Beyond Erewhon: Wellness As Practice, Not Product
When was the last time you thought about wellness? Maybe it was when you went for a morning run. Maybe it was when you popped a melatonin supplement before bed. Or maybe it was when you came across a post from your favorite influencer promoting a new product — perhaps a smoothie or a meal plan — promising clearer skin and a flatter stomach.
Whatever the wellness activity that prompted the thought, you probably didn’t once think: This is wellness. The term that became ubiquitous in the 2010s is almost impossible to pin down. But that doesn’t mean its flavor isn’t distinct, or that we can’t point to its evolution over the last decade: from supplements, crystals, and breathing exercises marketed primarily to women to a gender-agnostic mega-industry that deals in everything from luxury experiences to quiet outdoors and TikTok influencers, wellness lurks behind almost everything health and beauty related. It’s about how you feel but it’s also about looking good because of how you feel (which is, ideally, good). It’s about striving to be better, whatever that means to you (and knowing what it means to you is also part of the process). Wellness has a vocabulary. It turns anything it touches, from practices to products, into good-for-you lifestyle enhancements. And because it’s not going anywhere, we’re taking a minute to examine where it started, how it’s going, and where it’s leading.
The Oxford English Dictionary traces the word “wellness” to the 1650s, but the term didn’t gain steam until the ‘50s, when physician Halbert L. Dunn — widely credited as the father of the wellness movement — began arguing that health isn’t solely defined by the absence of disease but also by a person’s “inner world,” social environment, and economic status. In a 1959 paper for the Canadian Journal of Public Health, Dunn defined “high-level wellness” as “an integrated method of functioning which is oriented toward maximizing the potential of which the individual is capable.”
Fast forward sixty-some years, hundreds of doctors, yogis, fitness coaches and influencers, and Dunn’s words still echo through today’s wellness marketing far and wide. The difference is, “high-level wellness” and “maximizing potential” now can mean an Equinox membership, Erewhon smoothie, or cold plunges in Soho before a meal at a fast-casual salad chain.
How’d we get here from there? According to Alyssa Bereznak, wellness editor at the Los Angeles Times, in its early days, wellness was about disease prevention and meeting emotional and physical needs. And while it’s still about those things, our emotional and physical needs have evolved alongside what it means to live a good life: “A lot of the roots of American wellness are based in the ‘60s, when Americans were re-examining what it meant to live a fulfilling life. They were shedding this idea that it had to mean buying a house, starting a nuclear family, and working a corporate job until they retired and got a pension.”
So if the goal wasn’t just to attain middle class comforts – or if middle class comforts weren’t actually leading to long, fulfilling and healthy lives – what should the new goal be? Feeling good. In the US in particular, this has almost never not included looking good, and young, as long as possible. And this is one reason why the wellness industry was once largely directed at women – because as we know, women have historically been held to beauty standards that men simply have not been. Jack Bier, founder of health-focused PR firm Jack Taylor PR, thinks back to the sauna boom. “People like me were selling saunas to women. They were talking about the detoxifying benefits, rejuvenation, and it being good for your skin.” As studies about the health benefits of extreme heat (upwards of 180 degrees Fahrenheit) began to emerge, Bier noticed a shift in how the marketing of saunas was framed. “It's difficult to stay in a sauna that hot,” says Bier. “It becomes this Viking-type of thing that's really attached to male culture.” The divide Bier illustrates is stark: Women, historically defined by their appearance, are marketed saunas to improve their looks and mood. Men, on the other hand, are sold saunas to appear powerful and strong.
A lot has changed over the years. Though the wellness industry is still shaped by cultural notions surrounding gender, race, body size, and shape, and its products have caught heat for offering miracles where miracles were not proven out, and the barrier to entry is more often than not the ability to pay a lot of money for special treatments, what we’re seeing now is a more relaxed and inclusive wellness that’s less about what you can buy, and more about how you think. “Wellness does not equal luxury,” says Anthony Vennare, founder of popular health and fitness newsletter Fitt Insider. To Vennare, wellness can be things like going on walks, interacting with other people, and camping. It’s also about “the replacement of third places” like community centers and churches. “It’s bringing like-minded people with similar goals together to participate in an activity that they all enjoy.”
And as convenient as it would be, there’s no magic pill for wellness. As conversations around the importance of belonging, movement therapies, and data-backed treatments all take their place under the very wide wellness umbrella, the future of “wellness” may very well be a verb that means finding and maintaining a practice, investing time, and committing to the things that help you relax and pay attention to yourself in order to better care for others. “Wellness is not a product you can buy; it's not a class you can take,” says Bereznak. “I hope that everyone sticks with it, because the world could all use more therapy, meditation, and exercise in whatever form it is.”
