Pooja Lakshmin and Tressie McMillan Cottom talk about why self-care overpromises and underdelivers.
The Catch-22 of self-care becoming big business is that taking time to refuel, recharge and reconnect as self-care asks of us ends up feeling like just another chore, the kind that led us to burnout in the first place. |
 | | Courtesy of Pooja Lakshmin |
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The politics of self-care is a tangled web of American narratives as complex as the nation that produced them. There is the puritanical impulse to rest only if it can be done as a conspicuous act of work. Then there is the consumerist impulse to adopt self-care rituals through buying and performing their accouterments — the candles, retreats, journals, influencers and moral superiority. |
There is also the radical history of self-care in which marginalized people resist their oppression by focusing on their own sustenance. Treating themselves as whole beings, deserving of care, as the oft-quoted Audre Lorde says, is "not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare." Only in America could one branded term include everything from Goop to Lorde. |
I have lived a life where caring for myself seemed not revolutionary but impossible, a cruel joke. How could I focus on sleep rituals, deep breathing and being in community when I had student loans to pay and multiple jobs to work? |
Today, I am the target customer for the self-care consumer market. My inbox is flush with offers of cleanses and movement therapy that promise to bring balance into my life for a price. If it is possible, self-care feels like a crueler joke now that I can afford more of it. |
To say that I am cynical about self-care's many promises in our consumer-saturated culture is an understatement. When I read Pooja Lakshmin's book, "Real Self-Care," I was prepared to fight. But a shaman at a walking meditation once told me that what we desire is always hiding behind what we resist. The truth is, I want to believe in the kind of real self-care that people talk about achieving in rituals and found families. It promises something that feels like an antidote to the very thing that has perverted self-care: community. |
Pooja is an ideal person for me to be honest with about my cynicism and my secret hope for self-care that delivers. She has been there, and like me, she has failed miserably in her seeking. She does not sugarcoat the structural limitations of buying a dopamine fix. She has a plan, however, for the ongoing work of weaning ourselves off the quick hit of what she calls "easy self-care." I talked with Pooja on this week's episode of "The Ezra Klein Show," which I guest-hosted, about why it promises so much and delivers so little. In the end, I felt a little bit more normal for being cynical, and hopeful that there is a better way to live. |
What Our Readers Are Saying |
As someone who has succeeded in making a massive change in the way I feel about myself, I embrace the idea that "self-care" is ultimately propelled by internal work. But this work requires deep exploration and a commitment to face whatever pain you may come across. It takes a high degree of rationality to guide yourself through that kind of introspection, in addition to respect for your own dignity. — Rob Abiera, Oklahoma City The "wellness" industry has nothing to do with self-care. It has nothing to do with female empowerment. It is the antithesis of feminism. Wellness preys upon women's insecurity about their looks mostly and the realization that despite feminist rhetoric women are still not considered rulers of the universe. Wellness offers smoke and mirrors along with jade eggs and oatmeal cleanses for big bucks. — Ambimom, North New Jersey |
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