A decade ago, I created Your Search Within, a parody website inspired by a certain prominent health-and-wellness influencer who took herself rather too seriously. This famous woman sold clothing, body care products, sex toys, candles that she said smelled like her body parts, and woo-woo “lifestyle” goods for anywhere from two to ten times their normal retail value.
I could hardly wait to satirize it. I wanted to create a faux-spiritual guide to overpriced and essentially useless products aimed at vulnerable people who sought to attain greater spiritual awakening and purity of body, mind, and soul—but without effort. I asked my daughter, graphic designer Lily Rodseth, if she’d build a website for me if I wrote the copy. She said “Sure!” So we started meeting in coffee houses to brainstorm, design, sketch, plan, and build it.
The Circumflex Cranial Expansion System, the Innervyzion™ Spirit Animal Mask, and the Golden Grrl Highlighting Kit for Blonde Dogs were among the first nonsensical items my we decided to “sell” on the site (though they’re all somehow out of stock at any particular moment).
We agreed that using fame and influence to push merchandise of dubious value at extreme prices was tacky. But it struck us that what the smug celebrity was really selling on her site was the idea that one could attain greater physical, mental, and spiritual purity by simply buying it. Her tacit message was that purchasing just the right kind of colon-cleansing elixir, crystal vaginal egg, or $800 pair of white pants didn’t just make you look cooler or richer or trendier—it made you a better person.
Wearing or using the objects she sold was a way to not only to display wealth but signal virtue. The barely veiled message behind each product description and story of personal growth was that these products made one more focused, disciplined, healthy, attuned, and spiritually elevated.
Pushing overpriced objects at people who assign them glamour and magical properties based on brand or source is nothing new. But the implication that buying these products actually made one a better person of greater inherent value—that really rubbed me the wrong way. So Your Search Within was the obvious response.
Our parody website promises “ethically sourced, pure, wholesome, authentic, small-batch crafted, raw products,” of course. But it also states that “our vision, our mission and our dream all combine synergistically to provide you, our beloved customers, with products that change lives and alter history, all while leaving you refreshed, renewed, supple and glowing.” I mean, why not promise everything, all at once?
The heart of the site is the retail product section offering opportunities to achieve inner harmony, improve bodily attunement, keep a more holistic home, or help animal friends to live more fully and joyfully in the moment. Facial sorbet, an urban aromatherapy system, and the Cat-a-Tonic Feline Deconfusifying Kit will help you align, affirm, and awaken body, soul, and even pets to the wonders without and within.
Namaste, baby.
The website’s blog offers chances to “enhance and deepen your connection to the universe and learn to go with the spiritual flow.” The section on our team of five womyn who form the “Your Search Within collective” includes Natural Products Guru Yonia Cuervo, New Technologies Revelator Nagine Xavier-Woo, and Insight Channeler Starryn Fairchylde. They guide each spirit toward their cosmic energy source. (Funny how each influencer’s photo looks just like me, isn’t it?)
Lily and I have never monetized the site. But then, it doesn’t exist to gather income. We made it to poke fun at the idea that one can buy virtue and become a more pure person by imbibing, inhaling, or adorning oneself in a certain way. We hope it’ll make people laugh, of course. But after that, maybe they’ll notice how influencers manipulate us into feeling so insecure or inadequate that we spend time and money on obvious nonsense that we hope will shine up our tarnished halos.