Wellness Culture. History Repeats Itself.

Wellness Culture is a huge part of our lives. From magazines at the counter of the grocery store, preaching about some nameless woman losing 15 pounds in only two weeks and how you can too, to ads on newspaper articles toting a new and “dietician recommended” weight loss pill with absolutely no side effects (which is untrue). Our society is rife with people claiming if you’re fat you’re ugly, and if you’re skinny you’re at the height of beauty. This has caused many health issues in women. Eating disorders, mainly, but also drug addiction. First it can cause people to take unhealthy or ineffective supplements, which can cause damage to your immune system.

“Wellness” was a term coined by the so-called father of the movement, Dr. Halbert L. Dunn. Dunn defined wellness as the seeking of not just good health, but the personal well-being and betterment. Dunn’s program of “wellness” is not governed by the rules of medicine that we have developed, but some kind of intangible standard that shifts and changes with the individual seeking it. This standard began with the “life reform” fad in nineteenth-century Europe.  One such European, Louis Kuhne, published a book in 1891 (yes it does go back that far) recounting his struggles with chronic pain and illness and spurning the medical establishment for his lack of improvement. In his book, Kuhne prescribed all sorts of phony, natural cures for seemingly every ailment. Hydrotherapy, cutting out salt and sugar, fresh air, and strict vegetarianism were just a few of these “cures.” He went on to open a clinic in his town of Leipzig, Germany and became successful peddling snake oil cures. Kuhne had absolutely no medical basis for any of these claims. He was a freaking carpenter, for Christ’s sake! He had no medical experience, no degree, no nothing, but still, his book became a famous best-seller. Now, Kuhne was not some sort of prodigy. He simply used the cultural zeitgeist of industrialization to manipulate people into buying into his holistic healing. Many Europeans saw the industrial complex as dehumanizing and damaging, and medicine of the time did not help, approaching patients from a strictly technical stance, rather than a personalized one, which many people craved. After 1874, Germany passed a law mandating the smallpox vaccine. Many anti-vaccination activists (I guess history does repeat itself, oh hello, 2020) protested that they were being “poisoned” by vaccines and moved heavily toward alternative medicine, which was readily available thanks to Peddler Kuhne and the ever-expanding health market. This doctrine morphed into something called “life-reform.” Groups of people believing in this new phenomenon – including Kuhne – played around with extreme veganism, nudism, open-air exercise, sunbathing, spas, and raw food diets. They subscribed to health magazines like Vegetarian Lookout and The Natural Doctor, spent time at resorts promising weight loss and better health, and disavowing white bread and other processed foods. “Life-reform” began as an admirable effort to lower inactivity and indulgences, morphed into a program that transformed the meaning of health from a lack of sickness into a lifestyle that paragoned self-restraint and moderation in every aspect of life. Good health became synonymous with self-fulfillment in the form of moderation, and a certain standard of beauty. It changed into something that made people incredibly body-conscious and anxious about how their bodies fit into the strict molds of society. Soon, health became a commodity, rather than a part of survival. Does all this sound familiar? I hope so, because here in the 2000s and beyond, “life-reform” morphed again into something called “wellness culture.” With the uprise of social media and instant connection across vast distances, wellness culture has been in the hands of anyone with the ability to open their phone and look at Instagram or TikTok. Those skinny women wearing beige yoga pants with a matching Stanley cup that has so much stuff strapped to it you can’t even hold it correctly? It’s a facade. Now, including the commodification of health, wellness culture has added more warts onto its ugly face. Overconsumption. See, you may think that the doctrine of moderation peddled to you by influencers is helping you to clear out your home, but it’s really just making way for new things to buy, linked on their Amazon Storefronts. They have propended supplements filled with meaningless leaves, objects for you to pay for that are completely bogus, and fasting yourself to the point of starvation and unhealthy weight loss. History really does repeat itself, from anti-vaxxers to fake supplements, we should all be more mindful of what we are feeding ourselves, brain and body.

Author: Jude Ryan

I know how hard it is to be in conversations where you feel like everyone knows something you don't. My aim is to explore, learn, and to share that learning with other people, along with a couple things to help those people who feel unheard, feel like there is someone who understands. I hope to either go into law, or become a college professor, hopefully someday not riddled with debt. View all posts by Jude Ryan