Welcome to Wrath Month, our post-Pride series dedicated to embracing our queer anger. In this satirical piece, author P.E. Moskowitz grapples with the capitalist co-optation of self-care. Read more here.
I am speeding along a tree-lined road that winds up a mountain, my engine purring like an angry bobcat, the driver’s seat ever so slightly rumbling under me, a chaotic massage of sorts. I press the shifter on the steering wheel, squeezing even more of the car’s 769 horsepower out of its 12 cylinder engine. I am in a Lamborghini. It’s burnt orange. It’s annoying to everyone around me. It elicits stares and eye-rolls of disgust from the hoi polloi as I zoom past them: ew, there goes that materialistic nonbinary bitch. It cost me $719,000, which is nothing to me, because daydreaming is free.
But one day, God willing, this will no longer be a dream. I need a Lamborghini. I deserve a Lamborghini, because the world is stressful for people like me (I am transgender), and going 200 miles per hour in the Swiss Alps seems like a great way to release the anger I have at how hard things are for me, and for everyone, right now.
Over the last few years, I have heard a lot about a term called “self-care.” Apparently, this was a concept developed by the Black Panther Party, among other radicals in the 1960s. It was about survival, about stopping the horrible, oppressive world from claiming your mind, your sanity, your life. It was about oppressed peoples learning that they were in fact strong, capable of fighting, and capable of self-preservation. When I learned this I thought, wow! That’s cool! And important!
But the 1960s were approximately 100 years ago, and so self-care has gotten a much-needed update from a new generation of visionaries, such as makeup artist James Charles, who likes to lock himself in an escape room for an hour as part of his self-care routine. The multi-millionaire Kendall Jenner, who lives a very stressful life, dunks her face in a bucket of ice every morning to, apparently, jolt her system out of fight-or-flight mode (she does not mention what she is fighting or flight-ing from, but I’m sure it’s serious). Lady Gaga and a host of other celebrities seem to focus their self-care on “gratitude,” meditating on how lucky they are to live in large mansions, where they presumably have a lot of space for mindfulness, and to store their self-care-related products.
from WordPress https://ift.tt/Zvi2nmx
via IFTTT
0 Comments