Wellness is the cult of the 2020s. With the rise of LA influencer culture in the past decade, a new figure has emerged as the gold standard for perfectionists striving to be their best selves: the wellness guru. Influencers chronicling their lives in often-performative DIML (day in my life) videos never fail to include their daily workout, their sponsored probiotics, or the ever-popular Five Minute Journal (a way to practice daily mindfulness and gratitude in a timely manner). Although social media’s rapid trend cycles mean the workout class or therapy technique du jour is constantly changing, a commitment to wellness has now been a key facet of the quote-unquote cool girl for quite some time.
Public opinion generally seems to regard this commitment to wellbeing as a positive thing. We should be eating whole foods, exercising our bodies, and focusing on our mental health. However, there is a certain subset of the wellness movement that represents a more toxic mindset – the desire to put wellness above all else, no matter the cost.
This issue might be best exemplified by a now-infamous comment from YouTuber and podcaster Emma Chamberlain. “If you get no homework done one day because you just mentally can’t do it, and you maybe even get an F, so be it. If you just couldn’t do it, then you just couldn’t do it.”
Despite Chamberlain’s positive intentions, her sentiment was not warmly received. Her fans, normally rabid in their support, called out the advice as ‘facile’ and ‘out of touch’. In the words of one TikTok user, “It’s easy to say this when you make millions of dollars a year. But [the] majority of people have real life consequences that can truly affect their career. There isn’t an option of ‘not doing it’ for me, I have to do it.”
I’m not here to villainize Chamberlain or her comment. She was clearly well-intentioned and trying to advocate a prioritization of well-being over certain tasks. The issue is that her advice neglects the fact that most people simply can’t afford to avoid their work. When wellness is painted as an all-or-nothing lifestyle, advocating for an abandonment of our responsibilities, the vast majority of people become excluded.
I would like to emphasise that in this article is certainly not opposed to taking care of your health. On the contrary, I want to encourage people to be open about their mental & physical struggles and to seek help when it’s needed. Still, falling behind on work is not a realistic or advisable wellness strategy. And in an age in which one in four people follow social media wellness advice at least once a month, we need to be more selective about the voices we listen to.
If all-consuming wellness is unsustainable, we need to find a balance between taking care of ourselves and dealing with the regular duties of life. But how do we create this balance? How can we get our stuff done while still eating our greens and journaling about our feelings?
The short answer is: I don’t know, really. The line between caring for yourself and letting yourself go is thin, and the task of finding that line and recalibrating it as we grow is certainly not an easy task.
What I do know is that we have to accept there will be days when our sole responsibility is cramming for a massive exam, and even though it won’t be ideal for our mental and physical health, we’ll just have to power through. But there will also be days when we know that ignoring our exhaustion or burnout would be a major disservice to ourselves.
This is the less glamorous side to wellness, the side that can’t be curated and edited into an aesthetically-pleasing montage. Sometimes rest is only possible after the work is done. For many people, and particularly university students, stress is a normal response to demanding conditions. We need to recognize that sometimes stress can’t be remedied with a steamy bubble bath or a detoxing face mask, but by simply doing the work.
The reason that Chamberlain’s comment received this backlash is not because she’s wrong, but that the advice is not conducive for everyone. Even in a culture that urges us to focus on ourselves and prioritize our wellbeing, the reality is that our deadlines, rent, exams, and jobs won’t disappear.
Our task now is not to disregard wellness – not at all – but rather to be intentional about the time and energy we devote to it. Despite wellness’s ubiquitous presence online, the unglamorous reality of powering through is what keeps most of our lives running. And as for finding balance: (as I try to finish this article by the deadline and complete my IR reading before my nightly journaling) I’ll let you know when I figure it out.