Not directed at OP or anyone who relates to this, but I find this kind of thing interesting because it's so completely alien to me.
I don't automatically imagine myself from an external perspective. It takes effort for me to do that, and it's usually unpleasant, so I don't.
I have seen many writings about "identity based on consumption" so it seems to be an experience that stretches beyond a handful of people, but I wonder what explains it. Social media? Something nebulous about culture? Being autistic might explain not being able to easily "perceive" myself as a simulated outside observer.
This is also not directed at OP or anyone who relates to this, but the way this writing talks about "consumption" reminds me of anthropology class and the discussion of "overconsumption," which was what drove home for me that going to an expensive private college was a bad ideaâto upper-middle-class, environmentally conscious people, the source of all problems is the "wastefulness" of "our" personal choices and "our" need to define our identity by buying stuff constantly. The usual use of "consumption" is in terms of physical actual things, or at least things that can be sold and bought that involve physical resources.
I don't like the way "consumption" has started to encompass watching a movie, listening to a song, or reading a book. The writer's anxiety about the things they "consume" seems to echo similar anxiety about physical "consumption."
But what the writer is experiencing may not have anything to do with that kind of "consumption" at all: I think looking to art for reassurance that you are not alone in your feelings or for help understanding yourself is a very human thing to do in a variety of cultural circumstances, and can serve as a reassurance that your pain is real, and like a traveler dying of thirst in the desert, you go to places that others say they've found water.
The uneasiness and anxiety part sounds like something that partly comes of the deafening storm of attempts at defining and dissecting "What It Is Like" to be a young woman.
I keep reading this sentiment that young women feel like they need to "sell" themselves, a Platonic ideal of who they are as a young woman, and it feels connected to the fact that there is so much writing on the stable and distinct state of "being a young woman" and what experiencing this state is like.
The writer of this piece almost loops back into the state she feels is a trap in her own writing, saying things like "Young women are conditioned to believe..." and making broad statements about how other women feel and what motivates their actions and interests.
What on earth do "straight-cut Levi's" have to do with depression? Other than the fact that jeans, in general, suck.
