Why do men find self-care more challenging?

Jonathan Seidler is an Australian writer. This is his column for Esquire.

LAST WEEKEND, my wife came home from the nail salon and told me that she’d had an epiphany about my mental state, which is exactly what you want to hear on a Saturday afternoon. I’d been having a stress-filled couple of weeks, buttressed by poor sleep, cascading deadlines and the dawning realisation that a Brat summer in winter was likely not happening for me. “I’ve realised that you don’t have anything that you do just for you,” she said. “When I feel like life gets too much, I can always go and have my nails done, or my hair, or get a massage. You don’t have anything like that, no outlet; we need to find you some self-care.”

Putting aside the fact that I just really don’t dig massages on a personal level (ick, please get your fingers out of my back), I begrudgingly acknowledged that she had a point. The problem is, I just don’t really know where to start. I’ve always used exercise as my snatch of personal free time, but physical exertion doesn’t really fit the traditional mould of self-care unless you’re a masochist, which I suppose I sort of am. If I’m not running laps, I’m writing, which means that all my free time is essentially dedicated to more work creation, whether muscular or mental.

Men have always been inclined to do this sort of thing. You don’t need a scientific paper to prove it, just ask your Dad or male friends what they’re up to this weekend. Maybe he’s washing the car, cleaning the pool of leaves, fixing a shelf. My father always used to have some pretext to go to Bunnings for one lightbulb or a single screw and come back with a new project, which I honestly believe is a national pastime. And even though I’m thirty years younger than he was, I’m doing exactly the same thing, albeit with gentler tools that are less likely to cut a hole in my hand. 

We’re in 2024 and masculinity means something very different to what it did in the 1990s. But some things stay the same. My daughter can paint my nails on the weekend, but I’ll probably ruin them immediately by clearing out the garage because I had a spare hour while she was napping. Self-care, as my wife has tried to explain in far more elegant terms, means doing something purely for yourself, often just for shits. There is no quantifiable end goal to self-care, the precise goal is to not achieve anything; to approach the act with no expectations. Why do I seem incapable of either conceptualising or actualising this?

The way self-care is directed at (primarily heterosexual) men is usually under the broad bucket of wellness. While we are also welcome at bougie saunas and spas, mainstream wellness for men typically looks like a new way to brutalise yourself to achieve inner peace, like a 5 a.m. ice bath, extreme body hacking or forcing yourself to sweat inside a hot chamber watching the minutes tick down until finally you can escape. Getting a quick haircut is not the same as my wife going to the hairdresser, which can take up to three hours and involve much pampering. While I firmly believe my hairdresser could actually talk to me for three hours, I’m not sure either of us would enjoy it. 

But thinking about my hair reminds me of my first barber, who used to run an old school Italian joint in Sydney’s Kings Cross. Back then, the area was full of infamous criminals who operated with relative impunity, showing up at A Head Of Fashion at the same time each week. They weren’t there for a trim like me; they had come for a shave. Ten minutes or fifteen minutes in which they were pampered with steaming towels, a sharp blade, strong aftershave and silence. It was a very 1950s thing to do, but it was also a very distinctly male form of self-care that has gone out of fashion, just as beards have come back in.       

I remember marvelling at these men, lying backwards with their eyes closed, unable to talk for fear of being nicked in the neck. They looked like they didn’t have a care in the world. Later, they might go out and shake down a local runner or bribe a crooked police officer, but this was their time – and they relished it. It wasn’t Bunnings, it wasn’t three rounds of battle ropes and flipping giant tires at 7 a.m. I’m not going to shave my stubble any time soon, but I think I’m gaining a better understanding of what true self-care requires.

I still haven’t landed on what my version of a visit to the nail salon or massage parlour is. But if I miss my next column, you’ll know I’ve figured it out.

Jonathan Seidler is an Australian writer, father and nu-metal apologist. He is the author of a memoir called It’s A Shame About Ray and a novel titled All the Beautiful Things You Love, which is out now. Jonno has some interesting things to say about music, fatherhood, Aussie culture, mental health, problematic faves and the social gymnastics of group chats. This is his column for Esquire. You can see all of his previous columns here.

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