"Self Care" is the new "Me Time"

One topic rolling in on my blog feed makes an insistent drumbeat: the younger generations have embraced "self care" as if they minted it. One thirtyish blogger wrote, "My personal goal for 2020 is that, no matter what, my well-being is always going to be a top priority."

These women are usually Millennials, a few Gen Zs; they are working hard, often starting families. Their burden is familiar to us First Wave self-carers, and they will need support. Arlie Hochschild 's 1989 data about the famous "second shift" have been updated, but in 2014, women who worked outside the home were still logging an extra hour more per day of housework and child care than their employed male partners. (Source).

In my mother's thirties, "self care" referred to the application of ointment and a band-aid rather than a trip to the doctor's office. If she wanted to treat herself, there was only the beauty parlor for a trim or manicure that took an hour and a half on purpose. I still remember her opprobrium toward a friend: "I went over to Martha Drake's house and there she was, in the middle of the afternoon, sitting in a lawn chair reading a book!"

You could play golf, join a book club, volunteer at the hospital— but taking regular solo time to devote yourself to your wellbeing made you look like "a weak sister".

But by the '60s, the times brought a wave of new modalities (yoga, meditation, hot rollers) along with societal approval to quit wearing industrial-strength girdles, probably the best self-care strategy ever invented.

Give it another decade—less if you lived in California—and you had reiki, getting your aura adjusted, journaling. In the same month, I bought both Earth shoes and Maude Frizon heels; I was conflicted. When I told Mom I had taken a transcendental meditation course, she thought I had joined a cult.

All this was an advancement over her crowd, who smoked as if cigarettes were physician-prescribed (and they once were). Some used Valium and gin, and hello, Betty Ford.

As the Boomers traversed adulthood, we met the Clairisonic, Pilates classes, waxing every inch God gave us, and while we're in the neighbourhood, vibrators. Even cash-strapped friends hit the nail salons that dropped onto our city's streets overnight. Oprah was our shepherd; she led us to our tubs to read books of affirmations. The Seat of the Soul was in a eucalyptus-scented sauna.

Two succeeding generations have given wellness ever more prominence. The Millennials and Gen Zs remind one another to turn off their phones for a face-to-face conversation, drive with the window down rather than blast AC, kick the four-espressos-a-day habit.

They use tech to track activity, sleep quality and nutrition, or to play guided meditations. We justified Me Time; they have extended it to We Time, tracking their steps along with pals, meeting up at knitting cafés. I like how they have brought self-care into a communal setting.

Despite the free apps, self care is now an estimated $10 billion industry in the US. Avid self carers are also avid buyers. Sleep is the gold standard of self-care, the last frontier for the wellness industry; you can now hire an adult sleep coach, perhaps because the market is already stuffed with "self care mentors".

One site bears the slogan, "Admit it, deep down in your heart, you know you deserve all the love in the world." In case you do not, you can buy an Anxiety Journal.

Just as we pioneered the $100 blowout, plenty of high-ticket items decorate the current wellness marketplace. When one sporadically-employed lifestyle blogger causally mentioned her $200 massage, my mother's voice spoke in my head: "Go to a $15 yoga class!" (Actually, Mom would have said, "Can't you go for a walk, dear? It's so relaxing.")

I did not leave that comment, though. "OK, Boomer" embarrassment is real.