There’s a bigger consideration about our pursuit of health through wellness that goes beyond the science literacy of it all. It comes back to one of the main issues we’ve covered, which is that with millions and millions of dollars backing the marketing of the wellness industry, it can sometimes be difficult to tell whether our efforts make any difference at all. I’m often asked point-blank: Is wellness working? It’s a tough question to answer. For one thing, it’s too early to tell. We don’t have any metrics to make a definitive judgment call on how all these trends impact greater public health. But I’d like to think we’re on our way to smoothing the path forward, to distinguishing between the effective and the ineffective.
Granted, the pursuit of wellness is as old as time. Greek philosophers openly extolled the benefits of integrating mind and body—it was Pythagoras who advocated for soulful “me time” in the morning to center oneself before socializing. Ancient Jews observed the Sabbath to reflect and recharge for the week of labor ahead. Buddhist meditation dates back centuries. And America didn’t only inherit the political traditions of ancient thinkers, we also got their penchant for wellness gurus.
Our American version of wellness went into high gear alongside the Industrial Revolution, when the rich got healthier and the poor less so. In today’s information revolution, we Americans say we can’t keep up with modern life. We say technology has moved too fast, the healthcare system is broken, and workplace productivity burns us out. Eating well, moving around, connecting with nature, and even just sleeping normally have been taken away from us. Those things used to be easier, public, or commonly held, but now if we want those things we have to pay for them. And you know what? We will because we’re desperate for it.
In the summer of 2021, I revisited The Class. This time, the cardio workout was held outdoors on the Santa Monica Pier. Dozens of women assembled at 8:30 a.m. for a “heart-clearing” session set against the backdrop of the rough Pacific Ocean waves. A peppy blond instructor named Pixie sermonized on gratitude and the importance of expressing emotions between bouts of jumping jacks. After asking us to “pound out” resentment by gently beating our thighs, she told us to get loud when others try to silence us. “You don’t need anyone’s permission but your own,” she firmly instructed. I once again witnessed women showing weighted emotion. They danced with abandon and breathed heavily with intention.
Later, I chatted with one fellow classmate who said The Class was just as relevant then as it had been years earlier. “It’s only gotten more stressful,” she laughed. There was a raging new COVID variant, a torn country at each other’s throats, and so on and so on. The world, it seemed, was irreparably out of balance. The Class, for a moment, helped calm that anxiety.
Like her, I had to admit I was thrilled to be back among my emotional jumpers. Maybe it wasn’t a cure-all or the community I had envisioned, but it sure did something. That’s about as much as I expect these days from most wellness pursuits.
Wellness was initially introduced as a symbol of empowerment and a better way of life, and to some degree it is. If we’re talking real wellness—good nutrition, disease management, and such—then yes. You can’t discount the myriad of ways we can live a healthier lifestyle. Quickie marts sell bagged carrots and display as many water varieties as soft drinks. Tech platforms democratize access to streaming fitness classes. Terms like “prevention” and “being active” are part of the American vernacular now.
We openly discuss mental health, far more than our parents’ generation did. Look at the sophisticated offerings ranging from affordable therapy apps to inclusive digital support groups. Maybe it’s not perfect, but it’s progress. Do I wish there was more of an emphasis on community and less on personal intervention? Could we focus more on systemic issues? Of course. But what’s the alternative right here and now in our highly individualistic society? You have to appreciate that which is, at the very least, making modern life a bit more manageable.
In the same breath, I must say that there are issues within the greater wellness industry, as covered throughout this book. So much of the wellness movement is built upon critique—a pushback against a disappointing health system, revulsion at pharmaceutical scandals, and a distrust of Big Food. Those are all warranted concerns, but they can come at a cost. Obsessing over “natural” or overvaluing alternatives can obstruct clear thinking. Doctors and manufacturers undoubtedly harmed women in the past, but we can’t ignore science or evidence-based medicine in the name of defying authority. The romanticization of fighting the establishment does just that.
Pseudoscience and quacks have always been a mainstay of American culture. But we’ve entered a new era of uncritically accepting them and their charcoal-infused nonsense. Once supplements and “detox” kits overtook store shelves, we blindly embraced them. Herbal Essences now sells “gluten-free” shampoo, which is ludicrous considering that no one drinks their hair product. (Perhaps the company knows they can make a buck off those who have been taught to fear gluten, presumably, in all forms.) We started going with the flow instead of following the research. I’ve seen far too many women—myself included—adopt new rituals and debatable products with nary an ounce of skepticism.
