Prior to her show on Netflix, I’d heard of Marie Kondo.  Her book about tidying up and minimalism sparked a little bit of a firestorm from the literary world, citing inspiration to people to basically purge all the unnecessary shit they’ve hoarded over their lives, but from a holistic, Japanese approach; and if there’s one thing white people love, it’s exotic lines of thinking from the wise and progressive Orient.

Now, I use the phrase white and white people ironically, if that’s not obvious; the actual color of the people is widely irrelevant, as the mentality to rely on books and television to serve as inspiration to seek out enlightenment and happiness is a pretty white people thing, regardless of what color a person actually is.

And Netflix has clearly gone through the effort to make sure that the spectrum of people that Marie Kondo helps in her series Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, checks all the boxes of diversity, from the aforementioned whiteys, a black family, a gay couple, some ambiguously possibly Asian people, Hispanics, and then more white people in each respective episode.

I used to think that the shows on HGTV of a bunch of white people looking for real estate in South American countries were the whitest shows on television, but that was before I watched Tidying Up.  The HGTV shows are all about affluent rich white people, to which doesn’t actually apply to all white people; but the people all featured on Tidying Up are peak white people (again, regardless of actual race), in the sense that they’re all fairly upper-middle class households with the very relatable scenarios of just having way too much shit, and feeling overwhelmed and stressed out about, clutter.

They’re not worrying about jobs, income inequality, bills, or whether or not their next meal is guaranteed.  They’re worrying about the fact that they’ve accumulated a lot of material shit in their homes, and it’s stressing them out.

Peak white people problems.

Continue reading “Tidying Up with Marie Kondo is the whitest show ever” →