FIGHTING FOR SELF-CARE! TAKING RADICAL SELF-CARE

Tempo di lettura: 16 minuti

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
― Audre Lorde

During an international conference, I was privileged to hear social justice activist Jessica Ayden Li speak about radical self-care, which she defines this way:

Radical self-care has to do with creating space and giving ourselves* approval to break away from traditional beliefs of always putting others before ourselves. It is about making a personal commitment every day to deliberately take care of ourselves in a holistic manner. We need to challenge ourselves* before caring for anyone else.

As I mentioned here, we often confuse – because we are influenced to do so – self-care with the setting up of habits that only partly concern our well-being and that of the world around us, without contemplating that self-care has to do with a universal fundamental right.
The media help to disseminate an idea of self-care and self-time that completely distorts its real meaning, so much so that it influences a true obsession with achieving results that have nothing to do with our choice, with our deepest feelings. Without even asking ourselves whether what is daily imposed on us as lifesaving for our health is what we feel we need, we homologate ourselves not to have to suffer the judgment of a society that exclusively evaluates our performance.

Life becomes a never-ending performance, and there is nothing more unrelated to the self-care notion.

After the last speech by a person who, during dinner, was describing to us every one of his training programs to maintain the right shape, and who declared that “all it takes to lose weight is just doing sport every day after work, it’s a question of willingness!”, giving absolutely unasked-for advice to the attendees on how to develop a passion for sport, my husband asked me, on the way home: ” Did I ever tell him that to stay healthy he should learn to play an instrument or dedicate time to reading after work? No, I didn’t. Because I don’t think he has any books at all: it is obvious that he doesn’t like to read, and I am not interested in giving lessons on how important it is to spend time on culture to a person for whom it is completely marginal in life. And saying that a little love of knowledge would make him more humble, but that is not my problem’. Until that moment, I had not thought about how much I was surrounded by this view of well-being, by how much ‘no pain no gain’ style there was in some people’s mindsets. We are used to judging whether a person takes less care of himself through his exterior, through physical performance. You certainly hear a thousand times, ‘have you seen the way Mary looks? She’s lost weight, you can see that she cares now…before she was too fat, it’s sad to see women who don’t care about their body shape, how do they expect to find someone interested in them? “Tizia, who now cares about her health, has started practicing uncontrolled fasting following the instructions of an app, has eliminated all carbohydrate sources from her diet because she is convinced that they are life’ s enemy, only eats vegetables, and has started crunching bars like the seed balls you leave for the birds outside your balcony in winter; if she doesn’t poop for a day she gets overweight anxiety and doesn’t spend a day without stepping on the weighing scale.

She always talks about her weight, how she has gained weight, her boobs that are too small or too big, her stretch marks and cellulite that she cannot get rid of, her bloated belly, and the wrinkle at the side of her mouth. She spends hours on make-up and pays a fortune on make-up products, every morning she takes out everything in her wardrobe and cannot feel comfortable in any of the clothes she wears: too long, too short, too tight, too loose, too black or too colored. She never feels satisfied with her body, not even in receiving a compliment, because since she was a child, everyone in her family has pointed out every feature as a flaw: gaudy, clumsy, chubby or skeletal, too big in the hips, too small or too big in the breasts, too short or too tall, too quiet or too talkative.

And they also told her that all these things were for her well-being, no one else would do it with such honesty because the world outside is full of false people, who criticize your ‘faults’ behind your back. So how could Mary take a compliment as good? How could she not believe that self-care passes exclusively through the achievement of socially approved and homologated goals, so much so that she could use an app? Self-care also involves taking care of body, but each of us experiences our physicality differently, about our mental condition, our life experiences, our choices: how can an app, or the fitness influencer, replace those who have invested their lives in acquiring specific skills in the field of nutrition, physical education, psychotherapy, etc.?

