Reclaiming "Self-Care" from the Brands

Culture Study Podcast

Anne Helen Petersen

Fashion & Beauty, Society & Culture, Arts

4.6 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We’re at the point where we know a b******t attempt to commodify our burnout when we see it. No one’s buying the self-care spiel the bath bomb companies are selling us. But the rhetoric of self-care has crept into the workplace, family dynamics, and TikTok therapy speak, usually divorced from any critique of the systems that make self-care feel necessary in the first place. Pooja Lakshmin MD, author of Real Self-Care, joins the pod to answer your very smart questions about contemporary self-care in workplace trainings, in conversations encouraging everyone to GET A HOBBY!, and in advice to perfectionist women to “lower the bar.” Pooja is so clear-eyed and compassionate — and I think this episode will make you feel seen and challenged.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I would love, and it's okay if this doesn't come off the top of your head, but there's like a
0:05.9	self-care scam that you've seen recently, or it doesn't even have to be like a scam. It doesn't
0:10.8	have to be like as devious as like, these people are scamming me, but like maybe just something
0:14.3	that's kind of bullshitty. Is there something you've seen lately that like just you're like,
0:18.5	oh my God? Well, you know, I'm 41 and so I'm in that
0:24.5	like perimenopause space so basically my entire algorithm is full of menopause perimenopause stuff and
0:32.1	it's like all the things whether it's like the hormones or they eat protein like I feel like we're supposed to be eating like something like insane, like 50 grams
0:40.1	of protein like every morning or something.
0:41.9	I don't even know like what's actually.
0:43.3	I'm only supposed to be eating chicken and cottage cheese.
0:45.5	Those are the only things I'm supposed to put into my body.
0:48.3	Basically.
0:50.2	And all of that stuff.
0:52.1	And I know there's been a lot written about that recently.
0:53.9	It's like whenever
0:54.9	the media and then whenever like the tech industry gets a hold of a white space it's like it just
1:02.7	gets so crowded so immediately it feels a little bit like the motherhood space felt maybe like
1:10.8	six or seven years ago where all of a sudden it was sort of
1:15.1	like oh yeah being a mom is hard and then there was just like everything was all about supporting
1:20.5	moms which is great like you know I'm a perinatal psychiatrist like that's my whole clinical
1:24.4	practice I am a mom like it's good i'm not saying like that we don't need
1:28.8	that it's just so interesting to watch how these cycles go um and i think it does track with sort of like
	...

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