The Whiteness of Wellness
By Irene Koch, Editor-in-Chief
CW: mentions of police violence, therapy, medical gaslighting
Picture this: it’s the summer of 2020, and you’re doing your Daily Scroll through your social media feeds, only they look different compared to those of previous summers. Infographics about police violence, links to bail funds, pictures of protests, and videos elucidating the horrors of the “justice” system as experienced by Black and brown individuals dot your feed (and they’re likely swathed in pastels and bubble letters to be more “fun!”). There’s no denying that the picture that’s painted is bleak, and the content matter is oftentimes difficult to swallow. Every now and then, you probably hear reminders, either on social media or from family and friends, to “relax”, “take time for yourself”, “turn off your news feed”, “don’t inundate yourself with so much awfulness,” or “this isn’t good for you.” Here, folks, is where we reach the pivotal tipping point, the thinnest of thin lines, between wellness and privilege.
The wellness industry—like pretty much all industries in a post-colonial world—has serious racism problems, to the point where it’s difficult to decide where to begin this behemoth of an article. Think of various wellness activities/products that have become popular throughout the years. Yoga practice, gua sha, plant-based diets, meditation, massage therapy, acupuncture, and intermittent fasting all have roots in Asian and American indigenous populations. Over the years, these practices have gradually been incorporated into middle class American wellness culture, and you may have seen some of these practices written about on our site. Additionally, many health foods or “superfoods” that have become popular in recent years are indigenous to mostly nonwhite countries—acai berries, goji berries, quinoa, cacao, hemp, chia seeds, avocados, turmeric, and many more. While many producers have begun growing these foods in the United States, some of these products are grown almost exclusively in their regions of origin, such as acai trees in the Amazon rainforest and turmeric in India and other islands in the Indian Ocean.
You may be thinking, “so what? Lots of cultures have plenty to contribute to the quest for wellness.” And you’re right! The problem arises when these populations that have utilized these resources for thousands of years do not benefit from the utilization of the practices and products they cultivated. For example, yoga originated in South Asia over 5,000 years ago. Yet when you think of yoga classes and instructors, you probably think of white faces and Lululemon leggings. Little if any attribution of these practices goes to their originators, to the point where South Asian yoga participants report feeling excluded from the traditions that they held dear. While many grew up believing yoga to be a multifaceted spiritual practice, they now see their tradition appropriated into a fitness class with décor that makes light of the Hindu deities. Another example is the acai berry, a fruit that is grown in tall trees primarily in regions of the Amazon rainforest. The industry relies primarily on indigenous peoples, especially indigenous children due to their small size, to make the dangerous climb up the trees to harvest the fruit. They risk injury or death if they fall, and they do this for poverty wages so you can make your smoothie bowl. As if there needed to be more salt in the wound, many of these products and practices pioneered by nonwhite communities are often either fetishized for their “exotic and mystical auras” or whitewashed to the point where many consumers don’t even know the trend’s roots or associate it with the culture that started it.
What’s particularly ironic is that Western countries are now embracing the wellness trends that they previously used violence to eradicate in indigenous communities. In the Americas, the Choctaw, Aztec, Mayan, Cherokee, and many more have eaten plant-based diets for thousands of years. The United States government crushed their ways of life with residential schools, bloody wars, and removal from their ancestral lands, attempting to erase and replace indigenous ways of life with transplanted Western ones. In addition, the introduction of diets heavily dependent on animal products by colonizing powers has presented additional difficulties. Anywhere between 63-98% of Asian, African, and Indigenous people are lactose intolerant, despite being encouraged to assimilate into the Western diet that prioritizes dairy consumption. Yet, recent shifts towards plant-based diets are often too little too late for these communities. In the last 50 years, 17% of the Amazon has disappeared, largely due to deforestation to make way for cattle ranching. The destruction of these lands has prompted several indigenous communities to switch to meat-based diets. Meanwhile, militant rich white vegans accuse meat-eaters of hating the earth, and on a larger scale, the global North’s campaign to fight climate change asks the global South to give up their ways of life, as if the global North’s land overuse and aggressive capitalism were not the reason why both the victims of colonization and the planet were in this predicament in the first place. Primarily white and primarily privileged groups are still reaping the benefits of colonialism at the expense of nonwhite communities’ labor and even lives without receiving the credit they deserve.
