3 Things This Week #5
Finding joy in a reading light, playing with clay, and considering the thin line between self-care and submission.
Welcome to a weekly report on three things in my life or on my mind.
1. Reading Light
I got the idea to start using a reading light from a recommendation on “The Lazy Genius” podcast. It’s helped me get into the habit of reading a few pages in bed every night before I (try to) go to sleep.
If it’s already late and I have a 6am workout scheduled, I’ll just read one page. I have a lifelong problem with all-or-nothing thinking, so this shift has been somewhat transformative. Plus, I’m sleeping better! I even inspired my husband to get his own book light.
2. Family Ceramics
A new friend recommended an incredibly affordable family ceramics class at a nearby neighborhood recreation center. I checked online and saw that a new offering was about to start and signed up with my oldest daughter. (She turns 5 next week!) I thought it would feel good to do something creative together. She loves an art project and squealed when I told her about it.
During the first class, we shaped clay designs by hand. The teacher will fire them in the kiln so they’re ready to paint next week. My daughter made plates for her dolls. I shaped a ridiculous-looking cup and bowl and am reminding myself that everyone starts somewhere. I try to enjoy the sensation of clay in my hands and feeling like a kid again.
3. Self-Care or Submission?
I came across some writing by
, author of “Words From This Body,” that reflected so many thoughts I’ve had over the years about all the labor, time, and discomfort women endure to “look and feel good.” There’s an uncomfortably thin line between what’s marketed as self-care and feminine compliance.“What is natural to women’s bodies has become negotiable. The body, once a home, has become a project.
We are told this is self-care. But the hours women spend grooming, plucking, training, whitening—they are not care. They are acts of self-surveillance. A vigilance passed down for generations.
The uncomfortable truth is that somewhere along the way, beauty has stopped being an experience for women to feel—it became a duty for women to uphold. And when beauty becomes duty, discipline dresses itself as desire. Women are praised for the control, the restraint, the dedication. But this is not devotion. This is a quiet violence.
A violence so well-disguised that the world no longer needs to demand women’s submission—we offer it willingly. We've been taught that compliance is care.
To be a woman is to be constantly performing.
But beneath this relentless performance, the body remembers. It remembers softness without shame. Hunger without apology. Presence without an audience
Your body knows: it was never meant to be something to be viewed. It was meant to be a place only you could truly inhabit.”
I remember how as a young woman I almost felt it was my moral duty to work to make the most of whatever beauty I’d been born with. (Thank God social media didn’t exist yet.)
Now as I approach 40, I feel less obligated to maximize my attractiveness before going out into the world or posting photos. I’ve decided that there's a confidence and sophistication in exposing more of my bare and unfiltered state. And I won’t say there’s anything morally wrong with injectables, but I don’t buy the pitch that they’re somehow empowering or a form of self-care.