Source: Everyone Is Becoming Hotter to Stay Home and See Nobody Publisher: Cartoons Hate Her | Author: Cartoons Hate Her Published: February 9, 2026 | Archived: March 21, 2026

So, I actually wrote this piece a month ago, but had it in drafts because it “wasn’t relevant.” And then, this viral quote from this viral article on wellness appeared on my feed (and likely, many of yours).

In January alone, I’ve done Botox, Emface, IPL, scheduled Moxi / broadband light, seen my orthodontist, cardiologist, GP, OBGYN, ophthalmologist, dermatologist, plastic surgeon, trainer, and pilates instructor. I’ve renewed my health insurance and medspa membership. I’ve drawn blood three times and given two urine samples. My current skincare routine is 6-8 steps, my daily supplement stack is 17 pills (20 on Mondays) and a peptide taken subQ, and I’ve engaged at least 5 high-tech tools from my home device library (red light, SAD light, PEMF, etc). I’ve tracked every meal, macro, and relevant micronutrient.

Like everything on the Internet: grain of salt. This person knows she will get a reaction by making everyone else feel inadequately peptidemaxxed. This is the affluent millennial female version of Clavicular (if it’s even true) and I can almost guarantee you that this newsletter will contain affiliate links for red light masks and supplements, meant for the niche audience who wants to buy those things.

This quote prompted a lot of women to declare that all of this is total bogus that will never make anyone look better because they don’t do anything like this and they look effortlessly beautiful (doubt: if cosmetic enhancements truly made everyone look worse, people would stop doing them. I’m sure you look great though.) But the more frequent critique was that this author is “out of touch” because most people can’t afford to do all this shit. I also refuse to engage with the “out of touch” thing. If this feels out of touch to you, you are probably not the target audience. She never once says, “And SO CAN YOU, including the median American in an Ohio IHOP!”

But before I even saw this quote, I had already written about how laborious wellness rituals like the possibly-fictional ones this author claims to be doing rely on something other than large amounts of money: large amounts of time spent alone at home.

It’s not just this Substacker—the influencer economy is full of content in this genre, with one singular focus: an ever-increasing list of onerous wellness rituals, most of which are presented as “self care” but with a subtle nod to becoming hotter and more desirable. But all of these things would realistically impede real-life socialization, making little to no impact on your desirability as a partner, especially when you factor in how isolated and constrained you will be. In fact, extended social isolation appears to be an unspoken requirement for all of these rituals to be completed. Everyone is becoming hotter and healthier to stay home by themselves.

In recent history, personal grooming, fitness and hygiene were all a prelude to actually going out and socializing. With some exceptions of course. Even if I don’t plan on seeing anyone for a full day I like to shower. But generally, things that exist to make me better-looking—skincare beyond the basics, hair masks, hair dye, hair removal, makeup, fitness beyond general cardiovascular health—are done to look hot. Mostly, I want to look hot for my husband, but I still like to look presentable for the general population. When I drop my son off at school or take my daughter to her mommy and me classes, I don’t want to look like a ragamuffin. If I meet a female friend for lunch, it makes me happy if she compliments my hair color. And of course I’d like to look “good for my age,” so I take care of my skin. Realistically speaking, the youngest I could pass for is 30, but even then, I’d be happy to “age well” even if my real age never surprises anyone.

I’ve written before about how I still won’t do any real cosmetic enhancements like Botox or fillers. I wish I could say I had a feminist reason for this—or better yet, insist I knew for a fact that I looked stunning without them and they would only detract from my natural beauty—but the real reason is that my husband says it’s too expensive and if I do it I’ll have to stop buying clothes. As a result, I am still Botox-free, but I do other, lower-maintenance things.

Of course, when I was younger and actively dating, grooming was a more involved ritual, mostly for the purpose of competing for male attention in the public sphere (dances, parties, etc.) I did not have to be the best-looking woman in the room, but I did want to be the best-looking version of myself. I would primp for a night out, beginning with a luxurious, self-indulgent “everything shower” and escalating to makeup and hair with a few friends. Everything was done for the explicit purpose of going out, having fun, meeting guys, and hopefully making a romantic connection. If everything went well, this meant we all got up to lots of dancing and mayhem, and our Maybelline Dream Mousse makeup would be mostly smeared and melted by the time we got home anyway, and we’d look like Trump walking back from his near-empty Tulsa rally in defeat (but make it cunt.) At that point, the only “wellness” which concerned me was maybe removing the makeup smears and putting on moisturizer, but if you’re a socially active young twentysomething, you probably don’t have the time or energy after a night out to do a full lymphatic drainage massage.

