Actually, self-care is not resistance

Audre Lorde didn’t mean what you want her to mean.

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If there’s one thing Meghan “Sussex” Markle has done well, it’s make herself into a beautiful blank canvas for everyone to project onto.¹ If you have a problem with Black women, you’ll find a problem with her. If you self-identify as part of The 92%, you’ll probably stan. If you are one of the COVID Suits converts, you probably feel the kind of reflexive affinity for her that you did for the popular girl in high school who was really nice, actually.

No matter what inoffensively middlebrow thing this perfectly nice-seeming woman does, furious discourse about it will ensue. Most recently, it’s her lifestyle brand extension of a Netflix show, With Love, Meghan. The people were salivating; it barely mattered what actually happened on the show. A whole cottage industry sprang up around it to debate and dissect whatever they could.

Meghan’s gentle correction “I’m a Sussex now” was THE controversial interaction of the show.

Due to my own demographics² and affiliations³, the 92% side of the discourse is mostly what I’ve been seeing. Meghan represents a LOT to these women. To them, she is the Black woman who said no to a prestigious environment so toxic and hateful that it almost killed her. She embodies the possibility of the Soft Life Girlie—someone chosen to be a princess, but who chose herself instead. Even the fact that she has seemed a bit aimless since that Oprah interview is aspirational. Would that we could all have time to try things out and learn what works for us at our own pace, looking improbably glam in the process. Would that we could all leave the toxic environments that, at best, view us as a fun novelty until we start being too difficult. For anyone to call her unrelatable in that context, they’d have to disdain the entire idea of Black Girl Joy.

But that description I just made elides the pretty massive class structures at play in Meghan’s narrative. Meghan wasn’t making Friends money on Suits, I’m sure; but she was making syndicated cable tv money. She was flying in elite enough circles that a mutual friend set her up with a whole prince. Like, a household name prince. The person who took them in when they fled England owns one of the biggest film production studios in the country. The money they’ve made since then—the interviews, the phenomenally-titled book, the podcasts, and now the latest Netflix show—is in the multi-millions. And I know they explained that, among other things, they need to pay for their own security. But rich people’s defense of their massive spending is always “well, once I’ve spent all my money on expensive things, I don’t have any money left over!”

How can I be rich when I have all these expenses??

Now, the rules of discourse are simple and finite. And rule #1 is: no nuance. We are not recognizing complications or intersections at all. Honestly, the nature of discourse has warped the meaning of intersectionality altogether. Instead of people using it to identify and address the ways that different systems and structures intersect in our lives, we’ve taken intersectionality to mean “how many identity badges do I have, and which combo will beat yours in an argument?” It’s sadly ironic that a tool created to clarify and communicate has been weaponized to obfuscate and protect individual egos. Ah, discourse!

That obfuscation is absolutely at play with the 92%’s defense of Meghan. They are so determined to see her as a Black woman whose pursuit of joy is inspiring to all Black girls everywhere. That determination makes it nearly impossible for them to recognize that she is a rich Black woman whose material comfort is inspiring to bougie or aspirationally bougie Black women almost exclusively. The fact that Black women were posting their Le Creuset collections to show how relatable Meghan’s Le Creuset collection really is shows me how narrow their focus is.

Now, miss ma’am, I ain’t cheersing that unless you’re giving me some of those eggs.

As a bougie Black girl who owns some Le Creuset herself, let me say, the shit is not relatable! Not to people who can’t afford it, which is most people! A friend of mine said the other day, “being in the 92% is expensive…last week everyone had to go get new Dutch ovens, now y’all stocking up on Cliquot 😂” And there is really truly nothing wrong with being rich enough to afford Le Creuset. But I think there is something wrong with conflating being rich and Black with being revolutionary.

I’ve complained before about the hollowness of Black Excellence as the foundation for any kind of political movement, but it’s not just the Black Excellence of it all that’s sticking in my craw here. Since so much of the Meghan defense that I’ve seen is about how revolutionary it is to see a Black woman just be happy and make preserves in her well-stocked kitchen⁴, this also feels tied to how “rest as a form of resistance” has been co-opted.

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I believe very deeply in the need for rest, and for pacing yourself. All too often, the parties who benefit the most from us running ourselves ragged are the ones who care the least about our well-being. I believe too that it’s vital for us to push back against a system that values us primarily for our productivity. We as human beings are worth so much more than that.

Alas, that same system that values us primarily for our productivity values us equally for our spending ability. The way this is all set up, either we’re creating capital for them, or we’re handing our capital to them. So instead of a worker-led movement to work less and live more, we’ve been incentivized to spend more on our rest and self-care, and not participate in a movement at all. And when I say “we,” again, I mean those of us who can afford to spend on rest and self-care. Frankly, the people who most need a worker-led movement aren’t the ones calling their facials “a radical act of self-care.”

Because how is buying a $50 t-shirt joining a community?

When Audre Lorde said “caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare,” she wasn’t talking about champagne brunches. She wasn’t talking about a seven-step skincare routine. She was talking about the work of keeping herself alive, quite literally, so she could keep fighting. Self-care isn’t an act of political warfare when you’re not engaged in any other act of political warfare, and are in fact ensconced from political warfare altogether.

If the action you’re describing is something you were already doing, I highly doubt it’s revolutionary. If it’s something that aligns with the mainstream values of this society, then it can’t be radical. Having a lot of material possessions in a materialist society is not radical. Paying for convenience in a society that makes low-wage labour invisible is not radical. Hoarding your wealth in a society that rejects community in favour of the individual is not radical.

Instead, it’s something that strays too close to the Pamela Paul version of resistance, doing something so small and internally-facing that nobody but you even knows that you’re doing it.⁵ Just like the #Resist movement before it, it is all geared to keep us quiet, passive, and disconnected. If our goal is to beat the system by internalizing all the values of said system, but internalizing while Black, then what have we beaten?

1. If there’s two things, it’s stealing Olivia Pope’s entire fantasy of marrying her white boy, moving somewhere quiet, and making jam.

2. Bougie Black woman, surprise!

3. Ibid.

4. Weirdos made so much hay out of the show kitchen not being her home kitchen, by the way. Why should she let anyone into her kitchen? What is she, a Baldwin?

5. “Personally, I avoid using favorite Trump words like “beautiful” and “huge,” which nobody else notices but which brings quiet satisfaction. Make whatever adjustments you need to prove that you neither approve of nor participate in what is happening.” Can’t believe the NYT Opinion page let this one slip through their fingers!