The rhetoric of “self-care” comes up a lot these days, with so many harried people rushing hither thither, stretched to the point of exhaustion, calendars crammed from morning to night with no breathing space unless it too is written in.

I sort of cringe when people ask me about self-care, which people do these days because I’m one of the harried masses. I cringe because I understand too that the rhetoric of self-care is steeped in class privilege. That’s not to say that the sense of being over-stretched every day respects class boundaries.

But the concept of self-care as these days has a luxurious quality about it that is frequently accessible only to those of means. I came across a great article about self-care and justice by Toronto writer Nashwa Kahn where she talks about just this. She provides a feminist analysis of self-care as a neo-liberal idea not sufficiently subject to critical commentary.

All too often, we equate it with spa days, shopping getaways with our friends, sipping on pricey lattes, attending classes in swishy yoga studios.  Even cheaper or free versions of self-care require time, if not money. And if someone is in survival mode, time is as scarce as money. Khan writes:

…we forget that a few key components in these fleeting moments of self-care are other expenses like time, individualized space and caregiving. There are generational differences in immigrant understandings of self-care, as well as differences in the accessibility of self-care. I would argue that this is linked to self-care as a Western commodified worldview – one where community needs and power dynamics can be erased in a new wave of self-care capitalism.

Despite its being mired in this type of world view, geared mostly at privileged white women, she cautions against a new, “progressive” movement where suddenly the commodities of self-care are abandoned before women of colour, who also “can and should be able to have nice things,” her to enjoy them. 

What she does call for is a more critical discourse around all aspects of the self-care “package,” so that it’s not just cordoned off into “feel-good moments”:

Now, a girls’ day out shopping, mani pedis and bougie brunch can be named self-care. People do not have to think about those who service them or the processes that enable some people to sit in a gentrifying cafe, wear clothes made in a sweatshop and dispossess other people in the name of care. People no longer have to ponder the woman they tipped a few bucks. She, like the person who made the clothes or the person who was displaced to make room for the cafe are rendered invisible, while those indulging in self-care are positioned as healing themselves in ways that cannot be critically examined.

So with all that as preface, Khan has expressed much more eloquently than I ever have one complex set of reasons why the language of self-care makes me uncomfortable.

But I think too that there’s another reason why it makes me uncomfortable, and that’s because I frankly don’t do enough of it. I’m not saying I don’t get enough manicures, pedicures, or massages. These are not regular parts of my life and I confess that, speaking to Anita the other day about possible rewards that we could take at various points in our upcoming half marathon training I was thinking more in terms of breakfast at the diner than cute new outfits or spa days. Not free, but not an outrageous luxury either.

I’m on a Facebook sabbatical this week, and to me, that’s self-care. Besides feeling as if it’s a time suck, stealing time that I don’t have right now, I’m also almost unable to bear the random and uncontrolled stream of incoming commentary and news about the US election (and I’m not even an American, not even living in the US).

I’m writing this instead of watching the third Presidential debate tonight. That’s self-care.

I plan to walk to and from campus tomorrow, 50 minutes each way, much of it on the pathway through the park and beside the river. The trees are in a perfect state of autumn transition right now. And October has been so generous weather-wise, with warm days and hardly any rain. My walking commute is a form of self-care that gives me a buffer at the beginning and end of each day. I’m fortunate to live in a city where I have a safe and beautiful route available to me, minutes from my front door.

And yes, my self-care includes running (which, despite what so many of us have said over the years, is not simply a matter of throwing on your shoes), meeting friends for dinner, soaking in a hot bath with Himalayan salt (I haven’t a clue if it’s any better than regular epsom salt, and I am equally ignorant of whether epsom salt baths are any better than plain old water), knitting, colouring (yes, I did it, I bought an adult colouring book and some pencils–I like it).

But it equally includes going to bed early, spending an afternoon cooking (I realize this only counts as self-care to those who do not have to do it every day), waking up early enough to meditate, and, alternatively, staying in bed for an extra half an hour, or hour, or longer.

