At some point, taking care of ourselves started to feel suspiciously like maintaining a luxury vehicle.
There is always something due.
An injection. A treatment. A supplement. A prescription. A facial. A peel. A protein goal. A step goal. A water goal. An appointment to freeze this, tighten that, smooth something else and investigate whatever new betrayal our body has decided to unveil this month.
We monitor ourselves like a dashboard covered in warning lights.
Weight: check.
Wrinkles: check.
Hormones: check.
Sleep: questionable.
Protein: probably not enough.
Water: definitely not enough.
Stress: dangerously high, but apparently we'll deal with that after our next appointment.
And I couldn't help but wonder:
When did being a woman start requiring this much maintenance?
The Maintenance Schedule
There is a strange contradiction in modern wellness.
We're told to love ourselves exactly as we are while simultaneously being sold approximately 4,000 ways to improve ourselves.
Age naturally—but not visibly.
Be thin—but don't look like you're trying.
Eat intuitively—but track your protein.
Accept your body—but optimize it.
Protect your peace—but wake up at 5 a.m. to complete a twelve-step morning routine before everyone else gets up.
And somehow all of this is called self-care.
I'm beginning to think some of it feels more like an unpaid internship.
Because the list never actually ends.
You fix one thing and discover another.
Your skin looks good, but now you're worried about your neck.
You lose the weight, but now you need to build muscle.
You finally establish a skincare routine, and someone on the internet informs you that you've completely neglected your lymphatic system.
Apparently, my lymphatic system has been suffering silently this entire time.
My apologies.
We Have Never Had More Help Staying Young
We live in an extraordinary time.
We can soften wrinkles with injections. Change our appetite with medication. Resurface our skin with lasers. Whiten our teeth. Thicken our hair. Sculpt our bodies. Track our sleep. Measure our glucose. Analyze our hormones.
Some of these things are genuinely incredible.
Some improve health. Some restore confidence. Some make people feel more comfortable in their bodies. And frankly, sometimes getting Botox because you like how you look with Botox doesn't need to become a feminist dissertation.
You are allowed to enjoy beauty.
The problem isn't necessarily the treatment.
It's the feeling that you can never stop treating.
Because there is always another version of yourself being advertised to you.
She has better skin.
A flatter stomach.
Shinier hair.
More energy.
Perfect hormones.
She sleeps eight hours, drinks three liters of water, takes magnesium before bed and somehow has the time to walk ten thousand steps while maintaining an impressive career and making organic dinners.
I would like to know when she does laundry.
What Exactly Are We Putting Into Ourselves?
Then there is the actual stuff.
Powders.
Peptides.
Supplements.
Hormones.
Injections.
Medications.
Electrolytes.
Collagen.
Caffeine to wake up.
Something else to sleep.
Something to suppress hunger.
Something to help digestion.
Something to improve focus.
Something to calm anxiety.
Something to give us energy because we're exhausted from maintaining the lifestyle that's supposedly making us healthier.
Open the average bathroom cabinet and it can look less like self-care and more like we are preparing for a small clinical trial.
And I don't think the answer is that all of these things are bad.
That would be too easy.
Medicine can be life-changing. Treatments can be wonderful. There is nothing morally superior about refusing modern science.
The better question might be:
Do I actually feel better?
Not thinner.
Not younger.
Not better photographed.
Not more disciplined.
Better.
Do I have energy?
Do I enjoy food?
Do I sleep?
Can I concentrate?
Do I feel strong?
Do I laugh?
Do I want to have sex?
Can I go to dinner without mentally calculating everything on the plate?
Can I miss a workout without believing I've failed some invisible test?
Can I look at a photograph of myself without immediately identifying what needs fixing?
Do I feel like a person living inside my body?
Or do I feel like its exhausted service technician?
The Check Engine Light Is Still On
That's the cruelest part.
You can perform all the maintenance and still not feel good.
Because human beings aren't machines.
We can't replace a part and expect the entire system to run perfectly again.
Sometimes we're tired because we're doing too much.
Sometimes our skin looks tired because we are tired.
Sometimes we can't concentrate because our brains haven't had an unoccupied moment in three years.
Sometimes we don't need another supplement.
We need dinner.
Sometimes we don't need another productivity routine.
We need sleep.
Sometimes we don't need to lose another five pounds.
We need to stop standing naked in front of the mirror looking for evidence that we're failing.
And sometimes the thing that needs changing isn't our body at all.
It's our life.
Maybe Health Should Feel Like Living
I want to take care of myself.
I want to feel beautiful.
I want to age well.
I want to feel comfortable in my clothes and strong in my body.
I don't think we need to pretend those desires don't exist.
But I also don't want to spend the next fifty years desperately trying to prevent the evidence that those fifty years happened.
I want pasta in Italy.
Birthday cake.
Late dinners.
Mornings when I sleep in.
A martini that wasn't accounted for beforehand.
Dessert ordered because someone at the table said, "Should we?"
I want to exercise because moving my body feels good, not because I'm trying to erase what I ate yesterday.
I want beauty treatments to be things I choose—not appointments I fear missing.
I want medicine when medicine helps me.
I want to ask questions when something makes me feel terrible, even if everyone online is raving about it.
I want to be able to change my mind about what "taking care of myself" looks like.
Most importantly, I want enough room inside all this wellness to actually be well.
We Were Never Cars
Maybe we've approached our bodies backward.
We keep asking:
How do I make it smaller?
How do I keep it younger?
How do I make it perform better?
How do I fix this?
How do I prevent that?
How do I optimize everything?
Maybe occasionally we should ask:
What does my body need from me today?
Not what does Instagram think it needs.
Not what an advertisement says it lacks.
Not what the woman standing next to me is doing.
Me.
Maybe the answer is the medication.
Maybe it's the gym.
Maybe it's Botox.
Maybe it's cancelling the appointment.
Maybe it's eating more.
Maybe it's sleeping until ten.
Maybe it's seeing a doctor because something genuinely doesn't feel right.
Maybe it's ordering the fries.
Taking care of ourselves shouldn't require hating the version of ourselves that showed up before the maintenance.
Because our bodies aren't luxury vehicles depreciating every year while we desperately polish them back to showroom condition.
They're where our entire lives happen.
They carry us into restaurants and bedrooms and airports and kitchens.
They hold our children.
They dance at weddings.
They get sick.
They recover.
They change.
They age.
They collect evidence that we were here.
And maybe the goal was never to keep the check-engine light from coming on.
Maybe it was to stop staring at the dashboard long enough to look out the window.
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