We'll never achieve 'true wellness' if we're all too hungry to get the job done

We’ll never achieve ‘true wellness’ if we’re all too hungry to get the job done

Gwyneth Paltrow’s summit hits London this weekend. While revelers are debauching hard at Glasto, wellness devotees will be knocking back turmeric and ginger shots and getting high on life.

A video for the two-day event describes it as ‘focused on being and achieving our optimal selves’. And honestly, what could be more empowering than taking control of your health and wellbeing? It will only cost you a cool grand, but hey, it’s payday weekend! Go wild.

It’s no secret that the brand has come under serious fire for allegedly promoting pseudoscience and positioning charlatans as experts, while simultaneously dismissing serious concerns raised by credible medical professionals. The Working Girl Detox (WGD), for instance, is ‘high on nutrition and hydration’ apparently. I did the maths and this plan doesn’t contain enough nutrition to sustain a child, let alone a fully grown adult. It clocks in at just over 1,000 calories per day.

There is a curious privilege in actively choosing not to eat. While food banks across the UK are struggling to keep up with demand, swathes of women who have the resources to achieve adequate nutrition are giving food a hard pass. It’s difficult to think of more grandiose and blatant social signalling than to reject something so base as food.

Not only does the pursuit of our so-called ‘optimal’ selves put our physical and mental health on the line, it keeps us collectively subdued. Naomi Wolf wrote in The Beauty Myth: ‘Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.’

Restricting our diets also means restricting ideas and creativity, productivity and engagement in life outside of ourselves. It restricts relationships and connection. We’re depriving ourselves of hard-earned freedoms.

It also distracts from the fact that the people who can afford elite wellness are the same people who are going to live longest anyway. Not because of cordycep mushroom elixirs, but because health disparities track across a . While Goop is estimated to be worth more than , the number of people in the UK struggling to meet their most

When you are living in chronic deprivation and poverty, it’s difficult to meet your basic needs; for food, rest, security, safety and perhaps community. Your attention is focused on meeting those needs in whichever way you can, and once met, thoughts turn to our identity and staving off the inevitable.

Goop takes democratic and otherwise accessible practices like yoga and mindfulness, whitewashes them, and sells them back to people at a premium, with the illusion of control. As though if we could just align our chakras, we’d stave off cancer.

When called out for being too expensive, Goop have been that the brand sells a variety of products at a range of price points and even have an ‘Under $100’ section on their online shop – I doubt, however, that anyone would consider a $90 clutch brandishing the word ‘dude’ essential for wellbeing.

The subtext here is that the average woman really has no excuse for not buying into the lifestyle – it’s totally affordable! – and if they don’t then they only have themselves to blame. It serves to reinforce the idea that in order to take care of yourself, you need to buy stuff (and side note: that stuff should also look cute on Instagram).

The commodification of wellness leaves people in a permanent state of confusion over what actually constitutes wellbeing and the degree to which it can be achieved (spoiler: we are all unwell to one extent or another). It distorts our ideas of what it means to be well.

The consequence is that we equate health with thinness, Vitamixes, and green powders. We conflate aesthetics with wellbeing. We forget that our bodies are imperfect machines that do weird things for no apparent reason and sometimes malfunction.

We forget that bodies are messy and that is the way it is supposed to be. Elite wellness sells us the lie that if we just follow the rules, it will all be under control.

Sadly Goop is nothing new. It is the latest in a long-line of ‘chic’ and aspirational ‘clean’ lifestyles, detoxes, cleanses, resets, and fasting programmes that come with a side of £100 superfood powders.

We are taught to aspire to a level of affluence where real concerns around social justice and inequality are replaced by fantasies where leek powder is more effective than the human liver. What an enormous privilege, to live in this fantasy world.

This emphasis on cleanliness and purity drives fear around eating, creating a hypervigilance around food and the body. This in turn breeds more fear and anxiety, causing us to disconnect from our bodies and get trapped in our own heads. Which begs the question, why do we aspire to this?

In amongst the overwhelming amounts of advice on supplements, crystals, ‘non-toxic’ beauty and ‘clean’ household products, Goop has neglected to account for the single most powerful force in human wellbeing: social equality begets health equality.

True wellness isn’t hiding at the bottom of a bottle of CBD oil. Indeed there is no magic potion. If we are serious about improving health as a society then it will require massive structural shifts in housing, transport, education, employment and actual health care (not fantasy health care).

It requires building communities and prevention of social isolation. It means shifting our attitudes towards mental health and making sure people have equal access to psychological support as we do physical health services.

No small change certainly, but one that won’t happen if we’re all too hungry to get the job done.

MORE: Inside Gwyneth Paltrow’s unconventional approach to marriage, sex and relationships amid Brad Falchuk revelation

MORE: Gwyneth Paltrow wants us all to use ‘bonus mum’ instead of step mum to avoid anxiety

MORE: Gwyneth Paltrow thinks psychedelics are the next big thing – and yes, they’ll feature on Goop

Source: Metro

Powered by NewsAPI.org

Keywords:

Gwyneth Paltrow • London • Glastonbury Festival • Turmeric • Ginger • Jefferson Airplane Takes Off • Pseudoscience • The Charlatans (UK band) • Working Girl • Detoxification (alternative medicine) • Nutrition • Dehydration • Nutrition • Child • Adult • Calorie • Nutrition • Society • Mental health • Naomi Wolf • The Beauty Myth • Dieting • Sedative • Women's history • Idea • Creativity • Productivity • Interpersonal relationship • Religious education • Mushroom Records • Health equity • Chronic condition • Poverty • Poverty • Maslow's hierarchy of needs • Food • Leisure • Security • Community • Attention • Thought • Democracy • Yoga • Mindfulness • Illusion of control • Chakra • Yamaha S90 • Clutch (eggs) • Instagram • Commodification • Well-being • Stephanie Brown (comics) • Green politics (environmentalist) • Aesthetics • Well-being • Human body • Machine • Reason • Chic (band) • Fasting • Superfood • Social justice • Economic inequality • Leek, Staffordshire • Fantasy (psychology) • Hypervigilance • Human body • Fear • Anxiety • Human body • Begging the question • Toxicity • Quality of life • Social equality • Health • Health • Bottom of a Bottle • Cannabidiol • Society • Transport • Education • Employment • Health care • Fantasy (psychology) • Health care • Construction • Community • Preventive healthcare • Social isolation • Attitude (psychology) • Mental health • Psychology • Health • Health care • Employment • Gwyneth Paltrow • Same-sex marriage • Sex • Interpersonal relationship • Brad Falchuk • Revelation • Gwyneth Paltrow • Mother • Mother • Anxiety • Gwyneth Paltrow • Psychedelic drug •