Making money off women’s insecurities rebranded as self-care?

Let me start by saying that it’s not that the concept of self-care is inherently bad. It’s important to take care of ourselves and our mental wellbeing. For me, good, productive self-care has looked like resisting the urge to commit to too many things, prioritizing sleep, meditating when I’m feeling really anxious, and having “slow” mornings – enjoying my coffee, lighting a candle, easing into my day.

I’m just a little skeptical of “self-care” that 1. reeks of lipstick feminism and makes me “more attractive” 2. makes me feel like I need to buy more products.

I’ve always had an issue with makeup. Many companies have sold women their products by making them feel like they’re not pretty enough, using women’s insecurities to convince them that they need a ton of different products to fix their flaws. While it’s less socially acceptable to use those tactics now, I can’t help but feel like using self-care as a marketing ploy is more or less the same thing. Maybe it’s less “you’re not pretty enough” and more “you’re not taking care of yourself well enough.” The marketing schemes are meant to make us think we’re doing it for ourselves, but if I’m really doing it for myself, why is someone else – especially someone who does not actually care about my wellbeing – making a profit?

Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with buying makeup or skincare products, and some brands are more ethical than others. But the idea that these products are empowering somehow is also toxic; the idea that we need to buy more in order to feel good is what I have a problem with. Wearing makeup or buying skincare products is not necessarily harmful to our wellbeing, but wearing more makeup does not mean we are taking care of ourselves. Lathering on five different kinds of soap doesn’t mean we are taking better care of ourselves. Sometimes I want to buy soap that supposedly makes your butt look better, and sometimes I’m like “wtf is the male gaze doing in my self-care routine?”

The reality is that there are many ways to take care of ourselves that don’t cost money, in addition to many ways to take care of ourselves that are incredibly important, too expensive, and also not glorified on social media (like getting a pap smear, for example). Going to the dentist could be self-care, except it’s not sexy enough. Why, when scrolling through Instagram, does it feel like self-care has to be sexy?

All my life, I’ve never really cared about makeup because I’m not too concerned with aesthetics or how I look. It’s just not how I prefer to spend my time and money (but it’s totally fine if other people enjoy it). Self-care messaging is somehow what made me more insecure, suddenly making me think hey, maybe I need eyeshadow and separate types of soap for my legs, arms and butt because I need to take care of myself like all the other women on social media. “Self-care” has made me feel like I need to be prettier and more stereotypically feminine, which again makes me wonder if it’s really self-care if it’s pushing me to conform to stereotypical feminine beauty standards (that I personally am not a fan of).

Again, I think it’s a good thing that we’ve embraced taking care of ourselves – and if your idea of self-care is different from mine, that’s completely okay because it’s self-care. I’m not saying that it’s bad to buy mud masks. But I also think it’s important to be skeptical of companies that might be using the movement against us, and using our desire to better ourselves as a way to, once again, profit off of our insecurities. Self-care should be about me, what makes me feel good, what I want. It should have nothing to do with how I’m perceived by other people.

I need to make sure my self-care routine is created with my own needs in mind, and not because social media made me feel like I needed to do it. If I’m doing it because I feel pressured, that’s not self-care. If I’m doing it because some guy with a beauty company made me feel like I am not feminine enough, that’s not self-care. My self-care routine might not be aesthetically pleasing enough for social media. It might be messy, even. Imperfect. Cheap, because I’m on a budget. It might not make me any prettier. And so what? It feels good.

I’m Not Over Shanghai’s Lockdown – And That’s OK

On June 1^st I should’ve been happy. After two months of staying inside I could finally step out of my Shanghai apartment. 

And yet I didn’t. I spent the first day out of lockdown the same way I spent every day in lockdown: anxious, scared of coming into contact with people, worried that COVID was lurking about on every single surface. 

Lockdowns are hard regardless of where you are, but Shanghai’s lockdown felt particularly intense. For two months, I could not step outside the door of my apartment unless it was to pick up a box of food delivered by the government or to get tested for COVID. Mandatory COVID testing happened a few times every week, and sometimes every day, and announcements about the tests were made via megaphone – “Building 6! Come downstairs to get tested for COVID!” At one point, I almost ran out of food and could not order more. At other points, I was woken up at 6 a.m. by the megaphone announcements. I was terrified of testing positive for COVID because it meant I would be sent to a quarantine facility that was just one big room full of thousands of people. It almost felt like it was meant to be as anxiety-inducing as possible.  

After lockdown, I tried to use “logic” as a means of dismissing my feelings. Logically I knew that COVID wasn’t living on every box and chilling on the sidewalk. Logically I knew my chances of getting COVID were pretty low (the numbers were not high in Shanghai at that point). But logic couldn’t erase the damage that had been done, and it didn’t bring me much comfort.  

