Romanticise your life. Become “that girl.” Be the main character.
How often do we hear and see these things, specifically on our social media feeds? How many times daily are we sucked into the world of online wellness trends and fads?
You can’t deny that ‘perfect’ people presenting their ‘perfect’ lives in fifteen-second snippets is inspirational on occasion. It can motivate you to journal, read a book, start eating healthier, exercise, and even meditate. We also can’t deny that the idea of ‘romanticizing’ one’s life has brightly impacted people in the past; it has gotten them to appreciate their circumstances and approach situations with more patience and positivity.
However, some inevitably toxic parts of wellness culture leave people feeling worse rather than better. One is the notion that to be ‘well,’ you must look a certain way. Men and women with zero body fat percentages, toned muscles, and six-pack abs are the only ones that can be considered ‘well.’ On the internet, health, just like beauty, is one size fits all. You aren’t ‘well’ unless you are toned. Little to no variation exists in the body types of the most popular wellness influencers because the vast majority of us are attracted to their aesthetically appealing appearances.
This connects perfectly to the next problem with wellness culture; the obsessive and over-glamorised version of health that we are presented with today. Scrolling through Instagram, you’d rarely find influencers exposing the less-fabulous parts of self-improvement or glowing up: the gloomy early mornings, the struggling faces at the gym, the bored expressions as someone may try to get through an overhyped self-help book.
We are presented with the most specifically curated images of an influencer’s life. Naturally, it leads one to believe that their own lives must be this perfect, this movie-like all the time, when that isn’t true at all. Suddenly, not having glassy, clear skin 24/7 means you’re unhealthy, eating a flour and sugar cake means you have no respect for your body, and skipping one day of exercise implies that you are undisciplined.
The wellness culture of social media dictates that our current lifestyles, our current routines, and diets are insufficient if we want to be in the ‘prime state of health.’ Without expensive skincare products, overpriced vitamin supplements, and endless kinds of healing crystals, we can’t be healthy.
According to the Global Wellness Institute, the global wellness industry was valued at over 4 trillion dollars in 2019 and is expected to expand by at least 3 trillion dollars by 2025.
We don’t need to be spending exuberant amounts on bettering ourselves. We don’t need to look perfect while doing it. Finally, and most importantly, we must remember that ‘health and wellness’ look different for everyone.
