THE ISSUE WITH WELLNESS BEING WORSHIPPED

The epitome of health is beginning to be sold to us in a bottle; retinol serums, matcha powder and electrolyte sachets. The health and beauty sector is becoming more and more powerful, completely shaping our reality and identity. Forget cult classics and beauty staples, a new ‘cure’ to our insecurities is being pumped out weekly.
 
With Gen Z prioritising mental and physical wellbeing, self-care has become a romanticised daily practice. From journaling to matcha runs to Gua Shas, crystals and clay masks, wellness has become a performative trend obsessed with aesthetics. Neutral packaging, soft glows, serif fonts and lotus flowers are littering our feed. These products have become idols of worship. Our longing for serenity and stability is extorted by viral ‘holy grails’ for our health, making us hoard shelves of deities and mythological healers in our bathroom cupboards. Practices central to indigenous cultures have become profit-making machines, constructing fashionable trends out of sacred traditions. These elixirs, from brands like GAIA, taint our representation of wellbeing with spiritual exoticism.
 
These ‘cures’ are becoming increasingly performative online, marketed by influencers with no real understanding of what is nourishing to the body and soul, as their voices are becoming more prominent than medical professionals. The practice of vague medicinal buzzwords, like ‘detox’, ‘anti-inflammatory’ and ‘collagen-boosting’, create an authoritative presence without the credibility. The algorithm online encourages excessive visibility from interaction to the extent of not being able to get these products off our minds. We’re allowing tiktokers to become the GPs of the beauty industry, creating a pretence of care with prescribing us hacks for a new-fangled issue. This excessive exposure on social media ensnares our insecurities even more.
 
Healthy living has become an exclusive club, soured by commodified aesthetics and rampant consumerism. Eighteen step skincare routines have become elitist pieces of media, inciting competition over who can buy the luxury of health and beauty. The concept of wellness capitalism, as discussed by researchers such as Nopper and Bates, highlights how responsibility for wellbeing has been shifted onto the individual consumer. This late capitalist economy promotes a harmful and alienating “buy-to-fix” mindset, repackaging societal issues into personal faults. We’re quickly becoming exhausted spending a fortune on treatments that serve no real purpose, questioning if this chase for perfection is really worth it.
 
The industry teaches women that they’re ‘imperfect’ and ‘impure’and this has started to seep into our understanding of health. What is it we need to avoid this month, is it sulphates? Do we need to regulate our nervous system? Are our hormones imbalanced? Society is inventing insecurities quicker than we can cure them,lining the pockets of the individuals who manufacture both the fix and the flaw, generating $1.2 trillion dollars globally, according to Statista. Fixations on perfection, from ancient secular institutions to the modern patriarchy, are being recycled and rewritten as moral duties. The growing obsession with the ‘clean girl aesthetic’ is purity culture repackaged as wellness. Our medicine cupboard is slowly becoming a boutique of self-improvement is only the surface of a greater issue; our internal focus on our image is distracting us from the individuals that benefit from our subservience to patriarchal beauty standards. Wellness and treatments are not perturbed with health, but attractiveness. With being ignored within the world of medicine, these products and treatments offer a façade of empowerment and self-preservation.
 
In a world of economic, environmental and political decline, Gen Z crave health and rejuvenation, desiring control in a world they feel rendered powerless. Our need for balance is being extorted by the wellness industry colonising cultural identities, creating an illusion of inner peace and nourishment. With each product put in our basket, we out a price on our self-worth. We’re becoming pumped with unrealistic standards of wellbeing and selfcare and none of us can keep up.

• beauty
• Influencers
• wellness