Here are the questions I’m thinking about:

• Why is self–care so often gendered? Do we not expect men to take care of themselves? Is this because we expect women to do it for them (including making doctor’s appointments and making them go to them) or because we expect men not to need care? Do we expect women to run themselves to exhaustion and thus need “self–care” more often?

• Caring for others is also gendered, both informally and professionally. The helping professions (teaching, social work, nursing) developed in a time when white women often left the labor force upon marriage. Thus, there was not a push to make these jobs sustainable. The women of color doing paid labor (often things like sanitizing hospitals, changing bedpans, serving as domestic servants) were/are not considered worthy of care, and the jobs that white women held were often ones that you weren’t going to do for more than a few years, so we overworked them. Women now work in much higher numbers, but we retain models of work that were for a time when women weren’t doing these jobs for the long-haul. Social workers leave the field quickly, as do teachers. So, clearly, the structures don’t work. Why don’t we change them instead of telling women to practice self–care?

• Along those lines, how does self–care align with the neoliberal value of independence? Do we ever find ourselves blaming others for their lack of “self–care“?  If self–care is on your to-do list, is it another chore? Is it possible to get to a place where self–care is something we do rather than something to be done?

• When we buy self–care, whose goods and services are we buying? Who does our nails, gives us massages, mows our lawns, and cleans our houses? What are the racial/ethnic and gendered elements of this? How do we ensure that these people have the opportunity to care for themselves?

• In what ways do self–care practices signal wealth and leisure to others? Do we use self–care as a status symbol?

Above, mixed messages in a poster advertising “Self Care Week,” the theme of which is “Self Care for Life.” Now, which is it–a week of things activities that will stress us out (because my job duties don’t end just because I take the afternoon off for a massage) or a life organized in a less stressful way?

• What do we gain and what do we lose by cordoning some activities off as “self–care“?  What is the rest of our life that isn’t “self–care“? Does the use of the “self–care” frame contribute to resentment about these other parts of our lives? How do we ensure that it doesn’t? How can we make self-sustaining practices part of our life instead of something that we add to our life? In what cultures do people do this effectively? What social arrangements do they have that make this possible?

• Whose leisure is seen as self–care and whose is seen as laziness? Do we have to have a story of exhaustion before we permit ourselves self–care? If so, does this promote greater (and perhaps competitive) overwork?

• If we expect people to perform self–care, do we excuse ourselves from caring for them?

• I know that these questions sound critical of self–care, but that’s where I’m at now. I think there is good stuff about self–care too, and I’d never dissuade someone from doing it in a way that is differently from how I do it. But, especially for wealthier white women, I want to push on how we think about this a bit.