Selling Ourselves
...people I know who are dating, and particularly on the swiping sites, I think the whole sell of self on those sites is so problematic, because you have got to sell yourself to yourself, and that isn’t what used to happen when you were at a party or in a bar, you might have been flirting, but you weren’t in the selling of something to yourself, so I think there is something quite consumerist about it...
Susie Orbach (2025)
We live such rushed lives: on our cell phones - our acts are often impromptu; the above photo - is a ‘grab shot’; Orbach discussion - was extempore. Nevertheless her point seems apt. Once more we are caught
alone
Being alone with our phones.
with our phones, alone as we are in the massive consumption of pornography, alone with ourselves so that there is no one to sell ourselves to - except ourselves. This isolation materialises relationships, turns them from evolving processes into things. A product being marketed, consumers consuming, here we can see the
commodification
On making everything public and objective.
of our social lives. Seeking intimacy in the
presence
Surely empathy is an aspect of relationships inimical to phones!
of others, there is mutual accommodation, an evolution of the relationship, we are, at very least, guided to uncover parts of ourselves that had been hidden from our own eyes. Once alone I become both seller and buyer; here all is
stereotype,
Stereotypes, are necessary, but as a background to experiences.
all is product.
Orbach is Author of Fat is a Feminist Issue. The quotation is taken from the broadcast on Radio 4’s Free Thinking at 9 pm on Friday 14th February 2025. She is talking live, so the prose is less sharp than might be, but the idea seems very sound.
The photo was taken in the Old Quarter of Hà Nội while walking past shops. A sharper shot would be desirable, but the blur of movement is not inappropriate here.
Above, hovering on blue introduces a link: click to go, move away to stay.
Saturday 1st March 2025
...guide to this site