While we might want to just brush off problematic issues in the name of the free market, there is a societal impact to consider. Deceptive marketing has deeper ramifications. It starts small, then gets larger, until eventually it overtakes an entire industry. Even the word “wellness” has become an ambiguous, amorphous term—untethered to anything concrete, with more and more products shoved under its umbrella every day. It’s dulling our bullshit detectors.
Wellness is paraded as something anyone can achieve if they just commit to their health destiny. Then, as Arthur J. Barsky writes in Worried Sick, “everything seems either healthful or harmful, and life becomes a series of prescribed and proscribed behaviors. Personal habits, diets, leisure activities are all modified to conform to the orthodoxy of the healthy lifestyle, as if there was only one way of life that could assure us of complete and endless health.”1
So much of the current messaging serves to control women’s time and role in society. Our health becomes a catalyst for investment, one demanding negotiations, sacrifice, and performance. We need to purge our figures of excess fat, rid our minds of angry thoughts, cleanse our organs of “toxins,” fix whatever is “wrong” with us. It’s fueling what can only be called self-absorption, revering our body to unhealthy proportions.
This is why it’s difficult to discuss wellness in generalized, absolute terms. There is good, bad, and a whole lot in between. You cannot fully denounce it, nor can you disregard its growing problems. Often you need to discuss each sector individually, since this industry is ever expanding, encompassing more than a dozen subindustries. But overall, experts express optimism. “I feel we’re marching in the right direction in terms of awareness and people acknowledging that it’s multidimensional,” says Ophelia Yeung, a senior research fellow at the Global Wellness Institute. “You can’t just fix [everything] with medicine. You have to live [healthily]. I think that message is really out there now.”
Wellness will continue to grow because the inherent sentiment remains the same: the status quo isn’t cutting it. We shop at farmers’ markets to cut back on overprocessed food. We wear a Fitbit because we recognize our lives are too sedentary. We go to yoga because we need a moment to slow down. Those activities in turn help define us—and what we want our lives to be.
A 2020 Ogilvy study of seven thousand consumers discovered that a majority of shoppers now expect most brands to provide wellness offerings. Car manufacturers, for example, are reportedly incorporating wellness into vehicle design with features that measure stress levels or emit mood-altering scents (which may be helpful—we’ll see). “Every brand can be a wellness brand now,” noted Marion McDonald, Ogilvy’s Global Health and Wellness Practice Lead. It sounds as if wellness will soon be part of pretty much every aspect of everyday life, in the way that religion was back in the day.
The title of this book is not meant to be taken literally. I am not suggesting that women engage in wellness practices or join a gym as a way to replicate the role of organized religion. That would certainly be pushing the comparison. But I do see ways in which wellness functions as deconstructed religion, a regulatory system instructing us how to move through our lives. It’s almost as if it’s cementing a new moral order. Wellness has ethical values (healthism). People follow laws dictating what they must (“organic”) and must not (“toxic”) consume—a quest for purity to sanctify the body. Nature is armed with godlike powers, which then assumes sickness is thereby attributed to the unnatural or synthetic. Wellness has its symbols (a yoga mat) and high priest (Gwyneth), if not false idols (supplements). Rituals can be picking up a turmeric latte before a workout class or instituting a daily gratitude practice.
Wellness even has many of the same sins (gluttony, sloth) and self-denials (food again) as religion. There are significant differences, though: this clergy sermonizes not about the devil but rather the daily environmental threats against which we require amulets (clean beauty).
Worshippers are provided with belonging, whether that’s via an identity or community. Eating “right” or working out are imbued with sacred meaning because they all funnel into a promised salvation: a life free of stress, aging, and sickness. True believers—the hardest-working, that is—can gain entrance to this Eden of control. The belief is not necessarily based on science, but psychology.
How are we to interpret this? Well, it depends on how it’s used and who’s in charge. When the gospel is embraced by well-intentioned, scientific entities, then maybe it can be beneficial. But when it’s adopted by the Goops of the world, less so. Pursuing healthy habits in itself is good. It’s the pseudoscience, hyperconsumerist ethos that is muddying the waters. That’s the distinction I hope I made throughout this book.
The religious treatment of wellness might also be because we’ve made it harder for people to find aspects of a fulfilling life in modern society. I think a lot about Oprah’s Stanford University speech in which she implored students to find meaning. There’s one question after she says “You must have a spiritual practice,” and it’s “What is yours?” I think about those young adults staring at what is essentially a very difficult, existential homework assignment: How do I find fulfillment in this culture? What is the meaning of my life? How do I define myself? It’s not easy, especially in a society so obsessed with identity yet in which the familiar road map—with guardrails like religious orthodoxy or strict gender roles—no longer necessarily applies. That people gravitate toward overly marketed wellness makes sense in this day and age if only because the existential dilemma facing us can be overwhelming.