I like Nashwa Khan’s critical take on self-care as a social justice issue with class and race dimensions that are all too infrequently pushed to the side. At the same time, I think there is a valid notion of caring for ourselves in kind and compassionate ways, not driving ourselves into the ground, with the only reprieves being found in pedicures and fancy brunches.

What does self-care mean to you and have you ever thought of it as a social justice issue?

Last week, a new ad for Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto hit social and news media like a meteor.

It’s a really powerful ad.

The ad shows childhood illness as an epic, Game of Thrones type battle where real kids, in hero costumes of various kinds, are literally “fighting” the forces that seek to destroy them. I’m not a parent, but the flashes of worried, helpless parents, tiny kids under attack, caught me right in the knees.

The ad works. It’s profound to think about the notion that “sick isn’t weak,” and when it’s embodied in small children, it shakes us.

And, it’s troubling in ways that matter to everyone who reads this blog.

I’m a partner in a small consulting firm that focuses on strategy and change in academic health sciences. We are actually working on long term strategy right now with Holland Bloorview, the only standalone hospital/treatment centre for kids with disabilities in Canada. Louise Kinross, one of the parents who writes about children’s disability for Holland Bloorview, wrote a very compelling blog post about why she “can’t be for” the Sick Kids ad.

Louise captures really eloquently the limits of the “fight” metaphor, and who it leaves behind. Nearly 50% of the clients at Holland Bloorview right now either have autism spectrum or developmental diagnoses, and Louise points out that the movement toward framing autism as part of a neurotypical/atypical spectrum is about affirmation and inclusion, not “beating” autism. For kids with profound physical or cognitive disabilities or brain injuries, the “fighting” metaphor is even more exclusive. As she says, they’re not going to “win.”

The conversations I’ve been part of in this work are really emotionally and personally challenging. Yes, there’s a lot of hope and inspiration when technology, medicine and therapy scaffold new kinds of mobility and communication, and there are new possibilities for kids and young adults with all sorts of complex conditions. And, the notion that there is always more potential is fundamentally exclusive and stigmatizing.  Many of these kids will become adults with complex conditions, who will have severe limits on their ability to control their own bodies, to communicate.  Medical advances mean that many people with conditions like cerebal palsy or muscular dystrophy are living much longer, will be adults with different kinds of independence — but they’re not going to “beat” their conditions. They will always be living with their conditions. It’s not their goal to cast aside their wheelchairs, the way kids do in the Sick Kids ad. For them, wheelchairs are mobility.

Why does this matter to people who read this blog?

The question of ablism comes up a lot related to what we write about fitness. As a regular poster writing about my experience of strength and movement, I’ve been challenged to recognize that my experience is as a singularly able-bodied person. It’s hard to know how to be with that privilege, with what I have been told can feel like a pretty exclusive celebration of strength, a centrist assumption that fitness looks like and is based on robust health, freedom of mobility, freedom from pain.

I’m still grappling with how to make meaning for myself about those lines that intersect fitness as measurable achievement (how far can I ride?! how fast can I run?! how do I compare to “other people my age,” meaning other people without mobility limits), as strength-in-whatever-body-I’m-in, as preserving health and minimizing pain as I age. Those reflections are for another post, though.

What I’m sitting in right now, in this space between the Sick Kids ad and the kids I see every day at Holland Bloorview, is that I have to engage with my own privilege around physical ability in exactly the same way I have to engage with other forms of privilege. I have to listen, really listen, to these kids and their families, and to really listen to what happens inside me. I have to admit and look hard — with shame and honesty — at where I mentally, not-quite-consciously, collude in keeping people with disabilities marginalized, outside the centre.

The Sick Kids ad implies that the energy, the passion, the fight, comes from beating cancer, illness, weakness. I know that every child and family engaged in that kind of experience is deeply into it from inside their souls, is seared and dominated and traumatized by it.

But being with the kids at Holland Bloorview has made me realize that there is a very different kind of strength required for the thing that is hardest for me — sitting still. And listening.  Especially when it’s uncomfortable.

This video is an interview with a mom and one of the kids at Holland Bloorview. It’s about nine minutes, but please watch it.  Use the closed captioning so you can hear Julian’s words.

