The Strong Black Woman Doesn’t Need Another Burden — Including Aging

A Black woman can spend thousands of dollars on her children and never feel guilty. She can support family members financially and show up for everyone else’s emergencies. She can pay for birthday parties, sports teams, tutoring, church events, and family vacations.

But suggest she spend that same money on herself, and suddenly a different set of emotions appears. Guilt, shame, self-doubt, and the list goes on. All centered around internal questions about whether she’s being selfish.

For many Black women, the issue has never been money. The issue has been permission. Permission to rest. Permission to receive care. Permission to age intentionally. Permission to matter.

Recently, I spoke with Los Angeles-based board-certified dermatologist Dr. Zoe Indigo, who specializes in caring for patients with skin of color. What struck me most wasn’t our discussion about Botox, fillers, lasers, or skincare. It was her observation that many women arrive only after they have exhausted themselves caring for everyone else.

“The caretaker who is finally giving themselves a break,” she said. That sentence stayed with me. It captures something many Black women, myself included, know intimately. We are often taught that strength means sacrifice.

The Strong Black Woman archetype tells us we should be able to handle everything. We should work harder, carry more, complain less, need less — and ultimately — ask for less. And somehow remain grateful and gracious throughout the process.

The problem is that nobody escapes the consequences of chronic stress. Not our minds, our bodies, our skin, our hair, our relationships, or our health. The stress eventually shows up somewhere.

It shows up in exhaustion, in burnout, in high blood pressure, and in anxiety. And yes, sometimes it shows up in our faces. For years, conversations about beauty treatments among Black women were often met with skepticism.

Who needs Botox?

Who needs filler?

Why spend money on that?

Those questions aren’t entirely unreasonable. But I sometimes wonder whether we ask them differently when Black women are the ones spending the money. Nobody questions a man buying a luxury car.

Nobody questions a corporation spending money on branding. Nobody questions parents investing in their children’s future. Yet a Black woman deciding she wants therapy, a trainer, a facial, Botox, skincare, or a cosmetic procedure often finds herself defending the decision. But why?

Somewhere along the way, we learned that our value comes from what we give away. Not from what we keep for ourselves. The irony is that self-care is often discussed as though it exists in opposition to responsibility.

As though taking care of ourselves means we care less about everyone else. But the opposite may be true. People who are depleted eventually have nothing left to give.

People who never receive care eventually become resentful. People who are constantly pouring from an empty cup eventually run dry. What if strength isn’t measured by how much suffering we can tolerate?

What if strength includes receiving? Receiving help, support, rest, care, and joy. And yes, sometimes receiving the things that help us feel confident when we look in the mirror. This isn’t really a story about Botox.

It isn’t really a story about filler. It’s a story about Black women finally believing they deserve the same care they have spent a lifetime giving everyone else. And that might be one of the most radical acts of self-love there is.