The Self Care Lie
Allure|March 2019

The Concept Has Devolved Into The Stuff Of Vapid Memes. Devon Abelman Searches For Its True Meaning And Ends Up Finding Herself.

Devon Abelman
The Self Care Lie

Self-care is everywhere and nowhere. It’s the unofficial hashtag of Instagram. But it also lurks in the shadow of sad-trombone statistics showing that—despite the meditation, despite the yoga, despite the journaling—we’re increasingly anxious.

Could it be that we’ve gotten self-care completely wrong? Yes. Experts say today’s self-care barely resembles its roots in the civil rights movement: Women and people of color needed self-care because they were denied health care.

Now, as a large part of the international wellness business (estimated in the tens of billions in the U.S. annually), the term “self-care” is synonymous with privilege. This new, superficial version has officially become a cliché, says Juli Fraga, a psychologist in San Francisco who specializes in women’s health. “Because stress and anxiety are far more prevalent, especially for young adults, self-care has made its way into the self-help jargon world,” she says. And that commoditization is “dangerous in the sense that it reinforces the belief that self-care means spending.”

This story is from the March 2019 edition of Allure.

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This story is from the March 2019 edition of Allure.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.