The Bubble-Bathification of Self-Care: Problematizing Possibilities for Restful Mental Health in Canada

As radical genres of self-care are co-opted under neoliberal logics, I track an emerging "bubble-bathification" of self-care, which foregrounds rest as a therapeutic avenue toward mental health. Fieldwork at Canadian universities demonstrates that the promotion of restful self-care is often juxtaposed against environments of systemic exhaustion, resulting in a cycle of fatigue for students perpetrated by the sources promoting restorative breaks. There is a simultaneous desire among students to divest themselves from inactivity in favor of pursuing justice-oriented change in their communities. I conclude that social, mental, and bodily unrest are mutually constitutive in understanding how exhaustion threatens people's selfhood.