Neither did comparing myself to others. When I checked social media, I saw photos of people who were excited to finally go out, which prompted me to ask questions like why can’t I just be happy like them? If they can go through lockdown then immediately go out and buy a coffee, why can’t I?  Why can’t I be happy for them, instead of resenting the way they can go back out and experience life again so easily? 

Of course, thinking in this way only made me feel worse about the way I was afraid of ordering anything from cafes or restaurants. The more I rejected my feelings and questioned the rationality of them, the more emotional I became.  

After a few days, I had to leave my apartment for a COVID test (mandatory every few days in Shanghai). From there, I started to adjust to the outside world again, and if you looked at my social media posts, you might’ve even gotten the impression that I had moved on. Pictures with friends. Drinks and food from different restaurants. Buildings from all around the city.  

What I didn’t post was the amount of disinfectant I used or the number of showers I took every day. I didn’t share the moments in which I cried after cooking because I was worried about the germs on packaging to the point that it interfered with my daily life. I didn’t post about the anxiety I felt every time I got a COVID test.  

On the surface, I appeared to be fine, which made one thing very, very clear: the ability to go out and buy a coffee from a café after lockdown does not mean a person is OK.  

All of those people who went out on June 1^st were not necessarily OK. They were coping with their feelings in a different way. I had to cope with my feelings in my own way too. And I needed time. I needed to heal, without comparing myself to others or treating it like a race. I was never going to get better by trying to pretend I was fine just so I could catch up to where (I thought) other people were at. Besides, just because other people could sit inside a restaurant – while I couldn’t without feeling overwhelmingly anxious – did not mean that they were OK.  

In addition to making me scared of doing anything, my health anxiety also made me judgmental. I judged the people who seemed to decide that the pandemic was over and that it was time to carry on with their normal lives.  

As I continue to heal, I become more aware of the different ways in which the pandemic has impacted people and their mental health. For some people, going out and doing normal things again is a way of coping. What I think is important to remember is that for some people, the pandemic is not over, no matter how much they want it to be – those who are immunocompromised or who have anxiety, for example. I am trying to be patient with others, but I also am trying to be patient with myself and I hope others can do the same with me. I still wear a mask when I go out. I don’t eat indoors in public. I avoid crowds to the best of my ability. I spend more time at home than I used to. When I first came back to the US a couple months ago, I wore gloves when I went to the ATM.  

I still can’t shake the lingering effects of everything that happened earlier this year. Months later, I still have nightmares and use too much disinfectant. What we dealt with in Shanghai (and around the world) was hard (an understatement, for sure) – the fact that it has impacted us does not mean we are weak or illogical. I am not totally OK, but I am getting there – and I’m trying to be patient with myself along the way. 

Take care of yourself, period.

I was not feeling well at all on Friday. I slept in late, made coffee, forced myself to teach a class, and contemplated the meaning of my life. I felt lost and exhausted. Luckily(?), turns out there was a clear reason for this: my time of the month. A visit from aunt flo. my period. (Let’s call it what it is because there’s no need to feel ashamed about it).  

For the sake of experimentation, I decided to search for period self-care advice. I found suggestions about embracing your period and connecting with yourself (probably something related to feminine energy or something as well?) Some articles suggested surrounding yourself with roses and the color red. Take a bath with rose petals. Buy roses. Write in red. Paint your nails red.  

I decided I would try to be extra this month and embrace my period just to see if I noticed any differences. I don’t have a bathtub and I considered buying flowers but ultimately decided against it, knowing my inability to keep plants alive. I drank rose tea, which sounded really unappealing to me but actually made me feel good. My cramps were mild that day and I don’t know if I can give the rose tea credit for that, but hey… maybe. I lit my red “self-love” candle. I created a Spotify playlist full of songs related to self-love, women’s sexuality, raging emotions and blood, naturally. I couldn’t find my red pen so I wrote in purple. I don’t have red nail polish so settled for maroon.  

Some videos warned me to not schedule anything and to eat healthy food, which seemed reasonable and realistic.  

That is where I was wrong. I love scheduling things. During moments when I feel amazing, I’m overly optimistic about how I will feel in the future and I make tons of plans assuming that I will feel just as overeager as I do in those moments. In reality, I wanted to cancel everything. I canceled some of my plans, but I pushed myself to attend the Chinese class I signed up for along with the online yoga class I booked because they seemed like things that would be good for me. 

