Self-care wasn’t originally intended for the self

The individualism of self-care

Trends like the “silly little walk for my silly little mental health” are still pervasive, especially amongst young people. Similarly, habits like ditching night clubs for run clubs, saying Nozeco to Prosecco, and mindfulness are all on the rise amongst Gen Z.

Admittedly, I have (however unwittingly) taken part in at least some of these trends. I too slip my earphones in and click play on yet another podcast as I take a solitary stroll, passing by other amblers presumably doing the exact same.

Likewise, as I begin to envision the dinner I’ll cook alone for myself later – and the joy of having only my own mind to disagree with about whether I binge several episodes of First Dates or commit to a Rom Com – it strikes me again how hyper-individualistic this kind of self-care is.

And sure, getting more sleep and stretching probably is really good for your mental and physical health. I’m not going to sit here and refute, like, science.

Unfortunately, however, this investment in the self, that comes with a dermatological price tag and an expensive gym membership, doesn’t seem to have any greater purpose beyond rising at 5am. It really does seem like the “self” is sort of all there is to it.

And I know I know. A running club runs together, and you can have a spa day with friends. But never have I been to a run club where people weren’t comparing Stravas or competing against both each other and, oddly, themselves, for a new PB.

As for the spa, well, you try speaking to your mates while your face is smushed into the weird part of a massage bed and see how intelligible you are.

While this modern-day self-care movement might endorse the illusion of togetherness – or rather, get you to endorse it through compulsive consumer pressure – it’s not exactly a movement of solidarity.

Rather, it’s more often than not a neoliberal act of self-actualisation that fails to offer lasting positive effects on our wellbeing such as more accessible necessary resources.

This stands against the origins of the self-care movement as it was conceived of in the twentieth century.

Political self-care

Self-care first caught on in a medical context as doctors advocated ways that patients could care for themselves.

In the 1960/70s this was particularly in reference to mentally ill and/or elderly people. The concept was later expanded to serve workers in high-risk or emotionally daunting occupations in order to prevent burn-out and combat work-related stress.

As Alice Capelle, author of Collapse Feminism, explains, it wasn’t until it was used by the Black Panther Self Defence movement and the women’s movement at this time that self-care came to be viewed as political.

Self-care in the political sphere was, for these oppressed groups, a way to survive the disproportionate maltreatment they received from the racist, sexist, and technocratic state, by reclaiming their right to their own health.

It was a movement that led to activist-led health clinics and education community centres for women and black people, as well as free food programmes for children and families. The first of these in the US was opened by physician activists H. Jack Geiger and Count D. Gibson Jr.

In this sense, it was a way of ensuring that people would be able to defend themselves and their people when faced with oppositional threats and systemic violence.

Karla D. Scott, a professor of communication at Saint Louis University, has suggested that this ‘image of caring for your people and self-care’, is what evoked the African philosophy ‘Unbuntu’ (I am because we are).

Whereas these days self-care has been appropriated to allow people to indulge in individualism and turn their moisturised faces away from global issues.

The idea that our health is something that can be “treated” with over-indulgence and impulse-purchases is what has enabled the ‘self-care industry’ to prey on the very stresses that capitalism perpetuates through the sale of yet more commodities.

As psychologist Maytal Eyal has pointed out, “instead of self-care being this mechanism to take care of yourself so that you can then show up for others”, somewhere along the way, self-care transformed into self-obsession.”

We’re told to treat ourselves to the wine and the chocolate, and then shamed for not pushing ourselves in our 6am gym session (on a Saturday!). To take a holiday and to find a work-life balance, with little regard for how our absentee approach to our workload will fall on the shoulders of other people in our industry.

What’s more, like most other means of production in our capitalist society, this self-care is largely sustained through the exploitation of other people. Those who have neither the time nor the financial means to care for themselves and their own families, and often with further environmental repercussions.

This isn’t to criticise the process of nighttime routines or an elongated bubble bath, but rather to point out that fighting fascism with exfoliator is unlikely to have a lasting impact.

Alternatively, then, we should look to groups like the Black Panthers in order re(re?)-appropriate self-care as a way to reinvigorate our political consciousness.

Audre Lorde is right to argue that we need to take care of ourselves in order to be able to care for others.

However, the role of neoliberalism in our self-driven participation in the exploitation of others as we seek momentary relief for ourselves from the drudgery of life under capitalism has made self-care not merely self-indulgent. It’s also made it dangerously individualistic.

By instead viewing self-care as a collective movement of self-preservation for resistance rather than an individual coping-mechanism, we can create long-lasting and sustainable community driven systems of care which protect ourselves and the most vulnerable.

In the words of poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou: “None of us are free until all of us are free.”