The question of who has access to wellness merits a more local focus as well. While harvesters of superfoods or health foods certainly do not reap their benefits in full, neither do most populations within the United States. With the surging prices of healthy foods in the United States, the prospect of maintaining a balanced diet is a pipe dream for those unable to afford a $12 acai bowl or a $15 salad. Accessing these foods becomes even harder in food deserts—locales with little access to healthy foods that are often found in low-income communities. According to census data from 2009, the U.S. Economic Research Committee estimated about 23.5 million people in the United States lived in food deserts. If you’ve ever had to stop in a smaller town on a road trip, you probably didn’t see many Sweetgreens, CAVAs, or Trader Joe’s stores; instead, you probably saw McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, gas station markets, and small grocery stores with few nutrient-rich unprocessed foods. It’s not just healthy foods prevalent in wellness culture that are often inaccessible to low-income populations. Member-only gyms, hair and nail salons, spas, massage parlors, and other sites people frequent for the purposes of self-care are not cheap, often excluding people of low socio-economic status from avenues of self-care that potentially could help them.
And if you thought these goods and services were expensive, think about the physical and mental health industry. Medical gaslighting of women, people of color, and queer and trans individuals by health professionals, whether at yearly checkups or in life-threatening situations, can prevent marginalized groups from seeking and receiving the care they need. Medications like SSRIs can be lifechanging for those with clinical mental health issues like depression and anxiety, but without insurance, the exorbitant prices charged by the pharmaceutical industry make them inaccessible to many. Insurance also may not even be enough to cover visits to therapists and mental health professionals, many of whom do not accept insurance, and prices can be more than $200 for a fifty-minute session. Even if one is lucky enough to have insurance and/or have enough out-of-pocket funds, the prospect of getting therapy can be more difficult for marginalized groups. If one wants to start therapy to deal with trauma pertinent to their specific identity—such as the amount of academic pressure they face as a first-generation American, the journey to accept themselves as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, the racism they encounter in their daily lives—oftentimes they want to work with a therapist that has their same background (e.g. a Black woman may wish to have a Black female therapist, a gay man a gay male therapist, etc.). However, the psychology field is 84% white. While one’s race or background does not necessarily impede one’s ability to serve as a good therapist in general, the lack of a shared background may make it difficult for a therapist and client to work well together or may even retraumatize the patient, such as Dior, whose white therapist did not understand Latinx cultural norms, which affected her advice, or Scott, who believed that his status as a Black man made his white female therapist treat him like a threat that needed to be controlled. Factors like these can make the step of getting therapy even more daunting for marginalized communities than it already is. Combined with the fact that Black and Latinx Americans are less likely to have the health insurance necessary to cover these costly, potentially retraumatizing treatments, the advice “just get therapy” or “focus on self-care” can sometimes be more tone-deaf than helpful.
This tangled mess the self-care industry has created is ironic given the history of the movement. Pioneered in the 1960s by the women’s liberation and civil rights movements, the act of caring for oneself in the face of a hostile world began as a political act, “a claiming [of] autonomy over the body as a political act against institutional, technocratic, very racist, and sexist medicine” For marginalized communities, self-care can be a soft place to land amid a world often hostile to them, allowing them to recharge after dealing with the trauma they experience as a result of their identity.
