Wellness has come to mean a lot of different things in the last few years. Prior to this point, I thought wellness was confined to simply exercising either in the gym or through playing sports and maintaining a relatively healthy diet. There wasn’t much more to the concept apart from movement and whole foods. Now, however, wellness is something entirely new — especially with the rise of influencer content creation on social media and the wave of wellness being an aesthetic.
Today, wellness is a brand. It’s a Pinterest board, a perfectly curated morning routine posted to TikTok, a carefully put together Amazon storefront. It’s the $40 cold plunge, the $300 Equinox membership, the LED red light face mask and the adaptogenic mushroom latte with oat milk. And that’s before we even get to the $100 class packs, the matching workout sets, the creatine, the collagen, the magnesium glycinate and whatever else is making its way around social media. Don’t get me wrong, it is refreshing to see the increased awareness surrounding what people are putting into their bodies. But this new shift is also completely exhausting.
The change didn’t occur immediately overnight but rather through the actions of influencers who slowly expanded their content from workout routines and macro breakdowns into something more aspirational. Arbitrary content does not sell. So, instead of being about what you do to keep yourself healthy, wellness became centered around who you are. Instead of just posting pictures at the gym, people leaned into the “gym girl” aesthetic, which often includes 5 a.m. wake-up times, overly extensive morning routines, pilates, cold plunges, journaling and so much more. The message being portrayed is clear: wellness is mental and emotional, which is true, but perhaps this truth is sometimes lost under a pile of products and myths.
Although there is something worthwhile in this expansion, I also think there are a few drawbacks we must consider. Mental health awareness has grown enormously. This shift is fantastic because we were never really told to prioritize emotional regulation and mindfulness to this extent before. People are becoming far more accepting of the idea that they can seek help when needed in order to maintain peace. That matters!
However, wellness has also become commercialized to an absurd degree. Since it’s become an aesthetic, wellness automatically became capitalized into something you can buy. There’s this tremendous pressure to optimize every aspect of your life: tracking your sleep, eating entirely organic, monitoring your HRV with an Oura ring. And while none of these things are inherently bad, the intense volume of it all carries a hefty mental load. It also creates a blockage of sorts. Since there’s too much surrounding the concept of wellness, people may never start their journey at all out of fear that they’re already doing it wrong.
The performative layer makes it even more complicated. When people document their wellness publicly, they are rewarded with likes, followers and brand deals. That system of monetization blurs the line between genuine self care and content creation, and it makes me question whether the wellness activities people showcase are actually beneficial for them, or if they are just for an online public image. When wellness becomes part of your brand, it’s very hard to separate yourself from it. Influencers need to create content that sells, and this is not always synonymous with what resonates with the average individual.
What I miss is the simplicity of all things ‘wellness.’ Going for a run because it clears your head. Lifting weights because you want to feel stronger and see more muscle definition. Cooking dinner because you like how it tastes and it keeps your body full. Getting enough sleep because you feel astronomically better after a consistent eight hours. None of these things photograph particularly well for social media, and they certainly don’t build a following. Mundane, consistent wellness habits don’t attract attention but they are still effective.
It’s ironic that in this journey to make wellness more accessible and widespread we’ve made it harder to actually achieve. There is always another supplement, another diet, another workout set and another morning routine you apparently need in order to reach the best version of yourself. But you don’t actually have to follow what’s laid out. The class packs and matching sets are great if that’s your thing and you should definitely do them if they make you happy. However, it’s important to emphasize that they are not prerequisites for wellness nor are they the blueprint. The original idea still remains: eat well, move your body and rest.
Wellness used to be the foundation, not the finish line. It used to be, and still is, something you don’t need to master to practice; something you define for yourself on your own terms. Somewhere along the way we forgot that. And to be honest, remembering this might be all you actually need on your wellness journey.
