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Does social media promote self-love, or does it promote self-indulgence? We already know the answer. Love has become equated to the act of buying, and self-love can be achieved through purchasing bath bombs, colognes, scented candles, and perhaps some flowers. But love should not and cannot be commodified. Moreover, independence and self-care should not rely on money. The internet unites everyone through separation: social media proves that you can be connected to a million different ‘friends’ and be completely alone. We have lost a sense of self, a sense of community, and our perception of what love is has completely been distorted. Furthermore, social media acts as the basis for consumerism with ads and sponsors by big companies. 

While social media connects us, this connection is arbitrary. We are connected to each other’s information; not to each other. Sending a friend request is much easier than walking up to someone to talk to them, and our sense of community has been reduced to the click of a button. The distorted sense of true relationships is reflected in our distorted understanding of self-love. Merriam-Webster defines self-love as “an appreciation of one’s own worth or virtue”. Sara M. Bosworth further mentions in her article, “The Power of Self-Love”, that “self-love begins when we observe our actions and words with compassion as if we were our own best friend.” With the rising awareness of mental health, self-love has become an essential aspect in our lives.

Self-love is often linked with self-care, and the term is famously used by Audre Lorde. In Audre Lorde’s A Burst of Light (1988), she touches on the struggles of black women, ‘American apartheid’, her experience with cancer, motherhood, sisterhood, and so much more in her string of profound essays. Lorde introduces self-love as an act of “resistance” and the act of self-care as an act not of “self-indulgence”, but as an act of “self-preservation” and “political warfare.” This is emphasised especially when talking about her experience with cancer and receiving treatment. The terms ‘self-love’ and ‘self-care’ are seen as powerful acts in reclaiming the black female body, which has been abused and exploited for hundreds of years. Lorde’s fight against cancer can be seen as an extension of her fight against racism, sexism, and homophobia. Self-love and self-care are used to uplift the oppressed community of black women—it does not end with the self.

One of the important questions raised in A Burst of Light is: “How do we deal across our differences of community, time, place, and history? In other words, how do we learn to love each other while we are embattled on so many fronts?” Lorde emphasises the sense of community between black women and how solidarity is accomplished through togetherness. When self-love and self-care are used to uplift the oppressed individual, the uplifted individual signifies the beginning of an uplifted community. When self-love is practised correctly, it results in an outward expression of love. Love starts with the self, but its power is truly realised in the act of togetherness. The power of one lies in the fact that one individual has the power to change one’s community. Self-love is a way of gaining back the power that was taken away by the oppressor, a way of liberating the oppressed mind, and this uplifting power spreads through solidarity. Self-love and self-care cannot stop with the self—it has to be extended into the community for its full power to be realised. Self-love and self-care are powerful acts of defiance—however, this meaning easily becomes lost and misunderstood.

Our understanding of self-love and self-care is heavily influenced by consumerism. Self-care is no longer an act of defiance, but an act of buying and consuming. Furthermore, our polluted understanding of the self distorts the sense of empowerment and solidarity. How we define ourselves is directly related to how we love ourselves. Recently, a social media trend showed the rise of the ‘trauma candy salad dump’. The trend originates from the ‘candy salad dump’ trend where people introduced themselves while dumping bags of sweets into a large bowl.  ‘Trauma candy salad dump’ reflects the distortion of self-perception, as the trend shows the change from self-introduction to trauma dumping. The problem with ‘trauma candy salad dumping’ lies in the fact that heavy traumas are addressed in a light-hearted way in what seems like a ‘competition’ of who has been the most traumatised. Social media has become a platform where we can openly discuss our mental health—and that comments on our commendable progress in removing mental health stigma. The problem is that we have started defining ourselves only by our traumas and mental illnesses. It is true that experiences such as one’s trauma and mental illness largely shape one’s identity. However, this cannot become one’s key definer. We live in an era of identity loss—we do not know who we are, and we are desperate to ‘find’ ourselves. 

