The Absolutely Impossible Art Of Not Giving A Fuck: A Thought Daughter’s Guide

Notes On: The cult of perfectionism and capturing the elusive ‘work life balance’

There’s something about existing in the world, in 2024, that inspires perfectionism. That encourages it, doctrine-like. It’s all about capitalism, obviously. That classic, American thing: the harder you work the happier you’ll be.

Alexandra Shwartz describes this phenomenon in her piece entitled ‘Improving Ourselves to Death’ (The New Yorker): “In our current era of non-stop technological innovation, fuzzy wishful thinking has yielded to the hard doctrine of personal optimization […] We are being sold on the need to upgrade all parts of ourselves, all at once, including parts that we did not previously know needed upgrading.”

But according to Thomas Curran – Associate Professor of Psychology at the LSE, author of best-selling book The Perfection Trap, TED speaker, and – according to his website – ‘the world’s leading expert of perfectionism’ – it’s also a ‘“hidden epidemic”. In a Guardian interview, he goes on: perfectionism is ‘an indictment of neoliberal economics and the ultra-competitive, individualistic culture that has come to envelop us.’ That sounds about right. We have been enveloped by it, this ever-hungry, all-encompassing thing: individualism, personal optimisation, the unending dogma that repeats in the ears of commuters and students alike: be better, be better, be better.

And it echoes within our algorithms, too. To flatten an incredibly complex phenomenon: If capitalism requires a level of self-imposed perfectionism (and it does), then of course our feeds are flooded with ways to be better. Navigating an online-world designed for the individual (everything – from playlists to adverts to food recommendations to funny tweets – is designed ‘for you’), we are confronted by myriad of ways to ameliorate. Some videos that came up on my feed this morning: ‘How I stay young at 35 years old’ (includes: lymphatic drainage, raw juice, infrared sauna and, alarmingly: NO GLUTEN, NO SEED OILS), ‘How to do an effortlessly messy bun’ (it does look good, tbh), and ‘Morning Routine (for a healthy gut)’. In other words: A Thousand Ways To Be Better At Being You.*

Of course, it’s not everything, all the time. Other things that came up on my feed this morning: a ginger cat doing a ‘perfect’ loaf (10/10), Taylor Swift’s POV on money (incredibly insightful) and ‘a love letter to London’ (obsessed). But still – it’s a lot of content, a lot of the time.

And that’s on top of the onslaught of perfectionist messaging we get just by being women: nails, hair the right length (either a lot or none, depending on body part), moisturisers, body sculpt classes, LED masks, the question of Botox, the list goes on. (Nora Ephron has a brilliant essay on this, by the way, titled ‘On Maintenance’. She says it better than I ever could).*

To quote Alexandra Shwartz in The New Yorker: ‘The good life may have sufficed for Plato and Aristotle, but it is no longer enough: “We are under pressure to show that we know how to lead the perfect life” (Carl Cederström and André Spicer)’.

And honestly? It’s fucking exhausting.

Why? Well, one reason is that it’s elusive, and non-existent. Because perfectionism doesn’t exist.

At the same time, it’s alluring: the idea that perfection might just be reached if we try hard enough. And also: there’s something oddly cultish about it.

Amanda Montell

(author and host of one of my favourite podcasts, ‘Sounds Like A Cult’) defines a Cultish group as ‘one that promises to improve your life if you follow its regimen, buy its products or obey its leader.’ Her podcast is a tongue-in-cheek exploration of ‘the modern-day cults we all follow’. Episodes range from ‘The Cult of Lululemon’ (this one actually includes a murder), ‘The Cult of the Dallas Cowboys,’ to ‘The Cult of Skincare.’ It’s all a bit of fun: she’s not actually suggesting these are cults, just that they’re cult-ish).  And I think the same could be said about perfectionism.

Does perfectionism promise to improve your life if you follow its regimen, buy its products (gym memberships, books about habits), or obey its leader? Yes, yes, and yes. 

Okay, so there’s not one obvious leader who controls the entire movement, but we do have our own figureheads, through which we twist perfectionism into a positive trait.