When I scroll through Instagram, I either see pictures of a Juice Press green juice being held by a well-manicured hand or a Boomerang of someone boxing on my feed tagged with "#selfcare." When I google the term "self-care," I'm greeted with hundreds of articles telling me what classes or foods I need to take care of my body and mind (my brunch conversations have transformed into debates on what barre class tones you and how drinking only broth for meals helps get rid of the toxins in your body). Now, more than ever, we are in the era of self-care the brand, not the practice or the school of thought.
Our heightened interest in wanting to take care of ourselves isn't a new observation. Earlier this year, NPR pointed out that self-care is a millennial obsession. The Cut was the first to call out the wellness epidemic that has taken over our lives, something that goes hand-in-hand, if not used interchangeably, with the idea of self-care. But what are we talking about when we talk about self-care? The term gets thrown around casually to the point that it feels cliché.
On the podcast Still Processing, Jenna Wortham and Wesley Morris, culture writers for The New York Times, were discussing what it means to take care of ourselves in today's political climate, when Wortham defined the problem perfectly and said, "self-care has become synonymous with self-indulgence or self-investment."