Laura Craik on mindlessness, her social media bugbear and a refreshing take on hair beauty

My inbox this morning: ‘How Much is Sleep Deprivation Costing You’ / ‘Are You Set up for Financial Success in 2018’ / ‘Why so Many Women Worry About Uneven Breasts’.

Thanks, inbox. Wherever I look, there’s an avalanche of worries manufactured with the sole intent of making me buy stuff to assuage them. If it’s not my inbox, it’s my doormat. Someone sent me The Little Book of Calm by a Dr Aaron Balick. ‘Sometimes, you can simply hit your limit,’ Dr Balick informed me, unsolicited. ‘Get away from the situation. Take a walk. Watch a movie, even if it’s in the middle of the afternoon.’ Who in London past the age of two can watch a movie in the afternoon? What, is this The Little Book of Calm for Kept Women and Heiresses?

Mindfulness is nothing new, yet unlike hygge, it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere fast. Or even mindfully. The skinny jeans of the £22bn wellness industry, mindfulness seems destined to forever tug at our inadequacies. And now, new for 2018, apparently, there’s kindfulness. What sorry twat thought that up?

I might just invent some guff of my own, only mine will be firmly rooted in the sedentary. Blindfulness: when you wake up and grab your phone, but can’t read the replies to your Facebook post because your eyes haven’t adjusted to the screen.

Findfulness: when you rejoice in recovering the TV remote. Signfulness: when it rains just as you’re setting off for your run, and you take it as an act of God that you should just stay home and eat Quavers. Quick, someone give me a book deal.

We’d all love to sit cross-legged on our bed omming with beatific equilibrium. But we’re Londoners. We work the longest hours in Britain. In those rare slivers of ‘me time’, I don’t want to sit stressing about how my psychological coat hooks are hanging upside down or that I failed at Veganuary due to the inconvenient fact that oat milk lattes make me hurl. Mindlessness, I’m coming for you, via the little book of dram. Well, it is Burn’s Night.

The wrong one

We all have our social-media pet hates. Some — Coachella pics, plane tickets carefully arranged to show that plum business-class seat (3A! Have a medal!) — have been there from the get-go; others rear their heads with little warning. And so it has come to pass with ‘this one’, as in: ‘having lunch with this one’, accompanied by a photo of the poster looking like the best version of herself while the hapless ‘this one’ endures the ignominy of a rather less photogenic angle. According to a dating coach, the phrase can be ‘an indication of commitment issues, or of not knowing what the status of the relationship really is’. Either way, I always feel sorry for the ‘this one’, and can’t help imagining they’re trying to get home as fast as their legs can carry them. But maybe that’s just me.

Hair unapparent

An ambassador for Kérastase, the model Emily Ratajkowski was recently lambasted for opining that ‘hair is a fundamental part of beauty, femininity and identity’.

L’Oréal’s latest ambassador has a different take. ‘Whether or not your hair is on display doesn’t affect how much you care about it,’ says British blogger Amena Khan, who has made history by becoming the first hijab-wearing model to star in a major international hair campaign. Anyone bored of seeing really fouffy, cheesy, very possibly Photoshopped hair dominating every shampoo ad will love this hair campaign that doesn’t feature hair.