We’ve all been there: cocooned in the cosiness of your bed, with the world outside feeling colder, duller, and frankly, overrated. Errands? Snooze. Productivity? Meh. Surely there’s no harm in marinating in your own bed for a while, right?
Enter: "bedrot," TikTok’s latest self-care trend, which involves staying in bed all day (or days, who’s counting?) and festering, but in a good way. Most health professionals seem to agree that everyone deserves a break from the fast-paced modern world once in a while. It’s an opportunity to let the body and mind relax. Then, after a sufficient amount of rotting, we can emerge like a phoenix from the ashes – or the bedsheets – as an improved, refreshed self.
In our culture that values productivity above all else, spending the day lying in bed can feel like the ultimate gotcha. Binging shows, scrolling through social media, browsing online clothes stores, munching snacks, and doing absolutely nothing productive becomes a form of passive rebellion. In a world obsessed with hustle culture and the "grindset", lying in bed can feel like flipping your middle finger to capitalism. Society can demand more of us tomorrow. "No thanks," we declare with a smug foot kick under the covers. "I’m doing this for me."
Behind this self-care trend is the concept that Western society doesn't value rest as much as it should, and that we would all feel better if we listened to our bodies. This is particularly true of the female body, which culture often regulates and projects onto. When most women are in public, they are hyper-aware of their appearance because of unrealistic expectations and societal scrutiny. But in the sacred space of her bedroom, armed with a bag of Doritos and the latest episode of Call Her Daddy? The bedrotter is free.
Even the term "bedrot" is deliciously subversive. It is an exaggeratedly grotesque phrase, with connotations of depravation and sickness, which counteracts the toxic wellness and perfectibility that permeates our culture. By embracing its connotations of laziness and wastefulness, it anticipates the judgement of the self-care circles who worship cleanliness to the point of sterility. When we watch videos of others happily festering in their unkempt humanity, it helps us to feel less guilty about our own days in bed.
Naturally, this rebellion has its glorified aesthetic. Cue the coquette bedrotter—a TikTok star lounging among artfully mismatched bedding, surrounded by candles, her Pinterest boards, and a dusty Aretha Franklin record playing in the background. Even this anti-productivity act has become a performance. Because if you don’t post it for others to admire, did you even rot? This performative rotting, reminiscent of Victorian deathbed art, seems counterintuitive to the authenticity that made this trend attractive in the first place. Instead, it becomes another mode of comparison, tainted with the competitiveness of a capitalist culture.
Because here’s the catch: are we really sticking it to capitalism by spending the day in bed, or have we wilfully fallen into its – albeit super comfy - trap?
Sure, when we bedrot we might not be producing anything, but that leaves even more room for consuming. We watch media, often multiple forms of media at the same time, and shop online, constantly scrolling and chasing those dopamine hits. Bedrotting is an escape from reality - a temporary distraction. Through being transported to a virtual world in our screens, we are alleviated from both the oppressive present and the uncertain future. However, this also means that we are not acting to change the culture that is driving us to this state of exhaustion.
Rather than battling the constraints of capitalism, we may actually be feeding the monster. Adorno and Horkheimer warned us, in their seminal essay ‘The Culture Industry’ (1947), that culture, which has become a profitable industry, aims to “cultivate false psychological needs that can only be met and satisfied by the products of capitalism.” We are subliminally taught that the only way to alleviate our fatigue, most likely caused by capitalist structures, is through making ourselves docile and content with easy, mass-produced pleasures. Lit by the glow of laptop screens, we happily watch the familiar things over and over again, quickly flicking past anything that challenges our thought. We become the perfect consumers.
Like many things in our culture, bedrotting can give us temporary relief and distraction, but it is not a long-term solution. It is a distinctly gen-z trend that glamorises depression, disguising mental paralysis, procrastination and time blindness with a quirky hashtag and warm aesthetic. Ultimately, bedrotting encapsulates the paradox of our times: a revolt against relentless productivity that still feeds the machine it aims to escape.
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