I also decided to listen to my body. During my yoga class, I didn’t push myself to do everything. I was in a lot of pain so I rested in child’s pose more often than I normally would, and I didn’t judge myself for that. I was craving pasta so I ate it even though it wouldn’t necessarily be classified as “healthy” food. When I was feeling really frustrated, I was honest with myself about how I felt and didn’t try to ignore it. I listened to Headspace’s “Holding Anger With Kindness” meditation. I also finally got my journal back out after not writing in it for ages.  

How did these things make me feel? I loved the rose tea and my Spotify playlist. The Spotify playlist allowed me to bask in my current feelings in a more positive and fun way, even if some of those feelings were not the most comfortable. The meditation did not make my anger magically disappear but it did have a calming effect and helped me redirect my anger in a more productive direction. Through journaling, I got my feelings out and processed them more logically. I can’t say that the nail polish or pen necessarily had any impact on me (though maybe it’s because I didn’t actually use red), but I will say that embracing my period in this way that seemed super extra did me really did make me feel better about it. I didn’t spend my whole weekend sulking and feeling miserable. It’s not that I turned my period into a party and everything was magical and nothing hurt, but I accepted it – the emotions, the discomfort, the frustration – and instead of running away, I sat with my emotions, felt the pain and rested in child’s pose, and listened to PMS by Mary J Blige.  

How doing everything with passion led me to… nothing

When I was in high school, I was super ambitious. I was always daydreaming about leaving my small town, traveling the world and living in a big city, and I had very specific ideas about how to achieve that, which involved taking on multiple internships and basically getting involved in everything that I could (aka spreading myself too thin).

I filled notebooks with long to-do lists and motivational quotes like “do it with passion, or not at all.”

The quote sounds nice until you are anxious and depressed and unable to muster up any “passion” … so I took the advice. There were things that I could not bring myself to do with passion, so I didn’t do them at all.

This “all or nothing” kind of mentality pushed me into a perpetual state of procrastination. If I felt that I couldn’t do something perfectly or exactly the way I wanted to, I would put it off, waiting for the inspiration to strike. Waiting for the passion to find its way back to me somehow. Waiting waiting waiting.

In college, due to anxiety, depression and other factors, I was anxious about attending one of my classes and worried that I could never succeed in it. So what did I do? I never went, and I failed. Of course it doesn’t sound logical to totally avoid something because you’re afraid of failure, but for some reason I was just waiting for that perfect moment when I would feel ready to confront my fears.

The perfect moment never came. The perfect moment to write the story I’d been wanting to write never came. The perfect moment to start blogging again never came. The perfect moment to focus on learning Chinese never came. I would still create to-do lists but check nothing off, leaving me with the feeling that I had accomplished nothing.

Of course, this is also a problem with how I talk to myself and how I view my own accomplishments. It is incredibly unlikely that on any given day I literally do nothing at all. But because I was not doing what I planned to do, and I wasn’t doing things with passion, I told myself I was doing “nothing.”

Years later, I came across a different quote: “anything that is worth doing is worth doing a little.” It would be a lie to say that this quote instantly changed my life, but it has stuck with me for years. I’m still in the process of applying it to my life and reminding myself of it when it’s still much more natural for me to doubt myself, to focus on what I haven’t done, and to avoid anything that I can’t do “perfectly.”

I used to set goals like “practice yoga three times a week.” But if I was busy or tired and felt that I couldn’t go three times, maybe I just wouldn’t go at all. If I just went once or twice, I would focus on how I didn’t achieve my goal, rather on focusing what I did. I didn’t practice yoga three times this week instead of I practiced yoga twice this week.

I’m beginning to change the way I approach my goals. I am no longer waiting for perfection, but I am also listening to my mind and body and not forcing myself to do it all. I’m realizing it’s OK to not do everything, and not doing everything is not equivalent to doing “nothing.” Now that I’m not putting so much pressure on myself, I can actually enjoy what I do. Maybe I don’t enjoy it all the time, and that’s also fine. I didn’t feel like writing today. In the past, I wouldn’t have written anything, probably for days or months or years. But today I am writing.

I didn’t write exactly what I wanted to today.

I wrote something today.



Is “self-care” supposed to hurt?

I’ve browsed several “self-care” lists that suggest getting a massage. This was an idea I basically never entertained, as I’d only had one experience with massages and it was not a positive one. But one of my friends loves massages and for the sake of my experimentation with “self-care” and the advice commonly found on the internet, I decided to go with her.  

We went to a Japanese-style massage place on a cold winter morning and they greeted us with green tea then told us to take off our clothes in private. At least there’s tea, I told myself. We selected the massage based on the price; there was a coupon for a discount on a back, shoulder and head massage. I was bracing myself for pain but trying to remain chill and calm, like I do this all the time.  

