by the time you finally get in it congratulations this is the kind of overc consumption that drives me nuts look I'm all for a nice bath I am known to have dessert pretty much every night of my life but this is getting to a gluttonous level it's the multiple bath bombs the multiple soaps the Stanley Cup ice molds as if regular ice cubes don't work just as well the platter of

like six different desserts at what point are we just doing too much you know and probably the funniest thing about all of this to me is that when everything is said and done I'm just trying to picture her sitting in her cramped lukewarm bath eating her pint of ice cream like craning her neck to try and watch the Netflix show on the wall next to her like girl just have a nice bath come sit on the couch eat a pint of ice cream and watch a movie like the rest of us that qualifies as self-care

just as much as this whole charade and it's a lot less expensive and a lot less effort truth be told I would be willing to bet money that she didn't step foot in this bath at all cuz like I said earlier it's a commercial it's a fantasy This is Not Practical I'm almost positive that it took her at least an hour to set this whole thing up get the camera get the angles just to pull the plug on the drain and let everything flow out and clean it all up this is not someone's actual period

self-care routine this is just content this is her job that she makes an income off of and that's fine no shame in doing that that's just the nature of the job of an influencer that's how they make a living cool let them go about their lives doing that but as the viewer of it please just know what you're watching this next one made me laugh so hard when I first saw it because it is a hand care routine this is genuinely swear out my life never something I have ever thought of doing in a million

years sure my hands get dry sometimes I'll put a little lotion on sometimes it's nice to get your nails done or something but this was so comically over the top I could not cope [Music] a million people in the crowd but I only see your facing all the line I don't really care about love I don't really care about Happy Ever After something about you give me hope something about you yeah when the sun goes down and the night skies fall do you believe in one time love cuz deep inside of my wildest dreams you

[Music] be [Music] when I don't really care about [Music] my first thought is oh my God could you imagine how greasy your hands would feel after all of this I can barely stand the like sticky greasy feeling of hand lotion but this woman just used 10 layers worth of lotions oils and treatments on her hands it's just so ridiculously excessive in like a sensory nightmare for me personally at least and again I found her hand Care Page on her Amazon storefront and I totaled up everything featured in the video and it comes out to be

about $380 the big ticket items being this $80 light therapy tool and the $65 paraffin wax machine and then a couple hundred worth of lotions and potions for your hands for your hands that's it I just have never in a million years thought to give that much attention to my hands maybe I should is this a thing am I missing out on something I've heard that it's a good idea to put sunscreen on your hands to prevent aging but past that everything seems completely unne necessary to me personally it's one of those things where it's

like if this makes you feel pampered and cared for then go for it but you're not going to catch me adopting a $380 hand care routine uh-uh and kind of in that same vein I've recently gotten into skincare I've nailed down a four-step skincare routine that I loved I've been using it for the last 3 months it's great it's working wonders however four steps even feels like a lot I do be feeling like a little grease ball which is why I do my skin care right before I go to bed because again it's like a

sensory thing so videos like the hand Care One or the one I'm about to show you they truly perplex me in terms of cost time and the seemingly Overkill nature of it all and I'm going to blur her face on this clip because I believe she's a minor I think she's still in high school which almost makes this more troubling how much does my skincare routine actually cost First is my CRV cleanser which retails at $17.99 next use my Essence toner and this retails at $38 and I absolutely love this product for my next up

I like to use the watermelon toner and this smells absolutely amazing guys next I like to use my do drops and guys I am all out like like I'm literally so sad this is usually my first step but I'm using the Coty face mist which retails at $12 this is the Lan waterbank serum which retails at $45 and I get so many comments about this product next I use a lip mask and I'm going to be using the lineage one which retails at24 this is the ordinary Berry support system which retails at 17 bucks next