Real photo of me, circa 2008

I have no doubt that some young people are still going out, but it’s obviously not what it used to be. Last summer, my husband and I went to a few nightclubs mostly out of morbid curiosity, and were shocked to see most of them completely empty spare for a few bachelorette party crews who were clearly there for a special occasion. Couples who were dancing likely came together; nobody seemed to be meeting anyone new.

Wellness rituals, as they are presented today by influencers, are not the same thing as the grooming rituals of yore that enabled us to look our hottest at clubs and parties, even combined with the workout and skincare routines that were intended to keep us hotter and healthier longer-term. Wellness rituals today (if you really go down the social media rabbit hole) are so involved, so expensive, so draconian and so restrictive, that they only work if you never go anywhere at all. Perhaps that’s by design—with nowhere to go and nobody to see, today’s young people can put more time into obtaining “old money hair” and “glass skin” that nobody will ever see, ready to buy even more self-improvement.

A perfect example of this phenomenon is the Clean Girl trend which peaked around 2021. This timeline makes complete sense, because 2021 was still the era of covid-oriented isolation. Even if people were legally allowed to leave their houses in 2021, many cities still had shuttered businesses or mask mandates, and many people didn’t feel safe going to indoor spaces on a regular basis. Many people were still working remotely (and happily!) The prototypical Clean Girl wellness-chick archetype manifested from all these bizarre transitions. With nowhere to go and nobody to see, the Clean Girl’s life was confined often to a small one-bedroom or studio apartment. She woke up early to journal, set her intention, meditate and do pilates. She did cumbersome, lengthy skincare routines that would otherwise be interrupted by the obligations and surprises of everyday life. Maybe she walked around the block to buy a \(12 matcha latte. Speaking of matcha: all day long, the Clean Girl was consuming various liquids, most of which involved some degree of prep work. Don’t even get me started on the aesthetic breakfast bowls. This lifestyle simply isn’t possible for someone with a job outside the home, friends outside the home, or young children under their care. The Clean Girl was the perfect way to channel nervous, lonely energy for someone who truly had nowhere to be. And honestly? Between Cleangirling it up and storming the Capitol or going amydgala-deep on the Wayfair Child Cabinet theory, I’d prefer the Clean Girl stuff. s_!YgmR!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1470c5b8-b850-4353-96c5-383bb10d80e8_736x980.jpeg)

It’s no surprise that as soon as people started going out and doing more things (albeit not at pre-pandemic levels, even now) this aesthetic and trend kind of faded away. When you have to be at an office by 9 AM, or have to pick up your kid from school at 3 PM, let alone just meet up with friends for fun, there’s a limit to how many “daily visions” you can jot down, let alone how many sheet masks you can do. Eventually, the Clean Girl routines will slip.

But people are still far more isolated than they used to be before the pandemic. It’s no wonder, then, that even if the Clean Girl era is out of vogue, people are still filling the socialization and activity/hobby gap with more and more onerous wellness rituals, particularly things that keep you tethered to the house and unpresentable for the public eye. Wearing a red light mask, for example (which is something I admittedly do, although I blame my husband for introducing it to me) needs to be done with a clean, product-free face and requires ten to fifteen minutes where you aren’t going anywhere. That alone isn’t very difficult, but if you do it after work, it necessitates removing all your makeup, which more or less signals the day is over if you are a makeup-wearer (Are you still a wearer of makeup? At thirty-seven, it’s marginal.) Cold plunges cannot be done on the fly in between errands or meetups, unless you return home to run yourself a bath of cold water. Every wellness step on its own doesn’t seem that time-consuming, and perhaps a socially active person can stand to do a few of these things, but everything together will take forever and make you unpresentable for public viewing most of the time. While some influencers might make it look cool, most people do not feel comfortable walking around town with silicone sheets under their eyes. Wellness is thriving because people aren’t leaving their houses that often.

If these rituals make you happy, feel free to enjoy them! But there’s a reason they’re so popular these days. Obviously, there is something relaxing and pleasurable about taking good care of yourself—feeling your best, looking your best, surrounding yourself with relaxing and enjoyable things. But I fear this generation is romanticizing and optimizing their various in-home rituals—harmless and enjoyable as this pursuit may be—because they simply don’t have much else going on.

I hope that one day, we live in a society where wellness and beauty routines exist to prepare people for the messy, unpredictable and chaotic events of Going Outside. Ironically, we may all be healthier and happier for it.