Bullet Points | Beauty as Self-Care?

Is your beauty regime a form of self-care?

In this episode, I open up a conversation about something I've seen slowly happening around me in the beauty space and I'd love to hear your thoughts. It's the idea that the beauty products we buy and the way in which we use them amount to self-care.

Personally, I find this to be a worrying development because self-care is a broad concept that means so much more than what I think some beauty and wellness brands are currently communicating. 

It comes at a time when the conversation about mental health has never been more open and somewhere along the way this idea of self-care has managed to establish itself as the 'soft' treatment option for minor mental health issues. Feeling a bit anxious? Light a candle and use your best bath oils. Eleven months of lockdown getting you down? Exfoliate, apply some fake tan and wake up fabulous. Struggling to feel motivated? Put on some red lipstick.

These are all lovely things to do, and there's no doubt about it, there is a very real 'high' from an indulgent bath, a golden glow and an I-mean-business red lipstick, but it's my opinion that they do not offer any meaningful long-term support to mental health and it's potentially dangerous to suggest they do.

On one hand, the destigmatisation of mental health issues means that we're seeing a medicalisation of normal emotions; feeling sad is expressed as being depressed, feeling stressed is expressed as anxiety and it's quite possible that a bath, fake tan and red lipstick might make you feel better. But on the other, those people who actually have depression and/or anxiety might feel like failures if these things don't work for them or, worse still, there's a real risk that those people, the ones who need genuine help from a mental health professional or doctor aren't actually getting it.

I’m so interested to hear what you think on this subject...

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