At first, the massage was quite gentle. I was thinking it was not as bad as I remembered. As time went on, it became more painful and beside me I heard my friend tell the masseuse to use more force. I was thinking what? Am I weak? Also, if this is self-care, am I supposed to be comparing myself to other people?  

I’m still not quite sure what people are supposed to do or think about while getting a massage. I’ve always struggled with the concept of “being present” because I have a hyper-active (read: anxious) mind. At first, I was thinking what am I supposed to be doing right now? I tried to meditate, doing some kind of body scan half-heartedly and trying to ignore my discomfort. I started thinking that the way my body felt reminded me of practicing yoga, but at least yoga is a less passive experience in which I move into different poses by myself and if I find them uncomfortable or painful, I adjust. This thought reminded me that I am a control freak and perhaps sitting back and doing nothing while someone else massages my body is just not my thing. And then it actually became painful, like is there something wrong with my shoulders or is there something wrong with this masseuse?  

My “I’m bored; what do I do?” thoughts were replaced by “when will this be over?” During those seconds? Minutes? Hours? Days? I was thinking that getting a massage is about as pleasant as going to the dentist (why is that not on self-care lists though? Does it just not sound sexy enough?)  

At some point, it finally ended and I asked my friend what she thought of the experience. She said it was too gentle for her. I can’t relate.

The following day I was in pain and wondering if I was supposed to feel like that. But after the initial pain wore off, I felt that my posture was better and I was more flexible. My body generally felt better (much to my surprise, I will admit). But the reality is that getting a massage regularly is not realistic for me.

A big problem I have with self-care advice is that it’s often portrayed as something easy and accessible, like everyone can wake up at 5 a.m. every day and spend an hour meditating before writing in a gratitude journal. For me, considering that I start working at 8 a.m. and have an hour-long commute, that sounds like actual torture and not “self-care.” For me, getting enough sleep is self-care. How is it “self-care” advice if it’s making us feel like we’re doing it wrong or not doing enough? There’s so much pressure for women to take care of themselves, and sometimes “self-care” feels like a more socially acceptable rebranding of changing yourself to meet other people’s expectations. It’s still about the image we are projecting, one of a beautiful woman, but in this version, she not only takes care of her appearance but also her mental state.

Linguistically it sounds totally fine and feminist-friendly, but that’s how it successfully tricks us sometimes. With “self” at the beginning, it shows that we must be doing this for ourselves. Duh. It’s self-care. No way could it be about pleasing other people or about helping people make money. Except it can be. This is why I’m focusing on thinking about what I want, and how these things make me feel, rather than focusing on what kind of image they will project. It’s not about what “self-care” is “supposed” to be. It’s about what taking care of myself means for me. It’s not about how massages are “supposed” to feel. It’s how they actually make me feel.  

Maybe self-care looks less like flowers and pastel colors and sunshine and a zen Instagram aesthetic, and more like me wincing in a bathrobe. Maybe “self-care” is not something that should be 100 percent comfortable. Maybe “self-care” isn’t always gentle, though it certainly can be if that’s what you feel you need. So, what do you think? Going to the dentist is self-care, no?  

Misadventures in self-care

When I started this blog, I was the same age as some of my current students.

It was nearly 10 years ago, which is hard to believe – especially when I look back at some of my writing and realize some of the ways in which I haven’t changed at all (these posts are now set to private because only I need to skim through the rollercoaster that was my high school emo phase).

Somehow, at that age, in spite of my low self-esteem, I didn’t seem to have any qualms about sharing my innermost feelings with strangers on the internet. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve still had the desire to write and somehow felt that I had nothing valuable to say. I have quite an interesting relationship with my own mind. Sometimes I appreciate the way I think, reading through my old posts like “damn, girl” and sometimes my head doesn’t feel like a very nice place to be (thank you, anxiety).

Lately I’ve really been trying to take care of myself. Naturally I found myself online, reading through articles about self-care. To be honest, none of them that I read were particularly useful to me. I don’t have a bathtub. I’ve meditated many times and it still hasn’t changed my life in dramatic ways. I didn’t fall in love with yoga the moment I set foot on a yoga mat. I can promise you that I don’t wake up at 4 a.m., and I certainly don’t wake up and immediately light a candle, write in my journal and recite positive affirmations. I’m not saying there’s anything inherently wrong with these habits, but somewhere along the way, I realized that my “self-care” pursuits were somehow making me feel worse, not better. And then it occurred to me: how is it that I’m supposedly doing this for myself, and I don’t even like it or feel that I’m benefiting from it?

Welcome to my misadventures in self-care. Join me in trying workout routines that are definitely not immediately uplifting, wandering around my city, and discovering what actually makes me feel good.