Ultra Violent Self Care

 

Photo: Joshua Franzos

 I found an abandoned book at my gym. I let it sit on the magazine table by the elipticals for two weeks before I had enough courage to just take it. I get sentimental about books; I assume everyone is the same way. What if someone had just forgotten it? But that wasn't the case. Someone didn't want it. Or, someone put it there to ensure some curious sap, *me*, would read it. I still don't know why someone would abandon this book, but before I tell you of the mysteries and secrets I gained, I want to talk about something else.

photo: Joshua Franzos

Self-Care. It was called grooming back in the day and we just did it. Now it's a loaded word that conjures the memory of our last scroll through instagram. Influencers and influencer wannabes are always declaring #selfcare and #treatyoself for themselves with swipe-up links so their followers can buy the latest potion, unguent, face mask, tooth whitener, dietary supplement, $60+ candle, et alia that so & so is #currentlyobsessed with because, because. 

SCENE I
INT. BATHROOM - DAY 

Influencer content photo on a phone screen depicting a "bottle of whatever" artfully nestled on a fornasetti tray with a sprig of eucalyptus and an artfully folded white spa towel. Extra points if there's droplets of steam on a mirror and a slightly out of focus reflection of an INFLUENCER wearing a white terry cloth robe and towel on her head while she poses like an Avedon model.

 INFLUENCER

(peace sign and sticks tongue out)

Hey Guys! Hashtag selfcare! If this doesn't work, guess a glass of Champs (or three) will take care of the rest. haha LOL JK but literally, OMG, I'm like so shook by this product, I can't. You guys have to try this, I've linked it here for you.

Subtext: this pricey product (that may or may not be snake oil) is definitely the answer to your crippling anxiety and stress.


The benign acts of grooming we used to do on the edge of the toilet seat with a bottle of drug store nail polish (and without a supplicant audience) have been upgraded to a near spiritual status that rivals going clear in Scientology. The more money you spend, the more luxurious, the better a person you must be. We want to simultaneously justify and flaunt it by upgrading its sundry status to that of an ablution. It's utterly endemic to social media. I wish I was immune to it, but I still get caught up in the hyperbole of radical beauty world fundamentalism. Pretty flat lays and teary-eyed, squeal-y voiced IGTV testimonial videos are the silkily cloaked ads that tap into our insecurities and inspires our selfcare fomo.

photo: Joshua Franzos

photo: Joshua Franzos

The luxurious selfcare movement has pied pipered us to the belief that we can gloss over our myriad problems by lavish coddling. But remember that magical book I was telling you about earlier? It's led me to understand that self care doesn't always feel good. Pssst, wanna know a free and effective secret to glowy skin? We'll do it together. First, let's turn off our phones and set them aside. Now, let's take the palm of our hands and on the count of three. 1...2...3! slap yourself across the face. Snap out of it!

Self-Care is masturbation,

now self-destruction...

A bold statement that echoes the words of Chuck Palaniuk and Jim Uhls from Fight Club twenty years ago, but is tweaked a bit for our current culture. (It was self-improvement back then and there were rows, upon rows, upon rows of it at Barnes & Noble. Perhaps there still are in the dwindling stores.) So let's start talking about what I like to call Ultra Violent Self Care.

photo: Joshua Franzos

Back to the book. By now you probably think it's bound with human flesh and its over 200 years old. It's not. It's called Glow15: A Science-Based Plan to Lose Weight, Revitalize Your Skin, and Invigorate Your Life by Naomi Whittel