But you also hear ‘finally Bob has decided to get in shape and take care of himself, he has started going to the gym and has a personal trainer who follows him, have you seen his physique? Bob, within a few months, will have Big Jim’s bust and blackbird legs, he will no longer go out with friends for a beer or dinner because he follows a very strict and structured diet that he cannot betray, he will only talk about the lean mass and fat mass while maintaining the posture of a competing bodybuilder even while lifting his sugar-free coffee cup. He will judge every physique he meets on the street, saying that if you don’t make sacrifices, you can’t complain about your belly – because he imagines that everyone who watches him aspires to be like him – and that women certainly love those with his physique, because obviously, it is there exteriority that decrees a person’s worth, and the persistence with which one has achieved that primary – I would say primitive – and humanly essential goal. The ultimate representation of individualism, which makes every possible sacrifice solely to sculpt one’s exterior image. Screw the rest. Bob will become one of the many people suffering from bigorexia or vigorexia.

It happens so often that I see pictures of people working out, showing their muscles, informing people how many calories they have burnt and what they didn’t eat, how you can’t expect to live happily without sculpting your muscles, that sometimes I want to post a picture of my poop in the morning: it makes me happy because I’m not very regular, it starts my day feeling good, it indicates that I’m OK… why shouldn’t I tell the world, after all we can’t expect to live happily without pooping!

Of course, I am not saying that anyone who cares about taking care of their body through physical activity or engaging in sport is like the various Marys and Bobs. I have practiced competitive sports, attended gyms, and met qualified instructors – and not improvised personal trainers just because they look like Big Jim or look nice – I like to spend time in the hands of a beautician and many other things.

What I reflect on, and invite you to reflect on, is how widespread is the tendency to develop real obsessions with appearance and performance that have nothing to do with the concept of well-being: the list of disorders is quite long, and goes beyond what used to be the most common eating disorders.

Previously I mentioned bigorexia, which mainly affects men although many women are also affected. There is also orthorexia, i.e. the obsession with healthy food, which not only causes social and individual disorders but also leads to serious deficiencies as a result of unbalanced diets.

The tendency to disregard the individual as a complex entity, which cannot turn off and on only some parts of oneself and neglect everything else, has become normalized. It is not true that if the body is healthy, consequently the mind will also be healthy, nor vice versa. It is not true that ‘we are what we eat, but we are also our genetic heritage, our experiences, our feelings. None of this can be standardized, by definition. We are not cars, which all leave the factory the same, with the same characteristics and performance. The scratch on the car as soon as it is produced is a factory defect, but a scar, the body structure, the wrinkle, the size of the breast, the choice of food, are all individual characteristics, neither good nor bad.

Mary and Bob could have children, and this is what worries me evolutionarily.
We all live in this society, and no one is exempt from continuous exposure to this concept of self-care, it is no shame to admit that we are partly influenced and choose to follow certain trends, the problem arises when we lose awareness that this has nothing to do with wellbeing, i.e. a momentary and dynamic state of equilibrium from a biological, psychic and social point of view, as defined by the WHO. The problem becomes much more trouble when we carry this lack of awareness into our family, friendship, and work relationships.

There is nothing more revolutionary and feminist than self-care

because it represents a political choice in a hostile world, which tries to homologate thoughts and behavior, which demolishes our ability to self-determine every day. The world hates women’s self-determination, and it is not good if we also choose how to be well. Self-care has to do with that revolution that each of us necessarily brings to bear in our own lives, choosing not to follow the dictates of a system that first and foremost wants us to be caregivers, eternally engaged in caring for others, in that precise division of roles that a lot of people who were not necessarily born in the last century like so much, alas.

 

Self-care is power, a power we regain the moment we put ourselves, our experiences, our mental and physical health, our relationships, and our sexuality, at our center and make decisions about our lives. It is the power to say ‘no’, to make time for ourselves a need.

