“Wellness” Is Unhealthy
Welcome to This Black-Ass Life! This week, we want to discuss the trillion-dollar wellness industry making us all sick.
I. The Facts
Cue BIA, “it’s a whole lotta money in this mf.”
Today’s consumers view wellness across six dimensions: health, fitness, nutrition, appearance, sleep, and mindfulness.
And there’s lots of money in this game. The health and wellness market is expected to grow by over one TRILLION dollars from 2020 to 2025. The market for wearable fitness devices alone is expected to reach 27 BILLION by 2022.
Within the whitewashed wellness industry has come an extreme sense of individualism and a commitment to “self-optimization,” empowering wellness acolytes into anti-fatness, narrow beauty standards, and ableism (think: the belief vaccines lead to disability).
There is also the risk of concepts like “clean eating” being a half-step from disordered eating, a largely undiagnosed issue in Black people.
Why does it matter?
Let’s start with the obvious, wellness does not belong to rich white women. Peace of mind, serenity, and rest cannot belong to the most privileged. No one owns wellness, all humans deserve to be cared for and feel well.
However, it is no coincidence that in America, self-care and wellness have a radical history rooted in practices by Black and Brown people supporting physical and mental health and safety.
There’s nothing new about prioritizing the basics of what makes us feel well, our ancestors have been doing it for millennia. Engaging around sleep schedules, meditation, yoga, herbal medicine, beautification, and breathing exercises, are all rooted in ancient practices.
The white-washing of wellness is problematic because it erases all of us who are not thin, rich, white, and wearing gauzy pants. Seriously, white women are in their bag with those gauzy white pants. Where are they getting them?!
Finally, our current understanding of wellness is also intimately linked to healthism, the idea that a person's health and well-being is entirely their responsibility attained through the modification of their lifestyle, not something that is a multifaceted issue with many varied influences, including genetics, poverty, racism, misogyny, climate change, and so much more. Health is an inherently political and systemic issue, not a personal responsibility one.
What can my Black ass do?
First and foremost, love on your Black-ass self. While we cannot meditate, sound bath, talk therapy, or light incense racism away, remember you are wonderful as you are no matter what. Your people have survived in a Black body to bring you here, and you are surviving in a Black body at this moment. That’s enough.
Keep your coins, and don’t fall for the okey-doke. The repackaged wellness agenda led by rich white women selling moon juice, vagina eggs, and activated charcoal is capitalism disguised as self-care.
Don’t use wellness to shit on yourself, and don’t turn wellness into a competition (with yourself or others). Here are ways that dedication to wellness might negatively impact you:
If your meditation app is giving you anxiety because you’ve missed a few days and now you’re getting incessant notifications, consider deleting it.
If you are walking in circles around your kitchen just to make your step goals, maybe consider not chaining yourself to a fitness monitor.
If you spend more time perfecting your bullet journal than actually living the life you’ve perfected on paper, go outside, take a breath, lie down, cook, eat, etc.
Becoming the best version of yourself is a good thing, but ask yourself, is self-betterment for you rooted in a trauma response and/or feelings of inadequacy? Check in with yourself, and do so often. Ask, why am I doing this? Does this bring me serenity? Do I even like this? Don’t let marketing dictate what self-care means to you.
Baby steps are how we learn how to walk. Take them.
Read Belly of the Beast by Da’Shaun Harrison on anti-fatness as anti-Blackness.
Listen to Unsolicited: Fatties Talk Back; start with the episodes “She’s Too Butch!!!,” “It’s Not Right, But It’s Okay,” and “The Disability Question.”
Listen to our favorite meditations made for Black by Black women: here, here, and here.
Read Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving.
Read Who is Wellness For?
II. Other Things
Black-ass happenings
Cannot stop looping this Abbott Elementary clip of Ms. Barbara Howard mixing up celebrities’ names.
Check out this list of Black-ass books hitting shelves in October.
George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue is a beautiful memoir about their life growing up Black and queer. Now it’s the second-most banned book in the U.S. Here’s what they have to say about that in their own words.
Alexis Olympia Ohanian, Jr. has one message for her mom while she brushes her hair, “girl, you’re not serious about this.”
Forever shout out to Megan Thee Stallion, in this case, for launching “Bad Bitches Have Bad Days Too,” a site listing mental health resources.
Our Black-Ass song(s) of the week (Jumoke):
Things we look forward to:
I (Jumoke) am on sabbatical, and look forward to doing absolutely nothing.
I (Mitu) look forward to Drunk on Love by This Black-Ass Life favorite Jasmine Guillory because we love love over here!
lll. Lesson from a Black-Ass Pastry Run
You must watch this video about a very important cinnamon roll and then listen to one of my (Mitu’s) favorite podcasts that this creator co-hosts called The New Chitlin Circuit.
Stay Black, have a snack, and take a nap today. We'll hit your inbox next on October 17.