Read fariharoisin's genius piece on the generational divide within self-care, who gets to access it and what it really is beyond the capitalist rhetoric surrounding it
My mother is a 64-year-old woman from Bangladesh who has only had a massage once in her life. And even then, she only went because my father and I forced her into it; we made the appointment and took her there ourselves because we hoped it would help soothe her arthritic hip. We mistakenly chose a traditional Chinese massage thinking it would relax her, but instead of humming through the type of pain that you know will inevitably make you feel better, she wept.
An example: My mother has gone on and off her medication for schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder since I was born. This is partially because she didn’t think she was sick and therefore didn’t want to dull her senses—she has said as much to me before. But another part of it, I know, is because she’s afraid of spending the money. For her, money and scarcity are irrevocably linked; you don’t just come by it, it “doesn’t grow on trees,” as she’s told me, time and time again.
It’s hard to untangle my self-consciousness about my self-care practices from my mother’s feelings on the topic. In so many ways, I admire her frugality. It’s an art, frankly, and one that I never inherited. Unlike my family, I have always leaned towards self-indulgence. I started working at 14, at the Body Shop in my local mall, and soon garnered enough money to feed my habit of accumulating clothes and makeup. I’m 28 and I still don’t have a savings account.
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