Competitive Wellness
Even good things are bad. Take the cult of wellness. This was supposed to be a way to improve health in all of its dimensions, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. It hasn’t always turned out that way. Many people say wellness proves to be trying and diminishing. It’s become “you are not good enough” theater. One respondent captured the prob
... See moreGrant McCracken • The Gravity Well Effect
‘We’re sedating women with self-care’: how we became obsessed with wellness
Katherine Rowlandtheguardian.comthe self is no longer a subject but a project . The self is something to be optimised, to be maximised, to be made efficient, cultivated for its capacity for productive output. The worry is that all life activities become viewed as lines on a résumé. Knowingly or otherwise, we risk being constantly governed by the question How is what I’m doing rig
... See moreAlec Stubbs • The Achievement Society Is Burning Us Out, We Need More Play
What wellness culture asserts, in essence, is that there is some higher state we can achieve, but only if we’re willing to put in the work. Our natural impulses, the ones that draw us to the buzz of sugar, the sting of salt, bright sweets and festive feasts, are all wrong according to the wellness mantra. The way to upper-middle-class white-girl he
... See moreRuby Tandoh • Eat Up: Food, Appetite and Eating What You Want
Driven by ultra-capitalistic incentives, the incessant pursuit of productivity and perfection combined with external, never-ending stimuli results in burnout and anxiety, the symptoms of an overloaded nervous system.
Matt Yao • More Human Possible
“What’s aspirational has changed,” says Beth McGroarty, research director at the nonprofit Global Wellness Institute. Pressures to be perfectly happy, beautiful, and “healthy” are being replaced with a more realistic, relaxed, and less consumerist culture.