How do we practice self-care during a pandemic?

I can just see the fall issue of Vogue now:

How to Make Your Eyes Pop While Wearing a Mask

Coping with Corona – The Best Anti-Aging Tips and Tricks to Get Out of This Shit Storm Gorgeous!

Quiz Alert! Couples: Can you make it through Quarantine? Six ways to spice it up if the answer is yes!

Current self-care isn’t about getting a Mani-Pedi or a much needed massage. It isn’t playing up the eyes because that’s all we’re going to see for a while. These days, self-care is wiping down the groceries, and it’s dreaming about getting our hands on some Clorox wipes. It’s checking in with friends and family. It’s taking a daily walk with a mask on and washing our hands incessantly. It’s maybe taking a shower, but who are we kidding? Probably not.

Self-care is wearing a mask so we don’t die, not applying white clay to our face to draw out the impurities in our pores.

Do you have horrid teeth? No time for that annual cleaning? Who gives a crap; you’re wearing a mask for the unforeseeable future. Honestly, it would be a great time to get that dream nose job, just sayin’. I feel sorry for all the people that just got their lip injections done in early March. That’s a lot of plump pouts we won’t ever get to see. Sad face.

It seemed fitting to “self-care” when were actually going out in the world, working, making plans, and living our lives. We needed that time to re-charge and to pamper ourselves, but now that we’re all home self-care has taken on a new meaning. It’s more about self-preservation and mental health. How can we self-care our minds? Personally, I am doing my best but at times it’s a real struggle. I can only do so many gratitude lists and Oprah and Deepak meditations.

Makeup artists are pivoting, doing their best interpretation of “Quarantine chic” or “How to look hot on Zoom” along with all the IG Lives, posts, and Zoom tutorials. You’ve heard of Zoom fatigue? It’s an actual thing. Ridiculous and unfortunately, true.

At least with Zoom, you only have to make sure the top half of you is presentable. Just pretend the bottom half of everyone doesn’t exist anymore which is a great for me, because I wish I had thinner thighs, and now no one has to see them.

Now, when I wear lipstick under my mask, I feel like I have a big secret, like no one can see my perfectly lined Cupid’s bow and coordinating candy apple red lips. Total bummer for you guys! It’s kind of like when you have sexy lingerie on underneath your clothes but you have to go to a boring business meeting first. Honestly, this big secret is already getting old.

If you wear lipstick under a mask and no one can see it, does it really exist? We will never know.

Women around the globe are letting their gray roots grow out to Rapunzel like lengths, partly because there isn’t a choice in the matter and with a brassy and brazen statement going out to the world shouting, “I don’t give a fuck, this is me. Like it or leave it. I’m living through a god damn pandemic.” Sorry world, those beachy-highlights will have to wait. And guess what? Women age!

You can’t escape from all the “Quarantine ‘N Chill” emoji’s depicting women, just like, you know, chilling, super calm, day drinking Rose’, applying hair treatments, and reading classic books.

Like this is the most relaxing time in everyone’s life.

Ummm. Hi. We’re forced to stay home, what else are we going to do? I can’t Marie Kondo everything in my house. Or can I?

I know we’re all trying to deal and adapt to this new way of coexisting and I try to make light of the situation as best as I can but I can’t utter the phrase “new normal” without silently crying inside.

Most of us are doing the best we can, right? Except for those assholes that won’t wear a mask.

I hate wearing it too. I look like a tiny bandit, which is hilarious because I’m 5 ft. on a good day and most likely look like an unaccompanied 9-year-old child. It’s embarrassing. It’s frightening, and imperative.

As much as I hate it, I hate seeing people die more. As I apply my lipstick, mask, and go out into the world as safely as I can, if I can protect even one person from contracting this virus, that to me, is the true meaning of self-care, for all of us.