Julian has the kind of complex physical condition that he isn’t going to “beat.” But it’s not the physical side of his experience of his life that stands out.  It’s the emotional.  I’ve seen this video multiple times, and when he talks about the need to get distracted from his loneliness, my heart stops. Every time.

The first time I watched this video, I didn’t turn on the closed captioning. And I found myself not bothering to try to understand what he was saying.  Waited for his mom to talk again so I could easily understand.  That right there is privilege, and that right there is marginalization. I realized this as I did it, to my profound shame.

I’m not comparing kids with acute illness to kids with acute disabilities and making claims that one set is more important than another. Obviously that’s not true.  But I think it’s a lot simpler (not easier, simpler) for us to hurl our energy behind a “battle,” to laud kids who “fight” as “heroes.” It’s the same motivation that made Mark Zuckerburg throw $3B behind a vision of “ending all disease.”   We want to believe we can beat… everything, apparently.

It’s a lot harder and more uncomfortable to really look at difference and how we marginalize it. When you don’t have the energy of the “fight,” you have the quiet of feeling the truth and pain of Julian’s loneliness.  I know that’s true for me, anyway.

Using the battle metaphor puts the onus on the individuals to “win,” to beat their conditions.  But it’s not people with different or complex physical, cognitive and emotional makeups who need to adjust — it’s everyone else.  Or at least, I do.

Fieldpoppy is Cate Creede, who works as a consultant and educator in the space of strategic system change in academic healthcare in Toronto, focusing on creating sustainable, socially accountable healthcare communities. She also coleads an all-volunteer learning and development project for orphaned and vulnerable youth in Uganda called Nikibasika.  Her other blog is fieldpoppy.wordpress.com.

Recently, when scrolling Facebook I came across a few suggestions for people I might know and pages I might be interested in. As I follow a lot of fitness pages, I often get suggestions for female fitness competitors. One photo really caught my eye of a bodybuilder with an incredible physique and cool hair cut, so I clicked on her profile. As I should have expected, the comments were filled with the usual: “Gross” “What is that?” “I don’t find that sexy” “she’s on roids” etc.

Clearly many people somehow accidentally stumbled across this women’s page and felt compelled to give their opinions. Should you ever find yourself in this situation, here’s some advice on what not to write in the comments section.

“I don’t want to look like that.”

Don’t worry; you won’t. Women, you will not accidentally look like that from doing too many Group Power classes. Men, chances are you will not look like that either. Building a physique for that level of body building takes years of deliberate training and nutrition. It’s hard work. So don’t worry about ending up with an incredible, award winning physique anymore than you should worry about becoming a millionaire because you worked too much overtime at your fast food job.

“Ew she looks like a man.”

Here’s the thing: women might naturally have less muscle than men, but women have muscles. Yes: it is natural for a women to look like that. Sure she might take some performance enhancing drugs, but so do men. So if you think a female body builder looks unnatural, you should feel the same way as male bodybuilders. In fact, you don’t see overly ripped women often, but not because they lack the ability to build muscle. The truth is women have more body fat then men, so even if they are strong, it’s not as well-defined unless they do some serious fat burning.

“I ‘d never fuck her.”

Guess what, you can be 99.999% sure that feeling is mutual. It drives me nuts how often men look at a fit woman and immediately give their opinion on whether or not he finds her fuckable. Why, oh why on earth to men think she, or any other women, cares? Maybe she loves the sport of bodybuilding, pushing her strength and determination to the fullest extent to see what she can create. Maybe she loves the rush from blasting through her PR deadlifts. Why would anyone assume she’s into this sport so that men will find her attractive? Why do we assume she’s into men at all? I challenge you to find any women’s fitness page and see if there isn’t a man who asserts his opinion on her worthiness to be with him, as if that’s her sole reason for ever going to the gym. And for what it’s worth, there are man who find muscular women sexy so if it’s not your thing, relax, you are not condemning her to a life of spinsterhood.

When you see a women with a fitness page and a photo of her from a competition, you are looking at an athlete who has sacrificed months if not years to her sport. If you are at a loss for words, here’s a suggestion: “respect.”

