Pandora Sykes

Modern life is full of choices. We're told that happiness lies within and we can be whoever we want to be. But with endless possibility comes a feeling of restlessness; like we're somehow failing to live our best life. What does doing it right even look like? And why do so many women feel like they're getting it wrong? From faster-than-fast fashion to millennial burnout, the explosion of wellness to the rise of cancel culture, Pandora Sykes interrogates the stories we've been sold and the ones we tell ourselves. Wide-ranging, thoughtful and witty, How Do We Know We're Doing It Right? explores the anxieties and myths that consume our lives and the tools we use to muddle through. So sit back and take a breath. It's time to stop worrying about the answers and start delighting in the questions.

& Other Essays on Modern Life

How Do We Know We're Doing It Right

𝓬𝓱𝓮𝓻𝓲𝓮

Wellness presents itself as forward-thinking - with its wearable gizmos and performance apps - and yet it is based on one of the oldest principles of patriarchy: that women are dirty and that a woman's virtue depends on being perfect inside as well as outside.

The thing that often strikes me about my generation is that we are savvier and more cynical than ever - with a meticulous eye for wrongdoing and injustice - but we are also incredibly naive. We are desperate to believe that there is a universal cure for the incurable human condition. And that the solution may be available through ancient alternatives of wellness rather than the scientific advances of medicine.

Wellness can also divide us on an individual level. There is a 'curious self-alienation' brought around by self- optimisation, writes Ehrenreich, where there is the self that must be worked on, and another self that does the work'. Such splitting encourages self-surveilance, where you are watching yourself improve wbile doing the improving,

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