Whenever we have a bad day, our friends say “treat yourself.” Though it sounds healthy to participate in self-care, hitting the store might not be the best way to do it.
Unfortunately, this brand of self-care has become materialistic and focused on capitalistic ventures rather than on actually helping ourselves.
The idea of self-care harkens back to the time of Socrates and Plato who believed that in order to know ourselves and live a prosperous life, we must care for ourselves. Through this, self-care developed into a philosophical luxury.
Those who had the time to learn about themselves and care for their own health were elite philosophers and thinkers.
It then turned into a basic concept of just taking a few minutes each day to make sure one’s health is fine in order to continue on living life to the fullest.
Now, we watch television at the end of a work day, see a commercial that says we deserve the best because we are the best and we find ourselves on our phones two minutes later buying whatever product we saw on TV.
With the rise of mental health awareness, along with despair-inducing news becoming commonplace, it’s not hard to believe that people are frantically searching for anything to make themselves feel better.
The trend of taking care of ourselves has been capitalized and is now being used against us. We as a society use self-care as a way to excuse spending ridiculous amounts of money on things we don’t need or watching that 16th episode of "Naruto" instead of doing our homework.
If you’re okay with the state of your bank account or giving in to manipulative slogans that tickle your spending nerve, then this is all fine.
But couldn’t we turn our energy toward something more productive? Amani Ariel from Blavity, a self-described black millennial news outlet, expresses her disdain for the self-care movement in an article urging us to convert self-care to community care.
“I question why we are unable to notice how the emphasis on self-care can be dangerous to those for whom it is foreign and impractical,” Ariel says.
She doesn’t feel capable of subscribing to the concept of self-care due to its promotion of selfishness and irresponsibility whenever you don’t feel 100 percent.
Ariel also points out that self-care promotes taking care of oneself alone, rather than through the help of others. If someone is truly struggling with depression, anxiety or any other mental illness, buying a new lipstick or taking a seven-hour nap isn’t going to fix the problem.
Self-care helps in the short term, whereas community care could help in the long term.
Specifically, Ariel turns to movements like Black Lives Matter that remind her that she is important and that her problems matter, and it leaves her with a lasting feeling of relief, as opposed to instant relief that goes away just hours later.
The idea of community care is to look out for others, even if we can’t look out for ourselves. Through helping others, Ariel believes we can make long-term improvements on ourselves. “We must hurt together in order to heal together. And we must heal together in order to heal,” she writes.
Next time you feel like all hope is lost and think takeout will help, take a moment to text your friends and ask how their days were.
