Help Your Self! - by Mieke Gerritzen (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

An inspirational guide to constructing and navigating selfhood in the age of social media

We are constantly encouraged to lead the ideal life. Where once our identities were shaped by our communities, families and friends, today we write our own success stories on social media. We design our own identities to an unprecedented extent, constructing ourselves as we wish to be seen. Ways of "upgrading" oneself--dieting to achieve the perfect body, transforming your talents into a successful business, finding bliss by meeting a new love--may therefore be seen as new forms of creativity, or self-design.

In Help Your Self! Dutch designer and director Mieke Gerritzen provides an inspirational guide for designing your ideal self, and shows you how to get started, while also scrutinizing the self-help industry with wit and intelligence.

Review Quotes

Gerritzen dissects the self-help industry with wit, intelligence, and merciless absurdity. At the same time, she is dead serious about the inimitable possibilities and everlasting practice of "becoming" self. Brace for an eye-opening roller coaster ride that is called the playground of identity.--Aynouk Tan "Fashion philosopher, journalist and curator, Amsterdam"

Mieke Gerritzen makes a crash landing on the island of Ennui. Search the wreckage for shattered bits of selfhood while you explore the mobility of microbes, the myth of mindfulness, the narcissism of Zoom, and the addictive allure of love, money, and success.--Ellen Lupton "Design Chair Maryland Institute College of Art, Curator Cooper Hewitt. Smithsonian Design Museum New York"

The first, only and indispensable do-it-yourself book for the human Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamlined Babies of the Twenty-First Century.--Timo de Rijk "Director Design Museum, the Netherlands"

This fascinating and provocative book confronts its readers with the most urgent questions that raise their self-awareness and improve their quality of life.--Boris Groys "philosopher, media theorist, New York/Berlin"