Social media has sparked several recent crazes under the wellness theme, with the latest one being bed rotting. This involves staying in bed, enjoying snacks and TV, ignoring life’s duties, and only coming out once you feel truly rested (or when muscle atrophy starts to set in). Hundreds of TikToks are dedicated to this trend, often featuring muted colors, cozy bedding, and a deliberately cluttered bed, with captions or voiceovers suggesting it’s the best way to spend your time. The concept of the bedroom has long been associated with various cultural and artistic meanings. Historically, the bedroom has been a place for sleep and sex; before modern hospitals, it was also where births and deaths occurred, making it the place where our lives started and ended. Literature has dramatically reflected this notion. Long before TikTok and Instagram, the Victorians were already turning the idea of languishing in bed into an art form. This article is part of Quarter Life, a series about issues affecting people in their twenties and thirties, from career challenges and mental health to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet, or making new friends as adults.
These articles delve into these questions, offering answers as we navigate this tumultuous time in life. You might be interested in articles like Goblin mode: a gothic expert explains the trend’s mythical origins and why we should all go vampire mode instead, Why is the Barbie DreamHouse so creepy? An expert in the uncanny explains, or Lucky girl syndrome: the potential dark side of TikTok’s extreme positive thinking trend. Bed rotting aligns with other recent fads that reject the rising popularity of hustle culture and productivity cults. While that mindset still thrives on social media, so do new trends promoting slow living rather than constantly striving to be productive. Like the popular goblin mode, the 2022 Oxford word of the year, bed rotting uses an exaggeratedly grotesque phrase to specifically describe women’s inactivity and withdrawal. This highlights how transgressive it is for a woman to simply do nothing and go nowhere.
Yet, by describing these trends in unappealing terms, social media has ironically romanticized the idea. There’s nothing particularly goblin-like or genuinely slovenly in these videos—they are all very clean, serene, and cozy. Bed rotting isn’t about decaying in bed but about flourishing. This romanticization mirrors the 19th-century artistic perspective on the bed-rotting women of that era. Images of sickly women merging with their mattresses were common in novels, art, and non-fiction. Notably, there was the popular deathbed memoir trend, which romanticized the unwell woman, depicting her final retreat to bed as a purifying experience where she confessed her sins and forgave everyone. In 1832, Reverend Henry Revell published An Extraordinary But Authentic Narrative of The Penitence and Death of The Notorious Mrs. D***, describing Mrs. D. as depraved until her submission to rest was seen as an impressive demonstration of mercy. Being in bed is viewed as healing for the soul. Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell would likely have had thoughts on bed-rotting TikToks. Parts of her 1855 novel North and South reflect the sentiments behind this trend. Beds are significant in the novel, serving as symbols of the narrow line between rest and death, as well as privilege, class, and worker exploitation.
In North and South, two women engage in bed rotting: mill-worker Bessy and the middle-class mother of protagonist Margaret Hale. Only one is romanticized. While Maria Hale relaxes on an elaborate water bed, poor Bessy rests on a probably decaying settle (an early sofa bed), succumbing to a work-related disease. Bessy’s forced retreat due to employment-induced physical harm transforms her into almost a saintly figure. Maria’s behavior, in contrast, is seen as melodramatic. I see parallels with Maria and Bessy in the TikToks. Some retreat to their beds due to the mental health toll of work and school pressures, while others merely want to flaunt a nice bedroom. In both modern and Victorian examples, the focus is on the woman alone in her bed, having chosen or been compelled to reject socially expected roles: working, socializing, and even sharing romance, but they’re not truly alone. Bed rotting involves being watched, documented, envied, and romanticized by others. While bed rotting appears as a private act of self-care, it’s actually a public statement, akin to how Gaskell used Bessy’s death to highlight industrial exploitation.
These TikToks seem performative. Are we genuinely withdrawing from work, responsibilities, and social life if we still seek others’ attention and concern? No matter the motivation behind the trend, one thing is clear across centuries: rest should be valued just as highly as any other moment in life. And with that, I’m heading back to bed.