Are New Age Carrie Bradshaws the New Evangelists?
I love the New York Times Sunday Styles section because it’s sort of adorably out of touch. It caters to such a tiny subsection of readers–wealthy, thirty-something, Martini-swigging socialites clamoring for advice on how they remain relevant in a recession–and is so unapologetic about it, that reading it is something like talking to a sweet but slightly senile grandmother who is trying to explain hydroelectric power to you.
This week’s edition was no exception: “Seeing the Light,” by Allen Salkin, announces that “now there is a new role model for New York’s Carrie Bradshaw–young women who are vegetarian, well versed in self-help and New Age spirituality, and who are finding a way to make a living preaching to eager audiences, mostly female.” The women whose journeys into spirituality Salkin chronicles all quit high-powered jobs, and share their lives on the web, such as Ilana Arazie, whose major life change was replacing her dating blog “Downtown Diary” with the more mystical “Downtown Dharma”; or lead meditation and life-coaching classes in Greenwich Village apartments, like Jennifer Macaluso-Gilmore, a foot and hand model turned “guru” who charges $100 for an hour-long session.
Not all of the women Balkin writes about are of the “no red meat=self-actualization” school. Kris Carr, who appeared in two Superbowl commercials in 2003 and was diagnosed with cancer shortly thereafter, shared her experiences on both a TLC documentary and now a blog, Crazy Sexy Life. However, this blog features stories from Rory Freedman, author of Skinny Bitch, the official tagline of which is, “Stop being a moron and start getting skinny!”
Treating emotional and spiritual wellness as something trendy, exclusive, and expensive is nothing new, at least not in the past decade. In fact, evangelists have been commodifying spirituality like this for over a century. Could these women be our new evangelists? Of course this particular brand of thought won’t reach as wide an audience as Christian evangelism, but it isn’t hard to imagine women attaching themselves to this movement in the way they cling to Sex and the City: attempting to live the unaffordable lifestyle of someone who isn’t even real. As I see it, evangelism often suggests future fulfillment of unrealistic expectations in order to gain followers. For these ‘gurus,’ such expectations include finding romance, losing weight, and learning what they truly want out of life: goals really don’t seem all that different than what these women probably wanted in the first place. Here’s hoping that, like the Sunday Styles, these new evangelists don’t have much sway.
