We’ve Been Doing Self-Care Wrong
The origins of self-care: from radical act to consumerist trap.
The word “self-care” now elicits ideas of luxuriating in a bath with a bath bomb effervescing just below the surface, looking like a Michael Myers doppelganger in an antioxidant-rich face mask, getting your nails painted to the perfection of a Picasso piece, or buying yourself a decadent little treat from a nearby bakery. Sorry to burst the bubbles in your bath, but self-care has been appropriated.
Prior to the Civil Rights Movement and Women’s Movement, the term self-care was only used in the medical context. Health professionals told their patients to engage in self-care to either prevent or manage health issues by encouraging them to eat well and incorporate exercise. In the 1970’s, the Black Panther Party popularized and politicized self-care by providing resources for their community. They created access to free healthy food, set up health clinics to address problems specifically ailing the Black community, like sickle-cell anemia and lead poisoning, and built programs to share necessary information with each other. These free programs served as a coping mechanism for not only police brutality and government harassment that Black people endured, but also as a way to care for each other due to lack of resources from racial inequality.
Black women, often queer, pushed other activists and organizers into taking care of themselves as a daily revolutionary tactic. Prominent Black Panther Party leaders Angela Davis and Ericka Huggins incorporated yoga and meditation into their routines while incarcerated. Upon release, they campaigned for nutrient dense diets and physical movement to bolster mental health while navigating systemic racism. They created wellness programs for adults and children at recreation centers speckled across the country. Rosa Parks practiced yoga for many years. Self-care was not perceived as a luxury but a vital technique for rejuvenation and capacity building in order to continue the fight for liberation.
Co-founders of the Black Panther Party, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, incorporated self-defense into their Ten Point Program in 1966. Martial arts was used not only as a way to combat police violence but also to cultivate a sense of empowerment both mentally, spiritually, and physically. It emphasized appreciating one’s Black body as it is. Activist and writer Audre Lorde underscored the intersectionality of self-care and civil rights as she battled cancer in her book, A Burst of Light: and Other Essays. The more that you pour into yourself, the better you can show up for your community.
Decades later, self-care seems to revolve more around consumerism, with the self-care industry ballooning to an estimated $450 billion in 2024, and even higher by other reports. We often fall back on self-care due to exhaustion from overwork. This is a byproduct of capitalism, which deems us worthy based on our productivity and ability to make more money. Inadequate social systems are a result of our failing capitalist system, because why offer social programs like free child care or healthcare when you can monetize them? This internalized capitalism also seeps into many immigrant family values whereby success is achieved only by working hard and pushing your limits, and even then, systemic racism serves as an additional barrier. Likewise, this capitalist mindset penetrates the individual subconscious leading to an insecurity that you are not good enough, and thus by grasping for higher bars, you will finally be worthwhile. It’s all related!
No deep tissue massage or adaptogenic tea will cure you from feeling depleted due to working long hours, and thus feeling disconnected from yourself and your community. To dismantle these unhealthy societal norms and ingrained patterns of thinking, an exploration of values is needed. By understanding your values and experiences, you can then begin to unpack which values are allowing you to live an intentional life and consequently work towards strengthening them. By returning to the original idea of self-care as a radical act: show compassion and care for yourself so that you can show up for your community and enact societal change collectively.
