Meanings
- derogatoryuncountableThe appropriation of something as a lifestyle, without regard to its underlying tenets or meaning.
We went beyond squatting as lifestylism firstly by barricading our squats; secondly by taking over the street itself[…]
1998, George McKay, DIY Culture, page 1084 more examples
At the heart of the SL's [Spartacist League] attitude is as simple but insidious notion: lesbians and gay men should not bother fighting for their own liberation because that is "lifestylism"; rather, we should become closeted members of a straight-dominated sect and hope we are not forgotten after the revolution.
1982 August 14, Ian Daniels, “Nazis In Chicago”, in Gay Community News, volume 10, number 5, page 5In the cult of commodified lifestylism, even religion has become one more box on the shelf—promising a personal benefit along with conditioning shampoo, long-lasting antiperspirant, breath-sweetening toothpaste[…]
2010, Leonard Sweet, The Three Hardest WordsInstead, many fall victim to illusions of reformism, bourgeois democracy, technotopianism, lifestylism, and other bogus schemes.
2013, Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, Earth at Risk, page 192For if anarchism is just revolutionary workerism, then it loses its historical character as a libertarian critique or interpretation of socialism; yet if anarchism leaves its socialist roots completely in the past[…]then it arguably becomes something else, perhaps the supposedly aimless lifestylism derided famously by Murray Bookchin.
2020, Gary Chartier, Chad Van Schoelandt, editors, The Routledge Handbook of Anarchy and Anarchist Thought, Routledge, →ISBN
Origin
Cite this entry
lifestylism. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/lifestylism
“lifestylism.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/lifestylism. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “lifestylism,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/lifestylism.
Source: lifestylism on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.