Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.
Audre Lorde
Audre is speaking about self-care as radical and political. This quote from 1988 is still very relevant today. Especially when self-care has become an industry, a way to sell us luxury products and promote a way of living that is unaffordable and unattainable to most people.
Within the black feminist and civil rights movement self-care was a means of reclaiming bodily autonomy from a racist and sexist medical establishment and institutions, where most professionals were white, male and middle class, and the health needs of black people and black women in particular were not well met. – Arguably this is still the case today.
Self-care also is political and radical as it is a means of preserving ourselves – given the structural inequality and oppression we experience as cis and trans women, women of colour, young women, queer women, disabled women and non-binary people.
Self-care—It is NOT about blaming ourselves for how we are feeling e.g. ‘I am feeling down because I have neglected my self-care’, it is about recognizing that life is hard, the world is unequal and that I experience discrimination and oppression because of my identity and that is why I feel rubbish. So ‘I’m gonna take care of myself in order to survive, to resist and so I can live my best life despite this’. To us this is a form of radical self-love & definitely not selfish. – WGN Young Women’s Self Care Zine