However, this idea can also be used as an excuse for privileged groups to avoid dealing with systemic issues that affect underprivileged groups, as I mentioned in the opening of this article. Two summers ago, the death of George Floyd and the protests against policing in this country brought racism to the forefront of the conversation for many people, including white people who may not have discussed race much before. The process of understanding one’s own privilege and how messed up the world is is draining, challenging, traumatizing, and ongoing, and it’s not meant to be done without some form of self-care. Yet the need for self-care and the difficulty of processing the sheer horror that is racial inequality in America doesn’t excuse you from watching the news, checking your privilege, or educating yourself. You don’t get a pass for not understanding or caring about the causes of marginalized groups because “politics makes me upset” or “all this social justice stuff is hard on my mental health ☹”. Tough shit. What may just be a difficult conversation for you is the everyday, incessant reality of someone in a marginalized group. They don’t get to turn off the part of their brain that thinks about race whenever it gets stressful for them because of the history of racial violence in the United States.
Perhaps that’s why some of the most popular forms of self-care are inherently isolating—a night by oneself in one’s apartment, an afternoon in a white-walled massage parlor, a wellness retreat with other people like you who have the time and money to spare for it. None of these activities are inherently evil, and it’s usually necessary to isolate yourself from your stressors to heal. But if you’re not careful, they can also isolate you from the larger world and prevent you from dedicating the time and care your other priorities demand, one of which is the lives and rights of those disadvantaged by a system from which you profit. Self-care is necessary in sensitive climates like the police violence protests two years ago or today as we watch the developing situation in Ukraine, but it does not excuse you from exhibiting basic human decency. Seeing white mental health and white comfort prioritized over the actual lives of marginalized groups—whether in avoiding news cycles that make people “uncomfortable” or coming up with the latest wellness trend for white corporate America to exploit—in an industry that supposedly prioritizes wellness for all is a particular brand of evil that would be laughable if it weren’t so vile.
I’m not saying we need to just abandon self-care, stop therapy, return our yoga mats, and run naked and afraid into the American hellscape with no emotional support whatsoever, but there are ways we can be more intentional about how we look after our mental and physical wellness. I also recognize that a lot of these suggestions are fairly topical, because unfortunately, we can’t create a more equitable wellness movement without completely overturning the system. (I may feel pretty powerful writing this article fueled by Girl Scout cookies and vibes at 3am, but even I can’t do that.) Nevertheless, here a few changes you can make to your wellness routine:
Diversify your feed. You may only follow white fitness instructors or white influencers because “it’s just what TikTok showed me”, but algorithms are racist and show you what you want to see, even if you don’t express it explicitly. So, try to seek out content creators of various identities—women, queer individuals, people of color, non-Americans, etc. For example, say if you want to start eating vegetarian and decide to look for vegetarian Food-stas to follow. Are the first ones that come to your mind white? Can you follow one or two non-white influencers for every white one you follow? The same goes for supporting business ventures owned by people of color. You want an exercise mat? See if you can find a black-owned business that sells them (hey, here’s a link to a bunch of them right here that I found from a quick Google search – see how easy that was?).
If you’re financially able to do so, pay attention to where the products you purchase come from, and shop accordingly. Shopping sustainably 100% of the time is financially impossible unless you are quite literally drowning in cash. However, if you have cash to spare or feasibly can reallocate funds to have cash to spare, your dollar is your voice. Don’t know where to start? Try it one product at a time. Maybe one month, you skip your Shein haul and head down to a thrift store instead. Next month, you switch to fair trade coffee or farmers’ market produce. Even if you can’t make a bunch of changes, showing your support for these organizations helps keep them alive and allows their workers to put food on the table.
Be cognizant of varieties in socioeconomic status. If you’re talking to a friend who’s been struggling to find a good workout routine or manage their depression, remember that although it may be financially feasible for you to join a gym or start weekly therapy, it may not be that way for them. See if you can find low-cost alternatives to what they need. Send them your favorite workout video on YouTube, suggest a good CBT workbook, or seek out therapists that either take insurance or ones that offer financial assistance. (BetterHelp and Cerebral also offer accessible online therapy options, even if you don’t have insurance. If you’re looking for a therapist that matches your identity, here’s a list of databases for finding therapists of color, and here’s an article about finding queer and queer-affirming therapists with links to various databases within.)
