On TikTok, with the “Winter Arc” trend, good resolutions can be made now

The night is falling faster, the cold is coming little by little and the days are rainy… but don’t give in to the winter blues just yet because “Winter Arc” is coming.

Behind the hashtag “Winter Arc” is a concept of personal development that has gained popularity recently, especially on TikTok. “This video is for all my girls who want to become the best version of themselves before 2025. Winter Arc has started. There are 90 days left before the end of the year, and therefore 90 days to establish a new routine with lots of rules inside to be able to achieve all your goals. » introduces Dalia (@daliabnz) in her TikTok video.

What is the “Winter Arc”?

The number of videos featuring special programs related to “Winter Arc” has increased significantly since October 1st. This would involve taking advantage of the last three months of the year (from October to the end of December) to focus on personal, mental and physical growth goals, instead of waiting for the start of the new year. Basically, these are the traditional good resolutions that we anticipate in order to enter the new year already being an improved version of ourselves: eat better, follow a sports program, focus on our mental well-being or improve your social relationships…

For the American media Women’s Healthit is Carly Berges, a 27-year-old influencer from Miami specializing in personal development, who is at the origin of the phenomenon. His video has been viewed over four million times and has been the subject of numerous Google searches. Still according to this media, #winterarc occupies fifth place in the trend rankings in the United States and has more than 250,000 videos on TikTok.

Sometimes extreme rules

In many videos, Winter Arc enthusiasts recommend a list of rules to follow to complete this process: “ 3 to 5 sports sessions per week; Good lifestyle; at least 7 hours of sleep; No alcohol; No Junk Food; fewer social networks; 10 pages of reading per day; Forget the girls; No porn » details the [email protected] account. If the program seems to be strict, the last two points may raise questions. Under the comments of this video, several boys ask if they should leave their girlfriends, or if it is necessary to put girls aside.

Women’s Health magazine also reports that some young men, like @noahlifts5, film themselves shaving their heads as a “symbolic gesture” and “test of discipline”. Her haircut video has been viewed over 25 million times. In France, the influencer Tibo InShape also posted his video shaving his hair with the only description of the “Winter Arc” video.

However, if the movement seems to attract a large audience, it also raises questions about its impact, particularly on younger people. According to the media The Snitchalthough most of the content creators publishing under the #winterarc hashtag are adults, part of their audience is sometimes very young, “But it seems particularly dangerous, in the midst of the emotional storm that is adolescence, to make the choice to withdraw into oneself.

Furthermore, this movement sometimes seems to embody a quest for performance and personal domination, associated with certain stereotypes of the “alpha male”. In some videos, influencers put themselves in extreme situations (doing push-ups in the rain, for example) and accompany their videos with dark music.

Cat GPT, creator of the personalized Winter Arc

But many women are also taking on the challenge on TikTok. Some do not hesitate to use artificial intelligence to best construct their list of rules and their back-planning.

Listen to these needs and desires

In a video, @diversions_club nuances the appeal around this trend. If focusing on your goals and on yourself does not seem to be a bad thing, she invites people tempted by this experience to think before throwing themselves headlong into achieving this challenge. “The idea that you absolutely have to become a better version of yourself bothers me. On the networks we are harassed into seeing our personal lives according to a logic of productivism, but we are not a company, we are a person.”

Ultimately, establishing a routine should be motivated solely by the desire to feel good and happier. If this means changing your life routine, so be it; but if a good raclette or an evening Emily in Paris warm under the blanket meet your needs, no one will judge you. Unless you post a video on TikTok with the Winter Arc tag of course…