New Year's resolutions, a spiral of "guilt"?

• Who says new year, says new goals.

  Every January 1st, the tradition of good resolutions is essential.

• This custom, which makes brands happy, is nevertheless very guilty for individuals, who are asked to be ever more “perfect”.

• 20 Minutes

  focuses on these "to do lists" which want to erase our faults and push us to always have more skills, thanks to the insight of Amélie Clauzel, lecturer at the Sorbonne and Pelphine, who created the Instagram account Corpscool which denounces fatphobia.

Lose weight, exercise more, quit smoking or learn a new language, etc.

At the dawn of 2023, articles on good resolutions and how to stick to them are piling up, putting more and more pressure on our shoulders.

Every year, millions of French people take stock of the past year and believe that the time for “taking control” has arrived.

However, more than one in two French people know that they will not keep their pious wishes as soon as they take them, according to a study by Hello Fresh carried out on a sample of more than 1,000 people representative of French society.

But then, what drives us to continue to perpetuate this tradition that the Babylonians already followed 4,000 years ago?

And, above all, hasn't this custom become toxic for us?

“Often, good resolutions are not something positive and certain ways of making them are very harmful,” regrets Pelphine, creator of the Corpscools Instagram account, which denounces grossophobia.

With these commitments, "every year, we note everything for which we do not correspond to the norm", she notes.

“Society is stricter and more demanding every day.

On a personal, professional, physical, physiological level… You have to be within the standards and even more than that: you have to be perfect”, sighs Amélie Clauzel, lecturer at the University of Paris-1 Panthéon Sorbonne.

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The annual “to do list”

The researcher, who specializes in the phenomena of social influence, affirms that “good resolutions” have become a “normative tradition, inherited from a neoliberal model, which relies heavily on social pressure”.

More than one in two French people believe that it would be wiser to stop making promises for the New Year when they know in advance that they will not be able to keep them.

And yet, the refrain of the annual "to do list" seems impossible to avoid.

It's hard to say on New Year's Eve that you don't have a good resolution when everyone talks about their plan to get a promotion, conquer the gym or quit smoking while learning Mandarin - in the position of inverted lotus for better inner balance, of course.

Moreover, according to the Hello Fresh study, 56% of French people push their loved ones to keep their resolutions.

And 2023 is already accumulating a myriad of directives.

“We have to be sober, stop overheating, protect the planet and, on top of that, we should add other personal resolutions,” Amélie Clauzel lists, in a reference to the Dry January that flooded the media at the start. of the year and government calls for energy savings.

“Obviously, the others and the outside play a role of mirror and come into account.

But society no longer even needs to create the injunction, individuals create it themselves, they have internalized it,” notes the founder of Corpscools.

The spiral of guilt

So are we Sims?

After the few minutes - in accelerated time - sufficient to satisfy their basic needs, these characters can become virtuosos of painting, athletes, successful writers while obtaining four promotions in the blink of an eye.

In 2023, the injunction to productivism is omnipresent.

We should always be on the move, always working to improve, to erase our addictions and our faults.

"There is a lot of talk about personal development that places all the responsibility on people, forgetting the social determinants that can come into play", analyzes Pelphine.

However, it is a method that “places a lot of guilt on individuals,” she says.

According to a study by the Qapa interim agency dating from 2019, 85% of French people do not keep their good resolutions.

"Having resolutions means taking stock, so if I failed - and most people fail, the guilt happens," explains Amélie Clauzel.

A feeling of guilt that often revolves around the idea of ​​a slim body.

Losing weight, eating better and doing more sport are considered to be the most difficult resolutions for the French to keep, according to the Hello Fresh study.

The capitalization of our resolutions

And it is not for nothing that the body is one of the central axes of these first promises of the year.

“To function, capitalist society needs valid bodies capable of producing and as soon as a body is no longer valid, it is considered a burden and removed from society.

These existences are only seen through the prism of their inability to produce,” denounces the founder of Corpscools.

Especially since the body is essential in our society.

"The more we have a standardized body, the more we are listed on the market for love but also for work", notes Pelphine.

And our hatred of our bodies pays big, very big, to industrialists, who know how to capitalize on the tradition of new resolutions.

Gym memberships, non-alcoholic drinks, detox products and healthy recipe boxes explode in January.

“I receive targeted advertisements for weight-loss products on social networks and, in January, the phenomenon is exacerbated.

All the platforms do huge promotions because they know people are making their resolutions,” says Pelphine. 

For example, the Neoness gyms are offering a special offer for January with two months free for a thirteen-month commitment and the WeightWatchers diet brand is offering a “special good resolutions” offer with six months free out of twelve.

For the creator of Corpscool, however, this is not the formula to adopt.

“Loving yourself and taking care of yourself is a better resolution.

I don't have to hate who I am,” she recalls.

So for 2023, what if we wanted to accept ourselves, finally, as we are?

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