The new age of discipline | Life and style | The Guardian

The new age of discipline | Life and style | The Guardian: "We have reached the end game of have-it-all culture. Because I'm Worth It has had its day, and discipline is the new decadence. The Nike Fuel Band, which tracks your calorie expenditure and praises you for an active lifestyle, has more smug-factor than a Rolex right now. The dominant meme of annoying Facebook behaviour has segued from the posting of party photos to "inspirational" quotes (American men – Henry Ford, Albert Einstein, Ralph Waldo Emerson – are especially hot right now). Meanwhile, the narrative of reality TV has changed: bad behaviour in the hot tub, à la early Big Brother, has been replaced, from The Voice to The Apprentice, by Saturday-night preaching of the age-old Sunday-morning mantras that hard work will be rewarded, that mentors must be respected and listened to. Even family life has taken on a new set of values. With every issue of Goop, the cosy, cupcake-baking ideal of motherhood cedes territory to the Tiger Mothers (whose children will be more successful than yours) and the Gwyneth Paltrow-esque mothers (whose children will be slimmer and healthier, ergo more successful, than yours.)"

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