‘We cannot simply go, go, go.’ What is girl mossing, the wellness trend that rejects hustle culture? | The Conversation

The fast pace and pressure of neoliberal capitalism take an enormous toll on wellbeing: not just personal, but social and planetary. These pressures are most acutely felt by women – whose labour remains, in large part, undervalued and underpaid – and by young people, who are often in precarious work, priced out of the housing market. Yet they’re still bombarded with images of unattainable success on social media. Not so the moss selfies.

The pressure to succeed, to be a “girlboss” at work, as well as the perfect girlfriend or wife or mother or daughter, takes its toll on women’s physical and emotional health. It’s no wonder, then, that women are moving from girlbossing to girl mossing. Girl rotting is another subversive form of rest and retreat, focused on being intentionally “unproductive” at home.

There is a crossover between girl mossing as a byword for resting and relaxing in nature, and a worldwide trend for literally appreciating moss, similarly linked to finding relaxation in nature. In Japan, moss has long been a national craze, sparked partly by a 2011 runaway hit book, Mosses, My Dear Friends. The term “Moss girl(s)” in Japanese, #苔ガール or #苔ガールズ, has 4,036 posts on Instagram.

In the 1960s, leading figure in the counterculture movement and psychedelics advocate Timothy Leary urged youth to “tune in, turn on, drop out”. But girl mossing and girl rotting are distinguished by being led by young women, and by their embrace of natural rhythms of decay.