90 days of self love

Cristiane Galera is a lingerie model and influencer from Sao Paulo in Brazil She has been in the news a couple of times recently for first marrying herself And then last week for divorcing herselfDepending on how you think it is possible to find this event intriguing puzzling or just ridiculous But like all absurd theatre it is tightly packed with seeds of truthmdashin Galerarsquos case about the chimeric phenomena of the influencerGalera married herself following several disappointments with cheating boyfriends This made her dislike men and also feel lonely None of these responses are the least bit unusualmdash indeed they are the common reaction to betrayal and heartbreak and mea has been culpa of this every now and then Thereupon she felt the need to lsquolove herselfrsquo And so she performed a marriage to herself which some might argue was more a renewal of vows with her Instagram followers But is that so different from so many people who marry to keep families and communities happy to feel loved again in a world that pays lip service to liberty while embracing conventionAfter 90 days however Galera divorced herself because she met someone special enough to leave herself for Thatrsquos alright she said because the wedding allowed her to wear a dress that would let her ldquohighlight my best features my breastsrdquoLike Galera many are the folks who swear by singleness only to renounce and often denounce it when coupledom becomes available One might argue that you do not choose singleness as much as singleness chooses you but this statement too does not capture the complexity of personal life Paradoxically the term single is primarily defined visavis marriage or at least coupledom But the quality of being solitary or even lonely is in some ways unrelated to marriage and relationships Some inherently solitary people marry while others donrsquot Intimate life takes many different shapes and the binary of single and married doesnrsquot begin to capture lifersquos experiential truthsInfluencers succeed sometimes through their ability to distil experiences into a simple piece of relatable content But distillation becomes rigid because the need to maintain influencer status locks influencers into a numerical relationship with their public for not all public on social media is also a listening audience Life experience and knowledge must be converted into a piece of consumable content always new experience as a fast moving consumer good As in soap operas weddings are really useful for serialised content The dress the lehenga the food the flowers the events the ironic selfies the selfies with sahelis and yaars the moment of bodyshaming the triumphing over body shaming or narrow minded relatives nothing like smashing patriarchy by entering a patriarchal institution na the honeymoon a fortnight later the throwback Thursday post Itrsquos a rich Instagram seam Itrsquos also a log kya kahenge situation of mammoth proportions When you are content you must think what people will think all the timendasheven more than when we were oppressed by social norms because then every private moment and thought were not part of social currencyWhat does this atomised view of the self and others really mean for intimacy in our lives given influencers rule our consciousness so much Perhaps itrsquos telling that 90 days of selflove was as much as Galera could handleParomita Vohra is an awardwinning Mumbaibased filmmaker writer and curator working with fiction and nonfiction Reach her at paromitavohramiddaycom