As feminist activists, we face different levels of self-care. Choosing to be an activist is a choice that will necessarily involve our private sphere, life choices, and worldview, but sometimes we find it difficult to separate collective and individual commitment. As if we cannot afford to choose. And we find ourselves in everyday situations that make us uncomfortable. One example of all is a conversation with a family member who makes sexist jokes or states that there is a role division in society.
I admit that it is stressful – although for me these situations act as inspiration for most of the things I write! – and that it is even more so to take a position that would be disqualified as ‘the usual feminist’, as if the person replying were someone who lacks any competence whatsoever and, even worse, cannot afford to take part in discussions about her own life, about the discrimination she has suffered, because of a history in which people like the family member had the power. Sometimes, taking care of ourselves means giving up these informal discussions that have nothing meaningful but to create tensions with people in our affective circle. Sometimes, on the other hand, it can make us feel better to counter even just to show the mediocrity of such arguments. But we have to choose what part of our being in the world we want to put into these surroundings. This has to do with self-care: acting not to have to prove something, but to feel good about ourselves at that moment. If we are conflicted because we would like to react in order not to show ourselves weak, but we also do not want to raise big arguments, there is always the non-verbal plan of communication.
To explore this topic further, I suggest you read the Verbal Self Defence Guide for Feminists

It can also happen in public space, through social media or in-person: how many times do we hear people say ‘You should have countered’ or ‘It was better not to reply, you gave that person too much attention’ or ‘You should not have replied to that politician who only seeks controversy’. I have also been told ‘I feel that there is anger in your words, you should be indifferent’, while I was talking about a labor context of exploitation and prevarication that I have experienced. It is up to us to decide what is best for us, whether to speak out or be silent, and above all, we should never be told what emotions to feel, least of all that anger is a negative emotion. I claim my anger!
Another level on which we should strongly commit ourselves to make self-care a real revolution is that of the organizations in which we are engaged as activists and workers. The first form of manipulation of the realities in which we are engaged, is precisely that of not defining ourselves as ‘workers’: this reinforces the principles of the same patriarchal culture that wants us to be naturally inclined to care and protection work, unpaid and unrecognized, lacking any authority.
Of course, this is because we live in an oppressive system that doesn’t give feminist organizations adequate resources to be able to guarantee the same opportunities as other workplaces. This is part of the well-established strategy of demolishing women’s places and rights through the denial of adequate funding, there is no other reason. The piggy bank is not empty, it is simply not there, there is no point in circling it. Feminist organizations are autonomous or should be, they have a non-neutral approach, they do not compromise on rights, and this obviously cannot be tolerated in a world that wants to control every aspect of our lives, from our bodies to our relationships. But when we are the ones who introject that precarious view of our work, we need to break the glass and press the alarm, we have more than a problem! Because we are used to fighting against the institutions that deny us what is ours, but we will never go beyond words if it is we ourselves who practice that same deprivation.
Work is work, and a feminist activist performs skilled work inside her organization, and can also choose to volunteer, which is not the same as work. When, in order to justify precarity and starvation salaries, we appeal to the activism and commitment to the defense of human rights that has been our life choice, we do nothing but make ourselves complicit with the system that oppresses us, that’s simple.
If we do not make this first choice as a revolutionary act, we certainly cannot think of the right to have healthy workplaces, where our well-being is prioritized, where we enjoy that radical self-care that Jessica Ayden Li talks about; all we are doing is accepting the fact that self-care is a luxury, so we are accepting the deprivation of a fundamental right.
We are locked in a heavy contradiction: while we support women on the path to self-determination, in the name of individual freedom, we live the everyday life of an oppressive system that makes our lives precarious. We feel the whole weight on our shoulders: we have chosen the path we are on, we want to change this world, we want to live a life free from oppression, but to do so we have to compromise with a system whose aim is to prevent us from even remotely achieving these goals.
Centuries have made us strong and aware, proud of our battles, and skilled in moving forward with a backward glance when necessary. The worst of pandemics, patriarchy, has defined our ability to resist through sisterhood, in every part of the world. We cannot afford to reproduce in our places the violence we suffer outside: yes, that is the risk we run if we do not look after our wellbeing. How can we be of help to someone else if we do not first take care of ourselves, forced to choose between activism and private life, and put our mental and physical health last? How can we deal with other women’s experiences of violence on a daily basis, which therefore also affect us, without having the possibility to prevent the consequences of this?