Many want meaning and a guide directing them how to get it. The acclaimed late author David Foster Wallace may have put it best when he said atheism doesn’t exist in our culture:
There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship […] is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already—it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.”2
If we crave belonging and we increasingly worship good health, how do we ensure wellness is the best it can be? Redirecting the private sector economy is one part of the equation. For what wellness truly sets to cure, we also need systemic solutions and public infrastructure. We need more medical research, improved doctor-patient relationships, policies to support women, and better consumer product regulatory oversight. We need stronger communities. In our individualistic society, we are told that everything is our responsibility (and then often directed toward an app). But we’re not supplied with enough support, even financially, to pursue healthier habits. Wellness, therefore, becomes everything that insurance and medicine won’t touch. But if institutions want to change the landscape—as they publicly claim—why not incentivize fitness, nutrition, and connection?
Public investment is building. Fitness is a good example: A few state parks now advertise the mental health benefits of nature and attempt to widen access to recreation. Some physicians “prescribe” nature-based treatments, like recommending that patients join organized social hikes. Local governments are building more walking and biking trails to encourage daily physical activity.
Granted, the public sector is generally divided in that parks and rec is separate from the health department, which is separate from social services. And maybe we need a wellness czar at the city, state, or federal level to coordinate them all. Or perhaps we should look to other countries for innovative ideas. New Zealand adopted a “well-being budget,” while the United Arab Emirates employs a minister of happiness. Ophelia Yeung told me there’s no one successful model that the United States can readily replicate. “[Wellness] is such a nascent emerging field, and there is no one really thinking about it from such a perspective yet,” she said. “Thought leadership is needed.” Although, even if there was a model, it would hardly be a copy-and-paste situation: each population is unique in its needs and experiences.
Insurers and employers are shifting too. It’s not uncommon for health insurance plans to include gym membership discounts and stress management programs. ClassPass, the fitness class subscription platform, teamed up with Kaiser Permanente to offer thousands of free online workouts and reduced rates for live exercise classes. These are just several initiatives proving, at the very least, that society increasingly recognizes that citizens need help to live healthier lifestyles.
Early in the writing of this book, I called up Don Ardell, considered one of the architects of modern wellness. In 1977, he wrote a book titled High Level Wellness, which was groundbreaking for its time. Ardell wanted to educate the public about the actions they could take to promote their well-being. The individual was meant to ask: How can I feel better? What tools are at my disposal to ensure health and happiness? None of the answers, except for injury or disease, included a visit to the doctor. But his book wasn’t anti-doctor. “Modern medicine is a wonderful thing,” he wrote, “but there are two problems: people expect too much of it, and too little of themselves.”3
A manifesto for personal responsibility, the book focuses on the stripped-down core pillars of the movement. “Wellness was never meant as an advertising gimmick, a brand, a treatment, a market, industry, or service,” he stresses more than forty years later. Self-responsibility and community were equally emphasized. “Making a decision that you want to live a healthy life is not the same as being able to do it,” says Ardell. “If you don’t have a supportive culture—friends, family members, and your environment … your chances are next to zero to be able to pull off.”
Voices like Ardell’s get lost amid the noise, especially as we elevate the wild and pricey. But I notice pockets of consumers questioning their newfound habits. In much the same way that women pondered the status quo, they now seek to understand why they’ve gravitated to wellness. I believe consumers want to return to evidence-based solutions, of which there are plenty. They are floating around out there, in the same communities where they drink cold-pressed celery juice.
As for me? I threw out my supplements. I welcomed Neutrogena back into my bathroom. I’ve learned to pause before buying the hype on a new product, while simultaneously permitting myself to enjoy many products lacking scientific evidence. I still buy kombucha, though I drink it for the taste, not because I believe in some kind of magical gut healing. And though I still spend a fortune on my favorite boutique fitness classes (because they’re fun), I try to remind myself that I don’t need the fittest of bodies.
Wellness didn’t solve all my problems. Stress, lackluster medical care, and image-related pressures are still prevalent issues. But it sure did inspire a framework to better deal with some of them. Learning to embrace mental health solutions put me on the road to finding personalized solutions that worked for me.
It didn’t happen overnight, but over the years, I’ve witnessed an improvement in how I feel and how my body and mind react. That’s worth something.
Wellness, as Goop would rightly say, is a journey. And I can’t disagree with that.