Life

EAT SLEEP REPEAT | “It’s Called Self Care” — Why the Mantra Is Ruining My Life

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In the past week I have napped an average of two hours per day, impulsively bought three sweaters that I cannot afford, practically inhaled Twizzlers and an entire sleeve of Oreos, and watched five of the raunchiest past episodes of The Bachelor, all while telling myself, “It’s called self care.”

Hindsight is 20/20 of course, and looking back I think my actions were probably the complete opposite of self care. In the moment, however, I was so encapsulated in my stress from prelim season that I allowed myself to do practically anything just because I have this extremely vague mantra to “affirm” my desires. And it doesn’t seem like I am alone in my quest for an excuse to treat myself. It seems as though social media’s mainstream idea of self care just feeds into a cycle of bad habits, and undermines the necessity of actually taking care of ourselves and our bodies, straying away from what the term was actually meant to accomplish. The term “self-care” originated as a medical concept, as a way for doctors to tell patients to treat themselves and lead healthy lifestyles.

Culture

EMEM ELEMENT | Why Twitter Is Gold

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There is no question that, at an increasingly fast rate, technology and media have advanced significantly. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Internet, iMessage, text messaging, and other various forms of communication can now all reside on a single smartphone. Gone are the days when one would wait months for a letter. Waiting three days to respond to someone’s text would blow the world up in flames. Amidst the forever expanding technology and media, an interesting phenomenon has come before us, that phenomenon being… social media.

Entertainment

MOHAPATRA | What’s in an opinion?

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Having devoted the better part of my free time to social media (and not proudly so), it has been remarkable to witness the  transformation in the kind of material that crops up in my feed. There have been  tangible shifts, to the extent that everyone I know seems to have become a political activist at some level. Recently though, I have gotten into too many spats with people who have pulled out articles they saw on their Facebook feed on the alleged perpetuation of rape culture by the present-day Indian society, or people who have quoted a friend’s tweet verbatim to back up their point about the presidential primaries, only to stand corrected after being presented with a news report that speaks otherwise. I have become extremely wary of these quickly formulated opinions: while everyone is at perfect liberty to air theirs, generalized statements featuring charged words make me immediately put my guard up. I think this largely stems from my worries about where such opinions originate and whether they are informed or not.