Self-care isn’t selfish, but the companies behind it are
With shifting attitudes towards the acceptance and normalisation of talk around mental health, “self-care” has become a buzzword over the past few years. Across Google, searches for self-care tripled between 2013 and 2018, and now we can see and hear the phrase in our day to day lives from our workplaces, our friends, celebrities and products alike. Self-care, simply put, is making deliberate, mindful decisions which show respect and kindness for your wellbeing. But as Liza Minnelli sings so eloquently in Cabaret, money does indeed make the world go ‘round, and when it comes to making a profit, nothing is sacred.
Sometimes, in our busy lives, all we need is a small break in which we are allowed to exist, to process, and to rest without external expectation. Taking a walk to give yourself the space to think and feel can often be more beneficial to your mental state than anything you can buy in a bottle, but corporations can’t profit off of this simple activity. And so, self-care is becoming a commodity. We’re being told to purchase bath bombs, face-masks, meditation apps, or activity trackers in the name of mental health.
Now, don’t get me wrong, sometimes a little bit of luxury can go a long way. Treating yourself to a purchase is often a wonderful form of self-care, but if it’s the first (or only) measure presented or taken, we may have a problem. Because more often than not, it’s not a solution to your problems, it’s just a distraction from them.
Progress, particularly that of mental or emotional wellbeing, is often far from linear. It’s also difficult to quantify. But, human as we are, at the end of the day we want proof. We like holding up something material to prove that we’ve got some form of accomplishment. And if that can’t be done we like to find, or make, statistics that can show our intangible progress we’ve strived so hard to achieve.
The commodification of self-care can perhaps be most obviously seen in the plethora of apps we can buy to track our “progress”. These apps offer us the small satisfaction that at least we’re trying, and at least we’ve got something to show for it. In 2016, there were over 160,000 self-tracking apps on the market which could be used to track almost any element of human life, from productivity, to food consumption, to sleep.
These apps rely on the users assuming the methods of the Quantified Self. Although people have been recording and tracking their human experience since the dawn of time, the digitalisation of self-logging methods has made the practice more commonplace than ever before- perhaps even to the point of passivity, in the case of smartphone location trackers, or built-in pedometers. These apps are now highly profitable industry, accumulating both impressive economic revenues, and a terrifying amount of data on their user bases. Admittedly, these apps in their administration and gamification can be quite useful to motivate, or reveal, one’s habits. However, the influx of information to which we can ascribe our identities in a datafied, quantified manner is unprecedented, and it is important for users not to tie their identity, and the worth of it, with the figures which result.
“By pinning ‘self-care’ on everything from perfume to apps, you’re taking advantage of people’s desperate need to feel like they’re working on themselves, to feel like they’re taking steps to feel better…Using that against us is pretty rubbish”, says Scott in her opinion piece, and I can’t help but let out a cheer. The “treat yo self” mentality frames self-care as a splurge, or a luxury, instead of a crucial element to be incorporated in everyone’s daily lives. As Weist explains, “If you find yourself having to regularly indulge in consumer self-care, it’s because you are disconnected from actual self-care, which has very little to do with “treating yourself” and a whole lot do with parenting yourself and making choices for your long-term wellness.”
More and more companies are advertising their products under the guise of “self-care”, in a poor attempt at Self-Esteem Advertising. At best, this will sell a few silly knick-knacks which offer minimal help to their buyers. At worst, it perpetrates a misleading advertising strategy that offers products in the name of self-care but is instead a thinly masked attack of the audience’s inherent self-worth. After all, most advertising relies on the premise that you are inherently lacking without the goods and services it so kindly offers.
Sometimes it is a $9 latte, or those shoes you’ve been eyeing off for months, but self-care is also so much more than that. Its learning to set boundaries and learning to forgive. It’s taking financial responsibility and sticking to your budget so you’re not eating cereal for dinner with five days to go until pay day (not that I’m speaking from experience or anything). It’s crying in therapy sessions, and calling your mum, and going to bed on time. Sometimes it’s giving yourself permission to disappoint people. It’s washing those near-mouldy dishes that have been piling up for weeks and having the self-control to make hard decisions even when they’re not easy ones. It’s showing respect and compassion for your health; be that physical, mental, emotional, spiritual or financial. It’s creating a life for yourself that isn’t so entirely overwhelming and exhausting that a bath is seen as a treat, or rehabilitation, or a last resort- but just something to enjoy. Self-care is often far from glamourous, and it’s so deeply necessary.
And if we’re trying to equate the numbers, the cost, and the products of our self-care to correspond with our self-worth, that doesn’t sound particularly kind or caring to me at all.
