Scarleteen

Hi everyone,

So I have been trying to put self-care into practise lately but one thing I really struggle with as a (feminine!) woman is self-care in terms of appearance. A lot of websites I've read encourage either completely indulging in your appearance (embracing your sexuality, taking selfies, etc) or the other extreme which is like, listening to what you think is negative about your appearance and accepting it without observance. I see the value of all those things but in a patriarchal society which a) teaches women to seek approval 100% from men and b) shames us for being vain I feel like the first option feeds into a false sense of empowerment (bc it still satisfies the whole "women should be valued for what we look like) and the second option is downright impossible. How do other women/non binary people deal with this? Do you guys find it difficult too?

I think it's helpful, with things like this, to remember that self-care can include self-pampering, but that's only one kind of self-care. And it's not like there is anything wrong with pampering AND doing other kinds of self-care: they needn't be mutually exclusive! Same goes with how you seem to be seeing this presented, as nothing but two poles without anything in between.

Too, I think it's helpful to remember that your outsides aren't just about other people. For a lot of people, if not most, engaging in pampering and grooming isn't just about sexuality or others, it's also about appreciating your own body for all your own reasons, and enjoying the experience of that body all for yourself.

As an example, I take selfies sometimes of my hair as it's going grey that I rarely share with anyone, because that's really only about me and me enjoying recording that change and process, for myself (not because I think it's not okay my hair is going grey). That's about appearances in a lot of ways, but it's not about sex or about men or about anyone else but me and my own experience of being in my body.

Am I missing the boat here? I feel like there's some piece of your question I may not be getting.

I think you can recognise and accept that some of the things that make you feel good - like making yourself look in a way which matches up with your idea of attractive - are socially conditioned, without negating the value that they have in terms of making you feel good. One of the things self-care is actually about is forgetting about external pressures and expectations and focusing on yourself: I think that can definitely include indulging in things that you know are problematic, but which you enjoy anyway. The fact is that all of our preferences are socially conditioned, some in very negative ways, but the best way of challenging the structures which bring that about isn't to deny yourself everything you like on the basis that you shouldn't like it.

This very much ties into choice feminism, and the old adage that it's feminist of a woman to spend her time barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, as long as that's happening because she has freely decided that that's what she wants out of life. I do understand the point of more radical feminists who argue that making those kinds of choices is inherently unfeminist because no-one can make such a choice independently in a patriarchal society which has taught us to make that choice; but my feeling is that any time you start policing women's autonomy in the name of feminism, you've gone astray.

All the slow claps for Keda! Preach!

Yes to all of what Heather and Keda have said. If you think it might help to do some reading around this, I know that Roxane Gay has a few essays on pretty much exactly this topic, and more, in her book Bad Feminist. It's pretty new, and touches on a lot of different issues, but there is a thread running through a lot of the pieces about letting ourselves enjoy things that we know are problematic.