Christina Friend-Johnston is a freelance writer and communications consultant who spends equal time writing and sweating it out in the gym. She blogs at http://www.gofigure.fit.

Sandra Bartky died yesterday.

Bartky was a pioneering feminist philosopher whose work on femininity and objectification was often cited here on the blog.

(For me, she was also a teacher, a mentor, and a friend. She persuaded me to apply to Illinois at Chicago for grad school and take up their acceptance. Bartky came and gave talks at Dalhousie (in Halifax, Nova Scotia) when I was in the last year of my undergraduate. I’d only applied in Canada, for Masters degrees. I’d never even been to the US–except the train to Montreal went through the US but back in those lax border crossing days it didn’t even stop. Sandra was shocked. But you know you want to do a PhD? Yes. So why are you applying to Masters programs. Come to Chicago. Apply! We’d love to have you. I applied and when I was accepted she phoned and talked me down from my fear of large American cities. My first time in the US was my drive to Chicago from Halifax. A bit of culture shock but Sandy was a terrific mentor. Later, she talked me into my first Midwest Society for Women in Philosophy meeting.  Later still, I spent time with other women in the grad program at her cottage in Michigan. My daughter Mallory spent the weekend for her first trip away from home at the age of 6 weeks. I saw her last at a Society for the Philosophy of Love and Sex meeting at Urbana Champaign a few years ago when I introduced her to a feminist philosophy grad student of mine, Jenn Epp. She liked that!)

Here’s just some of the posts on our blog that talk about Sandy’s work:

Yesterday after our Sunday slow 10K Anita and I sat down at our favourite diner and laid out our training plan for the Key West Half Marathon that we’re doing with Rebecca in January.

Well, we didn’t map out the entire plan. Just the long runs that we’re doing together between now and when I leave for Christmas on December 24th (fingers crossed that there are no travel delays!).

If we stick to it perfectly every weekend between now and December 23rd, increasing 1K per week starting with 12K on Sunday, we can do a 21K together just before I leave. Then we just need to find two more days a week to get in shorter runs: a tempo and some speed work.

No problem, right?  There’s something so reassuring about putting a plan down on paper. But right away, as we waited for our breakfast, we started to see the potential for a break down in the plan.

First of all, there are weekends that one or another of us is going to be traveling. That’s not so bad in these early days, but when we start getting above 15K, running alone in an unfamiliar place gets more challenging.

Then there’s the minor issue of the taper coming a bit sooner than is ideal. I mean, race day isn’t until January 15th. So we need to sneak in at least one, perhaps two, longish runs after our 21K on December 23rd.

And also, as Anita pointed out, it’s cold and flu season. What if one of us gets sick?

Lately I’ve gravitated toward the 80-20 thing. I know there are all sorts of applications of this–from “20% of the people do 80% of the work” to Matt Fitzgerald’s “80% of your training should be at a low intensity, 20% at high”. But my application is even simpler: if I have a plan, I’m perfectly satisfied if I hit 80% of it in any given week.

So between the 3 runs, 2 swims as my cross training, 2 sessions with my personal trainer, a yoga class, and my round trip 10K walking commute 3 times a week, there is no tragedy in missing a couple of those things. My only qualification is that I can’t miss the same thing too many weeks in a row. And I definitely do not want to be missing out on my long runs more than a couple of times even if it means doing the same out and back or loop because I’m in a strange place.

So that’s training for the Key West Half.

I’ve also signed up for Around the Bay again. It’s on March 26th. Granted, the 2015 Around the Bay 30K was not my best moment. This time I’m doing the two-person relay with Julie. Only 15K each instead of 30K. Not nearly as daunting, and I think I’ll sign up for the training clinic anyway since that will keep me going through the winter.

I know winter running might not sound appealing to everyone, what with the cold and the snow and the ice and the wind. But with the right gear and when the pavement is reasonably clear, it’s easier than summer running. I’ve encountered more prohibitive conditions on hot and humid summer days than on most winter days. So I’m pretty excited about the winter plan.

Not that I’m in a rush to get through this latest warm spell we’re having in October. But with a couple of winter goals and a plan, I feel kind of excited about the months to come.

What about you? Do you have a winter plan yet?