I'm using my Ser V moisturizer which is $17.99 this is my favorite product if you guys can't tell next is the in free sunscreen which retails at $17 as well and guys this leaves no white cast this NYX fat oil retails at 9 bucks and here's me doing the deck lips guys this is the eyebrow brush last pencil for morphe and I believe this retails at $12 total cost is $276.5 I think I counted 10 skincare products plus two Cosmetics after that totaling almost $300 this is a genuine question because I'm pretty much useless when

it comes to skincare I don't know what I'm talking about in that realm so at what point are there too many layers of things on your skin that it just doesn't even matter anymore I would imagine that after like the fifth or sixth layer of goop and oil and moisturizers that anything you put on top of that is like impenetrable it's just going to waste right it just seems so excessive and like a waste of time and money and energy for pretty much no payoff and here's the thing that's always confused me about skincare if

you're having 10 layers of stuff on your face how do you know if none of it is working or if all of it is working or if you're getting good results how do you know which one is to blame if you're getting bad results how do you know which one to blame that kind of thing like it just it confuses me so much when people are like I love this product this is the best this works wonders it's so great people ask me about it all the time and I'm like okay but that's one of

the 10 products you put on how how do you know how do you know I don't know I tend to believe that less is more or simpler is better when it comes to skincare routines because how are you supposed to know if all these products are actually doing what they claim to do if you're mixing them all together and that's what kind of bothers me about these self-care type videos in which skincare is so heavily focused on cuz you'll see these people's massive skincare collections it's like an entire cabinet or a whole vanity covered in

them and in this video she added up the price for all this stuff we know how expensive it is and it's just reinforcing that message that if you want to take care of yourself or if you want to pamper yourself then you've got to splurge on like hundreds of dollars of skin care and I think that's such a superficial consumerist view of what self-care is and perhaps even the more upsetting aspect of this video in particular is that she is a high schooler you guys this is kind of beside the point of this video and

I'm going on a little bit of a tangent but this kind of thing is so dystopian to watch it's like the Sephora kids Trend that we were seeing at the beginning of this year where young young young literal children are becoming obsessive over things like skin care and makeup at an age where it's not even necessary at an age where they can't even afford it so they're begging their parents to drop hundreds of dollars on these products for them and then they're sitting at their vanity and they're obsessively coating their face with a dozen products

and they're making Tik Tok videos about it like this cannot possibly be good for the mental health and the self-image of young girls right like what kind of message are we sending as a societ society that we now have literal children becoming obsessed with preining themselves in front of a mirror using products that weren't intended for them I'm in my late 20s and I just nailed down a skincare routine this summer I was using freaking Clean and Clear morning burst and St Ives apricot scrub when I was her age and you know mistakes were made

you live and you learn we're moving on but point being I don't remember an emphasis on skin care being placed on girls my age when I was a pre-teen or in high school and this is clearly a trend that is reserved for children of parents who can afford to buy them this expensive skin care and I'm sure this is contributing to the popularity or the coolness disparity that we see among schoolage children as the result of these really expensive Trends if you're a young girl and you're watching this I want you to know that you

are perfect and beautiful just the way you are and you are worthy of everything wonderful in life even if you don't have 10 layers of skin care on your face right now it's easy to see what some girls on Tik Tok are doing and be envious of what they have or what their parents allow them to have but I'm here to tell you that life is about so much more than your material possessions and self-fulfillment and self-love has to come from the inside you're not going to find it in a bottle of Moisturizer in fact

that's a great segue into talking about some no cost or lowcost ways to practice self-care because I would love if we could pull away from this idea that self-care equals bubble baths and face masks and a cabinet full of skin care products the definition of self-care is the practice of taking action to preserve or improve one's own health the practice of taking an active role in protecting one's own well-being and happiness in particular during periods of stress and I love this definition specifically the part about how self-care is protecting your own well-being you may have

heard of this in terms of protecting your peace bubble baths and face masks are fun and they're a temporary way to make yourself feel pampered but what other things can you be incorporating into your life to take care of yourself and to encourage peace happiness and health some of the very first things that come to mind for me are about our digital and social media use a form of self-care could be to practice deleting a social media app from your phone for one day a week or one hour a week even or maybe you consider

turning off notifications protecting your peace removing those annoying notifications that are constantly vying for your attention and pulling you out of the present moment go on a social media unfollowing spree unfollow any accounts that you find yourself obsessing over or they make you feel bad in some way maybe you take a break from looking at the news for a couple of days not because you don't want to be informed but because the news is freaking depressing or you could try and go screen free for an hour before bedtime just to give your brain a chance