It literally looks like every other diet book out there. Hell, the first fifty or so pages are as gratingly optimistic and obnoxious as the testimonial portion of a every infomercial on the planet. But the thing the hooked me was a word I'd never seen before in a nest of other familiar words lining the book jacket. Autophagy. A word originated from ancient Greek, and it means 'self-devouring' -- As in our cells houseclean themselves regularly. Old and damaged cells get "eaten" or recycled to create new, healthy cells. Cannibalism! This cellular refreshing happens a lot when we are young, and you'll never believe this, JK, but it slows down as we get old. 
I don't know about you, but when I hit 39, my skin was really starting to show its age, my age...our age, not to mention it was taking a lot longer to heal from the blemishes that seemed to be happening more and more frequently. Also, it took so much longer to heal from sports injuries than it used to. SO. I was quite eager to read how to combat the effects of aging, and this "slowing down" I wasn't nearly ready for via "autophagy." Read I did. I learned it is a very hot topic in the science and medical fields and the study of it garnered a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2016. It's still a largely not entirely understood mechanism, but tests on mice have shown that there are significant inflammation, tumor, and cancer reducing properties to it. I also learned there are things we can do to jump-start and re-stimulate our individual autophagy processes and while they're not all glamorous and soothing self-care routines, they do produce results. In fact, they're more like self work, or self challenges, than what we routinely think of as "caring," or as I like to call it, Ultra Violent Self Care. You remember your tough love high-school track coach that shouted, "pain is weakness leaving the body?" Yeah. It's more like that.

photo: Joshua Franzos

Okay. so Ultra Violent self-care.  I mean intentionally, challenging, "starving", inflicting micro amounts of damage or stress to yourself to kick start the cellular renewal process. Things like: Intermittent Fasting, Protein Cycling, High Intensity Interval Training, the usual reduction/elimination of simple carbs, and the upping of healthy fats into my diet (in a eye-brow raising way.) Fat isn't the enemy. Going to get micro-needling sessions, which is like aerating your lawn, but with micro-needles on your face.  I dove in, and Josh started noticing my results almost immediately. So he joined out of his own free will. We've both lost body fat and gained lean muscle, our diet has never been healthier, our skin is looking great, and we feel so much more like our mental age. (25) We love it. 

But then this silly "diet" book started me thinking about the many levels of autophagy in our life. Of course on a cellular level, where lysosomes and autophagosomes interact (LMAO sounding like I know wtf I'm talking about), and then there's the body on a body level, kind of it's own cell in the world at large: the body fat-burning autophagy process that is triggered by not eating between the hours of 8pm-12pm every other day and of course the high intensity interval training. Then of course there's the emotional level of cleaning out the old and organizing our lives in order to make way for newer, healthier things in our physical spheres, and how they spread to other entities, and their communities, our social networks...These things have ripple effects. I think science is trying to discover the link and the talking between the ripples, or at least that is what I'm interested in.

photo: Joshua Franzos

So let's go back to social media self-care cult of personality. Yes, it's so easy and tempting to do what feels good. We all want to crawl back into a protective womb, but knowing the difference between the self coddling types of self-care and the uncomfortable self-work kind of self care, and the exact moments and durations we need each, is key. You have to do the work, or the coddling types are just band-aids on a spiritual problem. It is also my belief that we should absolutely do things that feel good for the right reasons...a verb that comes up quite frequently in the selfcare world is "deserve." I personally hate the word deserve. I hope to purge the word from my lexicon because I don't possess the omniscience to call it for others, and I hate the entitlement it summons when I use it for my own character. "I deserve this," for good or ill, does not belong in my vocabulary. It implies a quid pro quo relationship, and the power dynamics of such, don't really speak to autonomy, and all of that is perpetually unchic, especially now. However, "I'm doing this." period, without explanation, justification, apology, or social media validation is true and blue.

photo: Joshua Franzos

What do you think about the self-care movement? Does it inspire you? Enrage you? Make you feel fomo? Make you feel like the beauty standards are impossibly high and ever increasing? Feel class lines? Do you want to hear more about Glow15? Let me know in the comments.

What I wore:
glasses: Hunter S. Thompson range glasses dupes, here.
dress: one of a kind.
moto jeans: dittos vintage 
cuff bracelet: vintage.
shoes: Nike vandalized LX, here.
Purse: Alexander Wang Brenda bag,here.
Belt: Gift from Anna Sui.
glitter eyeshadow: Urban Decay Heavy Metal Face & Body Glitter Gel
 in Party Monster, here.

Your Bosom Friend in Pittsburgh, 

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