From McMindfulness to mimetic desire: reframing the “mindfulness gaze” in tourism

Mindfulness has become a featured aspect of global tourism, including forest bathing retreats, digital detox packages, and luxury wellness resorts. These are marketed as ways to improve well-being, self-awareness, and sustainability. However, McMindfulness highlights how commercialisation often undermines its ethical and philosophical roots, turning it into a commodified product mainly accessible to the privileged. This paper reinterprets mindfulness in tourism as a mindfulness gaze, a socially constructed and mediated way of viewing, shaped by promotional aesthetics, influencer culture, and social class. Using Girard's theory of mimetic desire, it suggests that mindfulness experiences are pursued not only for their intrinsic benefits but also because they are admired and copied by influencers, fostering cycles of imitation and rivalry. The paper argues that mimetic desire drives the mindfulness gaze; rivalry widens the gap between mindful rhetoric and unsustainable practice; and the visual politics of this gaze reinforce privilege and moral binaries.