Self-Care
- “what is self care”
- “audre lorde self care quote”
- “is self care selfish”
- “self care vs self indulgence”
:: COMPARE ::
Self-carevsSelf-indulgence
The short answer
Lorde's sentence exists to separate them, and puts the distinction in its first clause. Self-indulgence is the end. Self-preservation is a means to continuing the work. The wellness industry kept the vocabulary and inverted the direction.
Side by side
| Aspect | Self-care | Self-indulgence |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | To continue | Itself |
| Orientation | Collective | Private |
| Lorde's word for it | Warfare | What she denied |
| Sellable | Not originally | Highly |
Which one you meant
Readers who land here meaning Self-Care rather than Self-indulgence are usually searching for phrases like “what is self care”, “audre lorde self care quote”, “is self care selfish”.
Where the confusion comes from
“Self-care is a modern wellness concept — bath products, spa days, treating yourself.”
The formulation that put the phrase into popular circulation is explicitly a war metaphor, written by a Black lesbian poet living with cancer that had spread to her liver: self-preservation as an act of political warfare. Her sentence begins by denying exactly the reading the wellness industry adopted — 'not self-indulgence'. Scholarly work frames the concept as intertwined with community organising and treats today's commodified version as a contradiction of the original rather than an evolution of it.
Read either one in full