Why Jo Stanley isn’t going to pay $2500 for a group photo with Oprah

TICKETS for Oprah’s Australian tour, including a group photo? $2500. Living the life you want? Priceless. Why Oprah’s marketing cult has gone too far.

Why pay $2500 for a photo with Oprah?

Tickets to An Evening With Oprah, her #lifeyouwanttour coming to Australia in December, went on sale on Monday. With a gazillion followers around the world, you’d think every middle-aged woman in the country, with her own willingness to live her best self, would break the internet to get themselves living in the moment with Oprah.

As she said, if you want to accomplish the goals of your life, you have to begin with your spirit, and I’m assuming she doesn’t mean vodka.

Surprisingly, she’s not sold out, at least not at the time of writing this. The cheapest tickets are gone, but it seems there are an abundance at $265 up to the astronomical $2500 which you would imagine buys you a seat on Oprah’s private jet, but really only gets you close enough for a photo — a group photo.

I’m guessing a lot of would-be ticket buyers did exactly what I did, which was hover over the purchase button, considering Oprah’s challenge to Claim My Power, and then decide $265 was more than I was willing to pay for an intimate evening (because intimacy doesn’t have to mean being close enough to see a person’s face) with Oprah, even though I’m a fan from way back.

I did an Arts Degree. What else was I going to do on my class-free-Fridays, as I sat on my broken vinyl couch? Oprah was an inspirational meme before we’d even heard of the internet, and I slurped up every twee life lesson she dished out with the same relish as the 2 Minute Noodles I lived on. As she said, I was a woman in process, it’s just that the process plant was on break at that time.

So many of her most memorable moments were a part of my formative early adult years. Some I still get a little teary over. Like when she bought Bernadette, single mother of 3 and guardian to her brother’s 6 kids, a new house, thereby literally breaking a poverty cycle for that entire family. Or when she had Faith, the dog with only 2 back legs, on the show … sniff … and she came bounding onto the stage, tail wagging (Faith, not Oprah) on just those 2 legs with … sniff sob … little stubs where her front legs should be … and she just seemed so … sob … happy. That stuff destroyed me.

And then there were the hilarious moments. Tom Cruise on that couch, or the audience losing their mind when they realise they’re taking a whole swag of Oprah’s favourite things home, even some FACE CREAM, or the way Oprah introduced HUUUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHH JAAAAAACKMAAAAANNNNNN!!!!! It’s how I’d like people to refer to me at my funeral. Every time they say my name.

But none of this was enough for me to fork out the bucks to see her show. Maybe because I’m older and already living my true purpose, which is basically to sit on a couch watching a box set — it seems in 20 years I haven’t moved far. Mainly though, the image of Oprah standing, arms spread, before a stadium of 14,000 crazed women, sharing her wisdoms punctuated by Pauses. After. Every. Word makes me cringe. It feels so cultish. Like Oprah has become a blend of Martin Luther King and those Magic Happens bumper stickers.

And it’s because of the bumper stickers, and all the motivational sayings we’re bombarded with daily, on everything from our Facebook feed to the herbal tea I drank this morning, that I’m not buying the message any more. Living our full life now belongs to the marketers, hijacked by brands who know we’re all desperately seeking true happiness, and Oprah, one of the most successful brands we’ve seen in the last 20 years, hasn’t been able to keep her distance from that.

On this tour, she’s amplified her message to rock star levels, but the content hasn’t grown in its complexities, and she’s making a lot of money out of something I can read in Cosmo. Maybe I was naive to think Oprah was ever anything but this.

It saddens me that inspiration has become a commodity. Thankfully the happiness that comes from a quiet and still connection with our breath and the world around us can’t be bought. As the great woman once said, “this moment is the only one you know you have for sure”. She also said “my idea of heaven is a great big baked potato”. Oprah’s wisdom knows no bounds.