Storm Husbands Features Editor

If you search any variation of ‘self-care’ or ‘wellness’ on apps like TikTok or Instagram, you will likely find a plethora of lifestyle content revolving around prioritising oneself through activities like facemasks, manicures, pilates, and more. There are a multitude of hacks and  products — legs up on the wall for lymphatic drainage and debloating, bamboo combs for hair growth — all pushed by basic algorithms. There is a common theme in these examples, a pervasive motif, and it is not one that revolves around wellness. On the contrary, taking care of yourself in the modern day is instead portrayed as just taking care of your appearance.

One of these popular ‘wellness’ trends is gua sha. Endorsed by celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Kylie Jenner, gua sha was originally an ancient Chinese practice dating back to the end of the Han Dynasty, if not further. When translated, the name describes a process of scraping the skin until it is sandy or red and was often used to alleviate illness, aches, believed to displace stagnant qi, which acts as a spiritual lifeforce for the body.

Nowadays, however, gua sha is less about relieving ailments, proven most aptly by the almost gentle glides you will see in TikTok tutorials rather than the harsh, painful passes the practice traditionally requires.

The adoption of wellness by the beauty industry is reflected by many other examples. Pilates originated as a way for bedridden war soldiers to exercise, but what was then a way of gaining strength is now a method of achieving skinny arms. Eating well, the way to remain healthy throughout life and meet personal nutritional goals has been made into a cookie-cutter guide on achieving glowing skin and a flat stomach.

When paired with terms like ‘clean’ — which, further to the point, often prefixes ‘beauty’ on social media platforms — it perpetuates the idea that things like being heavier or having acne-prone skin indicate unhealthiness.

Another pertinent issue with this conflation of wellness and beauty is the inherent consumerism it poses. You can be healthy too, at a cost. Popular intravenous hydration treatments and biomarker screening tests can cost thousands of dollars. One can hardly find content in the wellness-beauty genre that does not direct the viewer to an Amazon storefront. Magazines that used to encourage you to buy the most beautiful celebrity’s sworn-by mascara now partner with their favourite red-light therapy mask. The trends rely on health, discipline, and budget, making modern wellness a practice fostering exclusion.

Body positivity has lectured us on congratulating skinniness or flawless skin. We now prioritise ‘detoxing’ and ‘balance’, but when you examine this shift closely, it is clear that the language changes while the standards remain the same. The most prized aspect of the human body should not be youth or thinness but rather ability; the strength to walk to class or hug a loved one. Things do not have to be beautiful to be worthy.