Beauty & ritual
Self-love is a broken concept within the wellness industry. Drink this juice. Don’t eat that food. Cut this out. Include this other thing. Don’t sleep late. It’s endless. It’s contradictory. It’s confusing. It’s exhausting.
Over the last couple of years, I’ve looked at the men and women who exude that confidence, radiance, embodiment and power that I find magnetic and that I, like many of us, would like to claim for myself. The thing that unites them all is their own abilities to feel both pleasure and power in their bodies.
So much of the narrative around self-care preaches abstinence, fear, or strict rule-following. Pleasure is the antithesis of all of that. It comes from following your intuition and trusting your own choices. It comes from dancing until the wee hours and clothing that makes you feel incredible and knowing that both those things might be as vital to your wellbeing as eating right and moving your body often. For me, that pleasure comes from swimming in the sea or soaking in a tub, from lying in the sun and from deep, honking, loud belly laughs. Your pleasure might look different. Your pleasure is personal.
“Ritual = elevating something from routine to revered.”
Self-care is not just a face mask, or a workout, or a diet. It is a practice. Self-care takes practice. It is the constant closing down of the tabs and of honouring boundaries as much as you question them. It is trusting yourself to try things, but also, to make mistakes. It’s a practice because we’re evolving all the damn time and the greatest thing I have done for myself this year is to grant myself permission to be in a constant state of self-discovery.
Ritual = elevating something from routine to revered.
Luxuriate in the glory of ritual. Nobody celebrates these dying arts, of tending to ones vessel with pleasure and pride instead of treating this precious body like it’s only worthy of clambering hastily into clothing and to a quick and perfunctory swipe of lotion. So many of us rush through our routines; whizzing through baths and slapping products on… there’s this pervasive idea that taking this time is vain and wasteful, that there are better, worthier things that should occupy our time. It’s a paradox of modern life that is beyond toxic: we’re expected to meet and hold ourselves to absolutely impossible beauty standards and expectations, but god forbid you actually take the time to invest in yourself.
India has an incredible culture of beauty. Most of us who grew up here are familiar with these weekly rituals: elaborate head massages with oil, vigorous head-to-toe sloughing with ayurvedic ubtans and powders or homemade masks with milk and honey (and everything else). There are few women in this country without at least one beauty ritual in their arsenal that’s been handed down by their mum, nani, or aunt. A lot of the ayurvedic rituals hinge around the purity of their ingredients; if you can’t eat it, it probably shouldn’t go on your skin. In my home growing up, most of what we ate went on our skin anyway. Drinking milk? Rub a little on your face. Eating banana? Rub a little on your face. Short of fully cooked meals, my mum is huge on the ‘rub it on face and then put it in your mouth’ sequence of eating.
Do it, and do it without shame and with pleasure. Our bodies are both the vessel and the vehicle; our bodies are the temple. Take care of your bodies with the highest reverence you can muster, but know also that this isn’t to bow to the pressure of those impossible beauty standards; this is about bringing forth the radiance that’s already within.
