There is a particular kind of arithmetic many women do before allowing themselves care. It happens quietly, almost without noticing: a moment of hesitation before booking a massage, a quick mental tally before buying the better quality vegetables, a flicker of guilt when a friend mentions her physiotherapist as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Somewhere along the way, caring for the body became entangled with the question of whether we have earned the right to spend on it. This is not a conversation about money in the abstract. It is a conversation about the quiet, private negotiations so many of us carry, and the way they shape how we treat ourselves when no one else is watching.
It is worth pausing here, because this feeling rarely announces itself directly. It disguises itself as practicality, as sensible restraint, as the voice that says surely there are more important things to spend on right now. And often, there are. But underneath the practicality sits something else too: a sense that wellness is a reward reserved for those who have already proven themselves financially responsible, disciplined, or successful enough to deserve it. Untangling that belief from the actual needs of the body is some of the quietest, most important work a woman can do for herself.
The Ledger We Keep Without Realising
Most of us were never taught to separate our health needs from our financial worth, so the two quietly fused somewhere along the way. We learned, often without a single explicit lesson, that looking after ourselves was something to be earned through hard work, thrift or sacrifice. Rest was for after the deadline. A massage was for after the bonus. New running shoes were for once the old ones had been resoled twice over. The body, in this framework, becomes something to be attended to only once every other obligation has been satisfied, which for many women means it is rarely attended to at all.
This ledger-keeping is exhausting precisely because it is invisible. It shows up as the small voice that questions a doctor's appointment for something that is probably nothing, or the reluctance to replace a mattress that has long stopped supporting a good night's sleep. It is rarely about the actual sum of money involved. It is about whether we believe we are the kind of person allowed to spend it on ourselves, and that belief is shaped far more by upbringing, class background and self-worth than by any bank statement.
How Wellness Became a Marketplace
It would be dishonest to pretend that industry has had no hand in this. Over the past two decades, wellness has grown into a vast and often glossy marketplace, one where self-care is increasingly represented by candles, retreats, supplements and studio memberships with soft lighting and softer price tags. There is nothing wrong with any of these things in themselves. Many are genuinely lovely, and for those who can access them without strain, they offer real pleasure and real benefit. The trouble is what this landscape quietly implies to everyone else: that wellness is something purchased, and that those who cannot purchase it are somehow falling short of caring for themselves properly.
This messaging seeps in gradually, through carefully lit advertisements and the aspirational tone of wellness culture more broadly. It teaches us to associate care with cost, so that the version of self-care most visible to us becomes the most expensive one, even though it is rarely the most necessary. A woman scrolling past images of infrared saunas and boutique fitness studios may find herself feeling that her own quieter, more affordable rituals, a walk at dusk, a proper night's sleep, a shared meal with a friend, do not quite count as real care. But they do. They always have.
What the Body Actually Asks For
The body, it turns out, is remarkably unconcerned with price. It does not know the difference between a stretch done on an expensive studio mat and one done on the living room floor before the kettle boils. It responds to consistency, to gentleness, to being listened to rather than ignored, and these are things available to nearly everyone, regardless of what sits in a bank account. Sleep, movement, nourishment, connection and rest remain the foundations of wellbeing, and none of them require a membership card to access.
This is not to dismiss the very real barriers that exist. Healthcare in South Africa, as elsewhere, is unevenly distributed, and for many women, cost is not an abstract anxiety but a genuine obstacle to necessary treatment, medication or diagnostic care. That distinction matters enormously. There is a difference between the guilt of not affording a luxury and the very real difficulty of not affording a need, and conflating the two does a disservice to both experiences. What can be gently separated, however, is the guilt itself from the actual requirement. Even where finances are genuinely limited, the body still deserves attention, and that attention can take many forms that do not depend on spending power.
What Care Actually Costs
It is worth sitting with what care genuinely requires, stripped of marketing and comparison. A daily walk costs nothing but time and a willingness to step outside. A consistent bedtime, protected from screens and last-minute obligations, costs only the discipline of choosing rest over one more task. A phone call with a friend who makes you laugh until your shoulders drop is, by any medical measure, a genuine act of care for the nervous system, and it costs nothing at all beyond the courage to reach out. Even the more clinical forms of care, a check-up, a screening, a conversation with a doctor about something that has been quietly worrying you, are often more accessible than the anxious mind assumes, particularly through public healthcare, community clinics and the many organisations working specifically to close these gaps.
What tends to cost more, ironically, is the version of wellness sold as aspirational: the retreats, the elaborate supplement regimens, the boutique studios with their carefully curated playlists. These can be wonderful additions to a life that already has its foundations in place, but they are additions, not requirements. Recognising this distinction quietly dismantles the idea that a smaller budget means a lesser commitment to one's health. It simply means a different set of tools, many of which are just as effective, and some of which are arguably more sustainable over a lifetime than anything that depends on ongoing expense.
The Unspoken Class Anxiety in the Room
There is a particular discomfort that surfaces when wellness conversations happen across different financial realities, and it rarely gets named directly. A woman might sit quietly while colleagues discuss their Pilates reformer sessions or their latest wellness getaway, feeling a small private ache that has nothing to do with envy and everything to do with exclusion. She may nod along, offering little, because admitting that such things sit outside her current budget can feel like admitting something about her worth rather than simply her circumstances. This is class anxiety wearing the softer language of wellness, and it deserves to be spoken about with more honesty than it usually receives.
The irony is that many of the women who appear most at ease with expensive wellness routines are navigating their own quiet financial pressures, whether hidden debt behind a polished lifestyle or the careful budgeting required to sustain what looks effortless from the outside. Comparison, in this space as in most others, is built on incomplete information. Letting go of it does not mean pretending financial difference does not exist. It means refusing to let it become a private verdict on how much a woman is allowed to value her own body.
Reframing What Permission Looks Like
Perhaps the most helpful shift is a small one: replacing the question can I afford this with the question does my body need this, and if so, what is the most accessible way to meet that need right now. This reframing does not solve every financial constraint, but it does something quietly powerful. It removes wellness from the realm of reward and places it back where it belongs, as an ordinary, ongoing part of being human, available in some form at every income level.
It also invites a more honest relationship with the resources that are already present. A public park, a library book on nutrition, a free community yoga class, a friend willing to walk and talk, a clinic nurse who has seen a thousand worried women before and will not judge the question being asked. None of these carry the polish of a wellness advertisement, yet all of them are legitimate, meaningful forms of care. Recognising them as such is not a consolation prize. It is simply the truth, one that the wellness industry does not always have an incentive to remind us of.
A Gentle Reminder
Your worth was never something to be proven through what you could afford to spend on yourself, and your body was never waiting for permission to deserve care. Whatever form your wellbeing takes today, a quiet walk, an early night, a small act of rest, it is enough, because it always was. You do not need to earn the right to feel well.