The very minimum that could happen is that tensions and conflicts arise within our context because each of us carries an emotional load that collides with that of the others, to the point of provoking mechanisms of exclusion, burnout, and mobbing. Violence, in short. So violence inside and outside, and us running like a hamster on the wheel so as not to leave women alone, so as not to risk losing the funding that at least makes our places exist, so as not to feel we have failed, because we are activists, damn it! And while we’re running on the wheel, we don’t have time to stop and look ourselves in the face and tell ourselves that it’s no good, that we have to do everything we can to save ourselves and not give up taking care of ourselves, which is the first and most important thing to do. While we are running on the wheel, if by chance one of us stops to ask ‘hey, where are we running to? Let’s stop, can’t you see that we are wearing ourselves out, that we are getting sick, that we don’t even look each other in the eye anymore? Stop, we are in danger of hurting ourselves!” the others, intent on running for the greater good and driven by those who fear that too much self-care will make the system’s distortions obvious, reply “you are the problem! You can’t take care of yourself, there are lives to be saved here, you can’t do whatever the fuck you want! Can’t you see that there is no money? How can you be so selfish, are you an activist or not? Don’t you think of the women and children? Get out of the way we have to run, or we’ll never get to…to…whatever…there!”
And after pushing, insulting, and tearing to shreds anyone who dared to dissent, we leave her outside the wheel, until she can stand up to get out of the cage. I know, it is a bit of a crude image, but it is what happens more often than we think, all over the world. Mechanisms that often reproduce themselves without us realizing it, sometimes because we lack the ability to act out nascent conflicts, sometimes because scientifically someone chooses not to act out those conflicts until they explode, in order to maintain permanent control. But in these cases, there has been an intrusion within the feminist organization. It is in these cases that one often chooses to walk away for their own health, after having tried to press the alarm button. But in all other cases, we have the possibility to act, to stop, and to choose. We need to be on the move, to grow, to break down walls and hold hands, to plan strategies that put self-care at the center, until we choose with all our might to do so, we cannot say that we have tried.
We can’t carry on living in the contradiction of having to give up our self-determination, our freedom of choice, and our economic independence, in order to be able to support other women who come to the anti-violence centers, to the shelters. We cannot continue to say that the personal is political while the support we give to women is at odds with our private life, which sees us dependent on husbands, fathers, and families, in order to provide that support. We cannot seriously assume that being a feminist activist implies acceptance of exploitation and loneliness in dealing with the emotional impact that the stories of women and children have on our lives. We cannot seriously assert that welfare comes first for some women and then for others. We cannot continue to silence dissent in the hope that no one will notice: is it not by silencing our dissent that patriarchal society has acted its oppression on us?
Planning strategies and spaces for self-care within our organizations is the first form of revolution we need to engage in, in order to be coherent with our choice of activism. And to plan, we must first listen actively, without judgment, without retrospect, remembering the words of Gloria Steinem

“mutual understanding comes from being in a room together”.

We can be creative about what we can do in these spaces, but first, we should start by sharing our individual feelings. We should talk about what we mean when we talk about space for self-care.
Pay attention, there is no right answer, but there are several ideas for creating the perfect inclusive space.
Maybe by listening to others’ needs and feelings, we could be more creative, and we could be inspired. Perhaps, listening to the burn-out experience of others and how they came out of it can help us talk about our own burn-out. Perhaps, if we are careful not to use the expression “you should do this way….” or worse “do that!” when another woman talks about her experience, we can all empower ourselves to share our thoughts. We may even push ourselves not to silence those who express criticism by disqualifying it as ‘controversial’. Let us start from the discomfort we feel when someone tells us that we are thinking incorrectly and let us listen. I speak of ‘we’ and not ‘you’ because every day I try to make the effort to build constructive, non-oppressive conversations as a starting point for taking care of myself and the people around me. And constructive conversations are not those in which one only expresses feelings of peace and goodness while scattering rose petals and sprinkling lavender perfume, in keeping with that idea of gentleness and gracefulness that the patriarchal order likes so much. Constructive conversations are those in which even anger finds its dignified place without having to cross one’s legs.