ABSTRACT
The conclusion outlines the major points in the history of lifestyle media, arguing that what has been at stake in its development is the erosion of middle-class life in the US. This book has attempted to understand, through a cultural studies paradigm, the conditions under which the American media industry has produced lifestyle in response to the growing anxieties surrounding work, housing, gender roles, and social life since the postwar period, serving to refurbish an ailing American dream. It suggests that the culmination of lifestyle media in the late 2010s is Gwyneth Paltrow’s haute couture lifestyle brand GOOP, which the conclusion analyzes to suggest that under contemporary neoliberal capitalism, lifestyle has become unmoored from its anchorage in middle-class ordinariness. Yet it argues that lifestyle is not wholly alienating and compensatory, suggesting instead that we take seriously the ways in which its mediated forms have become viable and meaningful to audiences—and women in particular—in specific historical moments.
