The curious cult of self love

As Sigmund Freud once told me in a YouTube video: ‘Who lacks sex – speaks about sex, hungry talks about food, a person who has no money – about money, and our oligarchs and bankers talk about morality.’ So beware anyone who starts preaching ‘self-love’ at you. Chances are they hate themselves quite as much as you do – if not more so – and have been duped by the latest fad into revealing their deeply narcissistic behaviour patterns.

Tenets from the social media church of self-help include 'do whatever feels right'; 'if people don't like you for who you are, that's their problem'; 'you don't owe anybody anything'; 'always trust your feelings' and (my personal favourite) 'guilt is a wasted emotion' (it’s what psychopaths are unable to feel).

Celebrities are spreading the gospel with gusto. Last week, it was Valentine’s Day and instead of ignoring it like any rational person, social media personality Zoella took it upon herself to compile a list for her followers entitled: "'To Me, From Me': The Self Love Gifts You Deserve This February.” In order to ‘let go of society's bias that prioritises romantic love above all’ readers were encouraged to generate revenue by clicking on items such as a pair of purple knickers with ‘you’ve got this’ printed on the front, a personalised mac and cheese spoon, a bunch of flowers that will arrive at your house dead, a Bella Freud candle that costs 50 quid and the latest Harry Styles LP. It would be bad enough receiving these horrors from someone else but to feel it is symbol of all your self-love would cause much less desperate souls than mine to hurl themselves out of the nearest window.

It used to be that terrorists would capture hostages, photograph them in a state of déshabillé and send footage to the Western world to prove their existence and demand money but in 2022 pop stars are doing this to sell us self-love. Madonna appears to have started the trend – sending out shots of herself lying under a bed with her bottom exposed in fishnet tights. But now popstar Lizzo has joined in, taking to Instagram naked to explain: ‘If you love me… you love all of me. You dont get to pick and choose. We should be unconditionally loving of one another, starting with being unconditionally loving to ourselves.’ Reading the cruelty of the comments about her body beneath this post one wonders if this was an act of self-love or self-abnegation... I miss the days when musicians were made for the ears not the eyes and the essential parts of a singer’s body consisted in lungs, tongue and teeth.

Self-grooming is the holy communion of self-love – it cleanses what is within – so 'get a mani-pedi and do a face mask' is the solution to all life problems. Yesterday, Flora Gill shared the tale of how ‘when my 1st boyfriend cheated on me I went to the Benefit stand in Boots to get waterproof mascara so I could break up with him and still look cute.’ Her reward for such a passionate declaration of self-love, she reveals, was ‘the two women that worked there… spent an hour giving me a free makeover’. Though this does sound a cushty way to spend the afternoon, I couldn’t help think crying, screaming and kicking him in the balls would have taught him to rue the day better.

We live in a godless age but Buddha believed the desires of the self are the root of all evil, while in Ancient Greece, Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection and all he had to show for it was a lousy flower genus. That is not to say self-love isn’t important – it is. Jesus said there was no commandment greater than ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’. But making an exhibition of your passion for yourself is as icky for others as couples feeling each other up in train carriages: 81.8 million hashtags on Instagram can’t be wrong and they suggest this new vogue is less about love and more about onanism.