flâneur

Rest is not resistance: Commodification, Capitalism, and the Cult of Self-Care

substack.com · 1,885 words · saved by 1 readers

We have to start using words with intention if we are to fight the battle ahead.

As I prepared to write this article, I started and stopped a few times, wondering if it was worthwhile to have this conversation at all. In the years since self-care has been commodified by white feminists, the concept of rest has been entangled and wrapped up in that performance, too. Nowadays, for so many people, self-care is rooted in the aesthetics: pedicures, manicures, first-class flights to countries in the Global South, and the individualized pleasures of leisure and inactivity. As a Black Feminist, this turn toward the capitalistic, material, and individualistic represents a shift…

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