to wind down some non-digital ideas for self-care could be to go outside as cliche as that sounds go sit in the sun lay in the grass go for a walk just sit just be just exist you could call a friend maybe you journal or you read or you do an adult coloring book or a craft of some kind I was super into those Diamond painting things for a while they were so soothing I would just sit there and I would place the Little Gems right on their little colorcoded spots and it was an opportunity to

just be and to just shut my brain off and do something completely pointless but soothing smothing and that is a form of self-care I know some people really like to create vision boards or have a gratitude Journal where they list everything they're grateful for and as silly as that sounds that's one of my favorite stress relieving exercises because I will literally put on the list I am grateful for the roof over my head my husband my daughter my cats the bed that I fall into every night air conditioning in the summer Heating in the winter

the hot meal I had for dinner like there is so much to be grateful for and by intentionally focusing on those things and listing them out on paper it's really soothing and satisfying that's a form of self-care to ground yourself in reality and to acknowledge all the things you do have and not always be yearning for more and that kind of leads me down the path of how romanticizing the mundane tasks in your life can also be a form of self-care I got really good at this after becoming a mom because my list of priorities

is completely flipped on its head now so taking the time to shower every day and wash my hair a couple times a week that counts as self-care cooking a nice dinner watching an episode of my favorite show working out consistently eating dessert washing my sheets and shaving my legs on the same day if you know you know that is selfcare Peak self-care right there you know maybe it's that you spend some time meal planning so you don't have to stress about it the rest of the week that's taking care of yourself I've been practicing painting

my own Nails recently because who has the time or money for a salon these days and when I list all these things out I wonder like does that sound pathetic like really you showered and you ate dinner and you wash your sheets today and that's your self-care yeah yeah it is it really is and once you start reframing your mind to see these mundane tasks as ways that you are choosing to care for yourself you start to take pride in those little luxuries you start to see them differently the alternative is that you don't eat

a good dinner you don't take a shower today you don't clean up after yourself so by choosing to do all of those things you are practicing self-care you deserve to Pat yourself on the back you're taking care of yourself and also reframing it like how lucky and fortunate am I that I had a hot meal a hot shower and a bed to fall into tonight I think that self-care and gratitude go hand inand which is why I find these self-care videos by influencers on social media so problematic because they are driving a wedge between self-care

and gratitude they discourage being thankful for what you already have they are teaching us that the only way to be happy and to care for yourself is to buy more more more more more and it's never going to be enough these videos teach us subliminally that the only way to care for ourselves is through material possessions and that's just not healthy and it's not true Maybe urging and buying something nice for yourself can be a self-care treat but only if it's done on rare occasions purchasing new products loses its Allure if you've made it an

expectation that you're going to buy yourself something new every time you want to feel good and I hope in this video I've given you some things to think about when it comes to self-care and I hope we can use the comments section below to share some other ideas of what self-care means to you because while these over-the-top videos on social media are entertaining and they're fun to watch and they're satisfying they're not a depiction of reality and they're not something you should be comparing yourself too so tell me down below what's one thing you're going

to do for yourself that constitutes a self-care today for me I give myself a self-care night every single night every night after I put my toddler down for bed I do like a 30 to 40 minute workout just for like the mental purposes honestly it's such a nice way to like clear my brain after the long day and it doesn't have to be hard it doesn't have to be strenuous just doing something physical then I'll go and take a shower I'll shave my legs if I'm really feeling like it and then I go and I

park my butt on the couch and I watch trashy reality TV and I eat snacks until bed and that is totally self-care for me and I love it and I look forward to it every single day and it doesn't have to be complicated it doesn't have to be expensive so that's everything I have for you for today's video let me know how you're taking care of yourself in the comments down below and thanks again to parro for sponsoring today's video you can use the link in the description box below for a 7-Day free trial plus

25% off paired premium thank you so much for watching I really appreciate you take care of yourself and I'll see you in my next one real soon a [Music]