The magic solution to all your problems? Confidence in you! Over the past ten years, the world of personal development has found its new hobby: nudging people to acquire the nebulous, but very rewarding concept of “self-confidence”. From women’s magazines to the most popular singers of the moment, the injunction is everywhere, all the time. In cultural trust, an essay published in February at Duke University Press, researchers Shani Orgad, professor of media and communication at the London School of Economics, and sociologist Rosalind Gill, professor of social and cultural analysis at the University of London , looked at a phenomenon that is far from being as positive as it seems. Maintenance.
L’Express: Why make a book on the culture of self-confidence?
Shani Orgad: The idea came up between 2014 and 2015 when we were both working on different fields of study: Rosalind on relationships on the internet, body image, and me on kinship and work. We were interested in how feminism fits into these themes and develops globally. As time went by, we noticed that the same exhortation came up again and again: “Be confident in yourself!”, “Improve your self-esteem!”, etc. These messages, in particular advertising, through, for example, the campaigns of the Dove brand, were aimed above all at women, and particularly at young mothers. Through our research, we noticed that there was a recurring instruction, carried by mantras such as “you are all your own enemy” or “be good in your skin”.
We’ve seen this motif everywhere, from the advice-heavy wellness industry to the music industry, with titles like Demi Lovato’s “Confident” and singer Lizzo’s “Truth Hurts.” In 2014, the French government even launched an application called “Leadership for Women”, which was supposed to help women better negotiate their salary by improving their self-confidence! We thought this trend would weaken over the years, but it has only grown stronger, especially during the pandemic.
How do you explain it?
Shani Orgad: Several processes converged at that time. This refrain about “self-confidence” started in the late 2000s, just after the financial crisis. We explain it partly by the intensification of the “work culture” and the weakening of state services, as in Britain, with austerity. At the same time, this has also been accompanied by the rise of a phenomenon that can be described as “neoliberal”. Think of “All Forward: Women, Work and Power”, the book by Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s number 2. This movement of individualization continued in other spheres, as with Black Lives Matter, in the United States. The anger against police violence was quickly captured in a simple, rather reductive message by brands. In these two cases, the phenomenon was the same: sending individuals back to what they are, alone. If something goes wrong, it is up to the individual – often the woman – to make it better, by having more self-confidence.
You thus assimilate self-confidence to a culture, and even to a cult…
Rosalind Gill: We use both the term worship and culture. Worship, first, because we are faced with a concept that is presented without being questioned. You must believe in it, it is imperative. We also speak of “culture” because self-confidence has permeated every cultural sphere, as have personal development and the concept of “self-care”.
Shani Orgad: As well as that of productivity! This language does not only concern work, but has extended to the individual himself. And so now, when you talk about productivity, you inevitably talk about self-confidence. For one as for the other, there is no limit: you can always do more, better, differently. Even when you get to a good level, the job is never really done.
Would societal injunctions to have more self-confidence be a bad thing?
Rosalind Gill: Not at all ! We are not against. We are even the first to encourage our loved ones and our students to have more confidence in themselves. But what troubles us is that this concept suggests that problems can be solved by the individual himself. That inequalities are a matter of will, of self-esteem. That it is up to everyone to resolve injustices by changing their attitude. Let’s take the example of the French application “Leadership for Women”: as if wage inequalities could be solved only by asking women to be more demanding in their interviews! In this configuration, the problems are less related to others and to society (here, the wage gap between men and women) than to the way in which everyone behaves and reacts.
Shani Orgad: As if self-confidence was a magic solution to all problems!
You talk a lot about a phenomenon that affects women. Are men spared by this “cult of self-confidence”?
Rosalind Gill: Not really, no. They are also the subject of these messages, but often in a different way. It’s a subtlety: on the male side, the concept is seen in advertising more as a “bonus”, and less as a way of explaining inequalities.