Wellness for all

Celtic sea salt. Hot pilates. Mushroom coffee, rebounders and sleep tracking. This is what the path to ‘wellness’ looks like, if today’s internet influencers are to be believed.

However esoteric or ridiculous some of their recommendations might be, these content creators are tapping into a core human concern, one which has been expressed differently in different times and settings. The idea that the average person should be happy and healthy was a key Tenet of British and European post-war ideals, for example, according to which the ‘welfare state’ had a duty of care to citizens, and social wellbeing was seen as a fundamental measure of society’s strength. To be and live well in this context often implied more than mere survival or a minimum degree of prosperity – it was about thriving, forging quality relationships, chasing meaningful goals, and ageing with dignity. Across the Atlantic, the Black Panthers ran free hospices, mindfulness groups, and hunger relief schemes, ensuring unserved Black communities had access to holistic welfare services. Their argument: to fight for social justice, people had to be cared for. Wellness was about solidarity, not self-indulgence.

Over time, that collective spirit has faded. Decades of a free-market consensus has forced the burden of wellness onto individuals as social services have fallen into disrepair. Stripped of its social gloss, wellness has been commodified. Offering everything from life hacks and mindfulness coaching to premium supplements, diet fads, and pricey fitness clubs, the industry promises self-improvement through consumption.

This process has transformed communities and societies into mere groups of stratified consumers, with access to the market shaped by economic privilege. Should you adopt a trendy wellness practice and possess the means to sustain it, the promise of a highly artificial “healthy self “is within reach. Miss the mark, and the blame falls squarely on your shoulders. In this wild wellness frontier, people are left to fend for themselves – in competition with, and at the expense of, others. The allure of exclusive knowledge is particularly strong. Getting in on the latest trick or trend is not so much about being healthier as it is about feeling smarter. It is a fear of falling behind that keeps people buying in.

The modern wellness industry is also built around rigid social norms, catering to those who fit a certain ideal. For women, wellness is typically presented as a serene activity, packaged in pastel aesthetics and sold as self-care. This brand of wellness encourages passivity and focusses on aesthetics: women should find fulfilment through quiet, unobtrusive practices and, above all simply ‘look well.’ For men, wellness tends to skew more towards self-optimisation, with every challenge framed as something to conquer and fulfilment found in constantly pushing physical limits. This picture of wellness has an almost primal quality, emphasising strength – and sometimes aggression – above all else.

The emphasis wellness culture places on competition and traditional gender norms hints at a latent conservatism. Unfortunately for those of us on the left, the connection goes deeper: the basic logic of the wellness market skews heavily towards right-wing conspiracy. While some wellness practices – often the most common-sense ones, like exercising more or eating more vegetables – are supported by scientific research, others lean into pseudoscience. This creates fertile ground for anti-establishment thinking appealing to those in search of alternative ‘truths.’ Such ‘conspirituality’ blends self-improvement with alt-right ideologies; wellness becomes an individual act of ‘waking up’ to the reality that mainstream society is conditioned by covert, malevolent forces. The pandemic exposed this trend –nearly half of wellness influencers shared antivax content.

The idea of waking up to a corrupt and broken society provides a bridge between wellness and the ‘manosphere’, which thrives on the rejection of the social contract. Figures like the Tate brothers have deployed wellness rhetoric to great effect, exploiting the health and fitness aspirations of young men to disseminate extreme individualism, toxic masculinity, and hostility towards gender equality. Oddly, such bandits of the wild wellness frontier are not necessarily right-wing ideologues. To have an incentive to push a paranoid, us-versus-them worldview, they only need to be opportunistic grifters: provocation means engagement, and engagement means money.

Wellness, then, is a key cultural battleground that the left cannot afford to ignore. With Labour in government, welfare should be restored to its central place in our collective social fabric. Only by providing for everyone can we undermine the demand for the individualistic, ineffective and conspiratorial paradigm that the wellness industry has produced.

Image credit: Gina Lin via Unsplash