Casually listening to the trauma of a stranger can feel strangely uncomfortable, but this has to do more with the way social media works rather than the telling of one’s trauma itself. Social media causes us to become desensitised to each other and to sensitive topics. People merely become a means of entertainment and consumption on social media, and so we consume others’ traumas and slowly become numb to them. The problem is that this desensitisation affects our real relationships. We lose the ability to connect and communicate with others. We interact more on social media where we observe and consume, rather than in real relationships where the effort is reciprocated. Maytal Eyal states in her 2023 Time Magazine article titled “Self-Love is Making Us Lonely”:

“To navigate the harsh terrain of radical individualism, self-love has emerged as our tool for survival. But it can come at a cost, especially when the type of self-love we turn to is the kind that has been manipulated by corporate ad campaigns and social media. In its commodified form, self-love is not really self-love at all; instead, it’s more like self-sabotage, convincing us to hyperfocus on ourselves at the expense of connecting with others.”

As Eyal mentions, self-love has become a means of “self-sabotage” where we isolate ourselves “at the expense of connecting with others”. It is true that factors such as COVID-19 have contributed to the development of an unhealthy sense of self-love and severed relationships. However, self-love that has especially been “manipulated by corporate ad campaigns and social media” advocates “self-sabotage”, tainting the initial meaning of empowerment and solidarity. What do our distorted sense of self and polluted sense of love say about us? Eyal continues to touch on the problem of self-love, mental health and loneliness:

 “Past research has also documented the vicious feedback loop of consumption and loneliness: When we purchase material possessions (even in the name of self-love), we surprisingly feel lonely, so we try and soothe ourselves through buying more, but this only makes us feel worse. This takes a toll on our health, as loneliness has been linked to increased inflammation, heart disease, and even premature death.”

While the link between self-love and “premature death” can seem quite extreme, Eyal’s claim about the unhealthy effects of the distorted understanding of self-love is important, especially in the sense that it propagates loneliness. Without a sense of community, self-love amounts to nothing but isolation. 

Self-love was a tool for minorities to combat oppression. The Black Consciousness Movement of South Africa and the Black is Beautiful Movement of America are both examples of self-love uplifting the community. Even when the white oppressors deemed black people worthless, black pride focused on regaining this power through an emphasis on elevating the self and therefore the community. The rise of self-love proves that there has been and that there is a huge absence of reciprocated love and togetherness, causing us to search for this love within ourselves. In other words, an unhealthy sense of community and a history of oppression has caused so much trauma that we have lost the ability to love each other, and self-love is a way of reclaiming this love. Even though the notion of self-love and self-care started off as a means of empowerment and solidarity, it has regressed into a means of consumerism and loneliness. 

How can we reclaim a healthy sense of self and a healthy sense of love? The act of self-love is an act of defiance—a refusal to be defined as inferior by the oppressor; an act of “political warfare” as mentioned by Audre Lorde. However, self-love has turned into a trifling commodity, nothing more than a product on social media. The regression of self-love further comments on the polluted sense of self and the inability to love. Reclaiming the power of self-love through regaining a sense of community is essential. Lorde’s question about overcoming differences is pivotal in our reclamation of self-love and community: “…how do we learn to love each other while we are embattled on so many fronts?” We need to learn to talk about our differences in a healthy manner, in safe spaces. Too often, we hide our differences or disregard them completely in fear of being misunderstood and alienated. 

Identity is complex, and so are love and our relationships. Redefining self-love simultaneously as an act of community and an act of independence is important. Self-love does not just imply the purchase of bath bombs and scented candles. Self-love does not entail isolation and avoidance of responsibility for ‘peace’. Self-love is an act of power achieved through self-care. It is stating that you are of power and value, when systems of oppression, such as social media dominated by consumerism, say you are worthless. It is the act of uplifting the individual and therefore the whole community in solidarity. Can we really buy this kind of powerful love? Do we really believe we can achieve love through consumerism? The commodification of love speaks to the instability of social relationships. We need to rebuild the sense of community through self-love and self-care. While these terms may allude to an inward expression of love, the resulting love will always be an outward expression.