Where self-care meets consumerism: How can we reinvigorate the “self” in self-care?

Written by Alice Blunden

“I know what we need!” I blurt out to my friend as I interrupt the string of depressing complaints and worries that pass between us. “A face mask, an expensive glass of wine and a night of Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging.” I desperately seek my friend’s approval, anxiously scanning her head for even the slightest nod so as not to feel guilty for suggesting a night of sheer indulgence discreetly disguised as self-care. “We deserve this, right?”

In its simplest form, self-care implies an individualistic and subjective approach to healing. Only we as individuals really know and understand what we need in a particular moment to prioritise our wellbeing. Ironically, however, the self-care practices many of us gravitate towards are endorsed and forced upon us by large corporations selling glib, beautifying processes and grooming us into ideal neoliberal citizens. The proliferation of empowerment techniques (for instance, the intense focus on enhancing self-esteem or one’s career) promotes individual responsibility. However, the problem with this individualised responsibility is that it is often marketed to us as a one-size-fits-all solution to the maladies of our social environments.

As a collective, we are more depressed and stressed than ever. We live in an always-on environment, peppered with unreasonable expectations and normalised self-loathing. The solution to this complex social disarray? Well, according to big corporations, dismantling all that is wrong with our society would be much too difficult and fruitless for capitalism’s insatiable greed. The solution, rather, is placed on us, it’s an individual responsibility, a band-aid-like solution; a distraction, a chance for us to feel accomplished after fixing a part of us that was never broken to begin with. The advertising industry plays a sinister role in this illusory and harmful self-care discourse. It has subtly shifted self-care away from meaningful introspection and towards impulsive consumerism. The phrase “treat yourself” is now a capitalist command. It is an insistent reminder that we deserve to consume, we deserve to splurge, we deserve to optimistically pursue external stimuli with the (perhaps naïve) hope of recuperating our internal selves and nourishing our minds. In this sense, self-care has become an elusive façade that justifies our insatiable desire for more.

Hyper-individualised self-help discourse is also highly gendered. The outdated and misogynistic notion that a woman belongs chained to domestic duties subtly presents itself in modern conceptions of self-care and self-optimisation. For instance, think of magazine articles like ‘These 5 Household Chores Are As Good As Doing a Full-Blown Cardio Workout’. Here, selfcare is repackaged as self-discipline, a desirable quality that fuels capitalism’s relentless craving for productivity and a restricted female body. Additionally, there is a tension in our excessively consumerist environment and the way society expects a woman to limit, refine and restrain herself from such indulgences. The mental illness anorexia nervosa embodies this tension. Sufferers of the illness experience a total conquest and control of hunger—limit, refine, restrain—that is entirely antithetical to the gluttonous foundations of our modern consumer system. Here, selfcare discourse directed at the female body becomes a feminised tool of control wherein a well-managed or well “cared-for” self/body represents a successful performance and an effective display of femininity.

Self-care was once a basic term used to describe the act of looking after oneself. Today, however, it has become an economic titan. Big corporations insidiously exploit self-care discourse. They harness it tightly into their brawny business belts to sell products and lifestyles that paradoxically estrange us further from our inner selves. “Treat yourself” and buy a face mask to eliminate your pores and enhance your beauty. “Prioritise yourself” and buy a gym membership to shrink your body and take up less space. “Indulge yourself” and buy those new clothes to conceal the increasing fragility of your mind and body. What do all these self-care practices have in common? They promote consumption and the façade of selfimprovement. In other words, self-care represents a mere cog in capitalism’s industrious machine. Its job? Relentless self-optimisation, a distraction from the machine’s deeper technical faults.

So how can we redefine self-care so that it is no longer about being the perfect, productive citizen within the confines of capitalism? To truly build an effective self-care apparatus, we must detach ourselves from the external social linkages that bury deep into our minds and bodies like ravenous parasites. We must stop heeding the selfcare prescriptions of corporations and other social entities and start listening to ourselves. We must stop for a moment and embrace the daunting silence that comes with the rebellious act of ignoring society’s endless noise. And in that moment of silence, we can ask ourselves what we really need. We can reclaim the “self” in self-care.