What exactly IS self-esteem?
So I come from the generation that grew up knowing they were supposed to have self-esteem. Work on it, build it, have it respected by others, etc etc. The term is such an embedded cliche it seems to hold little power any more. When Gok Wan does his thing, he is wholly focused on enabling women to reevaluate their self-esteem, and encouraging them to believe that they are 'worth it'. It seems so cheesy, so easy to laugh at. So I looked up 'self-esteem' on Wikipedia. Self-esteem, apparently, is an evaluation of one's own worth. Only under conditions of capitalism could psychology be commodified in this way, it seems to me. That it took Carl Rogers to invent the notion of 'unconditional regard', that we needed to be told or sold the idea that we ought really to be nice to each other, speaks volumes about the appropriation of essential humanity by its own false representations of itself. Self-esteem is a mixture of a JUDGEMENT we perform upon our own com...