Do your research. If you decide to hop on a wellness trend that began in non-white cultures, don’t just jump in headfirst. Read up on the practice and see if you can find content creators from that culture that you can support, or at least ones that are respectful of the tradition’s roots. Whether it’s a Hindu yoga instructor or a Chinese acupuncturist, you can support the groups that started these traditions while getting your money’s worth at the same time.
Keep up with politics surrounding these issues, and support those that make wellness more equitable and accessible for all. If you agree that therapy is for everyone, great! What national or local initiatives can you support that work to make it available for everyone? What’s your stance on universal healthcare and making mental healthcare more affordable? If you think we should eat more leafy greens and lean proteins, awesome! Are there local initiatives like community gardens and non-profits that help alleviate food deserts that you can support? Do you support legislation that would expand public transit and make it easier for people to get to and from grocery stores? If you don’t, why not? If you haven’t heard it enough, the personal is political, and I believe you can’t support wellness practices like these without supporting policies that make them more accessible for everyone. If you don’t, take another look at what you believe in: do you really believe in therapy for everyone, or do you just believe in it for the white and affluent?
Educate yourself. Your marginalized peers—women, people of color, LGBTQIA+ individuals, immigrants, poor people, etc.—do not exist as a personal sounding board for you. The practice of performing the emotional labor of educating others who couldn’t be bothered to go to Google is mentally draining. Educating yourself is important, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of the very groups you’re trying to help.
Be mindful of why you’re taking breaks from news cycles. I’m not saying witnessing second-hand the trauma experienced by others isn’t draining. Everyone deserves breaks from it, especially those who share the identity with the victim. For those that don’t share that identity, think long and hard about why you’re changing the station when you see a police shooting story or clicking away from an article because it has the audacity to bring up race. Are you doing it so you can recharge yourself and be in a better mental state to advocate for others, or are you doing it because examining your privilege makes you uncomfortable?
Wellness is an ongoing process meant to care for both the whole human and the whole of humanity, not just the parts that are commodifiable. However, self-care is not synonymous with insulation from or ignorance of the larger inequitable world in which we live. We’re obligated to ensure that the promotion of wellness gives everyone a seat at the table and ensures that those historically disadvantaged by this industry receive the support and credit they deserve. As we work in earnest to remove the blinders from our eyes that prevent us from seeing the injustice deeply entrenched in the fabric of our world, I’m confident we can also work to make the prospect of universal health and wellness in whatever forms they may take a reality for all.
Note: I am far from the first to discuss the concept, and there are several other wellness bloggers and writers of color who have written extensively about this topic and have much more epistemic weight than me to discuss these topics. Some of the sources I’ve listed below are just articles and databases where I found statistics, but others are incredibly well-written op-eds that I studied in writing this article. If you want to read more on these topics, please consider giving these a read!
Sources Consulted:
https://www.ayanatherapy.com/post/the-lack-of-therapists-of-color-and-why
https://www.self.com/story/white-people-self-care
https://www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/g34976127/black-owned-activewear-brands/
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2017/04/the_history_of_self_care.html
https://www.thecut.com/article/wellness-doesnt-belong-to-white-women.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/11/28/brazil-acai-child-labor/
http://www.ivu.org/history/native_americans.html
https://www.beautyindependent.com/asian-american-beauty-brand-founders-ethics-selling-gua-sha/
https://www.them.us/story/how-to-find-a-queer-therapist
https://www.justdavia.com/blog/directories-for-therapists-of-color
https://www.northwell.edu/katz-institute-for-womens-health/articles/gaslighting-in-womens-health
https://belatina.com/medical-gaslighting-people-of-color/
https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/10/healthcare-abusing-trans-folks/
https://stanforddaily.com/2020/02/07/white-veganism/
https://www.self.com/story/yoga-indian-cultural-appropriation
https://everydayfeminism.com/2016/05/yoga-cultural-appropriation/
