When I first searched for ‘ideal lifestyle’ on iStock, I expected to see different ways of living — maybe people from different cultures or age groups. But the results were surprisingly similar: mostly young white women smiling on beaches, or couples enjoying perfect holidays under the sun. These images didn’t show real life; they sold a dream — a standardised version of happiness that looks the same everywhere.

Reading Foucault made me think about how systems of classification are never neutral. He argues that catalogues and archives reflect the values of the societies that create them (Foucault, 1989). I began to see the iStock search results as a kind of visual taxonomy — one that organises people according to what capitalism defines as ‘ideal.’ Each image was carefully arranged to suggest joy, freedom and success, but all within a very limited frame.

When I added professions such as nurse, teacher, farmer and factory worker after ‘ideal lifestyle,’ the pattern became even clearer. Almost everyone was smiling, but for different reasons. Nurses and teachers smiled to show care; farmers smiled while presenting their harvests; and factory workers smiled the least. The meaning of the smile shifted depending on the profession. This reminded me of Anderson’s idea of imagined communities (Anderson, 2006) — people connected not through reality, but through shared emotions and repeated images. The ‘ideal lifestyle’ works in a similar way, creating an imagined emotional community of happiness that everyone is expected to join.

I started to catalogue the images by different types of smiles: the leisure smile, the service smile, the success smile, and the invisible smile. Together, they form a visual loop where leisure and labour feed into each other. The same expression moves from beach to office, from rest to work — showing how even happiness becomes part of the capitalist cycle.

As a visual proposal, I designed a book cover titled The Smile Catalogue. If I continue this project, I want to build a small visual archive that traces how the ‘ideal lifestyle’ turns emotion into a form of labour — something that can be performed, sold, and endlessly repeated.

References

• Anderson, B. (2006) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Revised edition. London: Verso.
• Foucault, M. (1989) The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London: Routledge.