Say no to ‘self-care’ this year
Self-care is set to be bigger than ever this year, but is it healthy to be so obsessed with ourselves? Amy Nelmes Bissett investigates.
At first glance it might appear tricky to spot the threading theme in the consumption of a family bag of M&Ms, a cucumber face mask and the decision to turn off all devices at sunset but alas that’s the joys of self-care, it really can be anything.
You’ve probably heard the term. Anyone who breathed in 2018 did. A boundless and nebulous movement that’s allowed us humans to indulge in all the things we enjoy and hail it as caring for ourselves.
And as the resolutions of 2019 rolled out, the flavour appeared to be irrevocably fixed. We’re going to indulge in ourselves for a little longer. In fact, in the first few days of January #selfcare was the hashtag that ruled, rumbling-up the total mentions to a monstrous 10.9 million.
But self-care itself isn’t a new concept. Rarely anything is in the recycle days of present. It was used by the Greeks to learn more about themselves so they could offer the world their true self.
Perhaps that’s why journalling and a spot of meditation were once the activities used by the handful of those wanting to be more in tune with themselves. But like anything that finds itself being mass marketed, the message often gets mislaid under the meaningless.
These days the in-vogue and so vague movement has become a commodity. There’s self-care makeup, manicures, face masks, massages, and detox tea. There’s a line of massage chairs with the tagline ‘‘the science of self-care’’.
There’s even temporary tattoos in the shape of a BandAid with self-care mottos like ‘‘This too will pass’’, ‘‘I am enough’’ and ‘‘I am possible’’, just in case we magically miss the daily bombardment of selfaffirming messages on social media.
Self-care is growing and evolving with each passing moment. You’ll probably have noticed an influx of ready-made resolution formats online, which appeared to focus on the fine adjustment of self. They were small promises for 2019, like having an hour of ‘‘me time’’ every day.
Even Netflix’s newly released Tidying Up With Marie Kondo, the Japanese tidying expert who vows that folding T-shirts into a neat baguette shape can offer inner peace, is nothing more than a subtle self-help show.
And perhaps less subtle is that for the first time in decades, self-help books are back in, with a 56 per cent increase in sales in the past three years. We are getting ready to reach peak selfoptimisation by focusing on me, me, and more me.
But why have we become so obsessed with self? Well, in simple terms, the world is a funny old place at the moment. Turn on the television or scroll through Facebook and it doesn’t take long to find something that is unsettling and upsetting. Times are turbulent.
And it’s hard to overlook the link between adversity and retreating into ourselves with personal time when Google searches for the term self-care reached a five-year high just after the election of Donald Trump in November 2016. And life since has hardly been rosy under his leadership.
But can this carefully curated lifestyle choice really offer lifechanging magic? After all, life should include downtime. It’s an important way to refuel in modern times. And when faced with the current climate, maybe it’s understandable to want to comfort ourselves with an adult equivalent of a snugly.
But life often swings like a pendulum and it seems we have swung too far into a retreat of denial that seems to be the cornerstone of generation Treat Yo’ Self. Selfcare right now is in fact just an indulgent focus on ourselves, feeding a monster of privilege.
It’s at the heart of Marie Kondo’s message. Throw away parts of your life that are messy because it ‘‘sparks joy’’ and the result will be de-cluttered selfpeace. Just throw it away, people. Throw it away and let’s pretend you didn’t buy that horrid jumper in the sales.
But something happens when we no longer engage in hardship, we lose something that is core to our development: resilience. True grit isn’t something that comes from hiding behind the cloak of self-care and ignoring the world and its problems.
Let’s look at some of New Zealand’s greats.
When Maurice Paykel and Sir Woolf Fisher were told in 1934 that the Government would no longer import refrigerators from America for their new business, they didn’t hide away from the world in charcoal-activated face masks until they felt whole again. Instead, Fisher & Paykel now hold more than 420 patents for original designs.
When Cambridge-born Brendan Lindsay’s father told him he would likely end up sleeping on a park bench because he was such a dunce, he didn’t decide to cut all ties with toxic people and live with only Netflix and his fat pants as company. He launched a company, Sistema Plastics, a storage system that sold last year for $600 million.
Embracing and overcoming life’s great challenges, hardship and even slight suffering is often the stepping stone to a greatness and strength that, no matter how hard we try, can’t be found in the convenient safeness that we currently court with solipsism.
Perhaps it’s time we shake off the comfort blanket of self-care and step back into reality with a bit of fight in us. After all, no steely determination or human hardiness was ever found at the bottom of a bubble bath during ‘‘me’’ time.
When we no longer engage in hardship, we lose something that is core to our development: resilience.