Introduction
Santa Monica, California
It’s a sunny spring day in Southern California. Two thousand women are gathered on the wooden planks of the famous Santa Monica Pier. Seagulls are squawking overhead, but the women pay them no mind. They’re busy saluting the sun from a rainbow of colored yoga mats in perfectly spaced rows, spread out over a half mile of the pier. A yoga instructor’s commands blare at them from a stage’s loudspeakers: “The universe is calling and your right leg is going to answer.” The women extend their legs in unison, with military precision.
Usually, after a yoga class, everyone grabs their stuff and walks to their car, maybe chatting it up a bit with fellow classmates. But not here. The loudspeakers switch to club music, and the yoga class morphs into a rave. Women bounce up and down and headbang to Robyn. Their stainless steel water bottles become percussion instruments. Nobody is drunk, or high, or rolling—the only thing they’ve consumed recently is complimentary kombucha. Also: it’s eleven o’clock in the morning.1
This is Wanderlust, a traveling wellness festival that bills itself as an “all-out celebration of mindful living.” It goes from town to town, setting up pop-up outdoor fitness events like revival tents, drawing women together to bond, set personal goals, meditate, and revel in collective namaste vibes. Wanderlust is Coachella for healthy living, and like the famous desert concert, Wanderlust sells both tickets and sponsorships.
On the far side of the pier is an Adidas-sponsored lounge with an interactive art installation where you’re invited to post a mantra to their website. A blond woman wearing Tory Burch workout gear offers her own: “To feel whole again.” She then slips her Chanel handbag over her arm and proceeds to the yoga shopping fair.
New York, New York
The scents of bergamot and frankincense flow through a minimalist spa. White walls, light birchwood floors, soft gray furniture. Succulents in sparse pots. WTHN is not an East Coast radio station—it’s a word that’s pronounced “within,” and it’s the name of this soothing spa. Though “spa” isn’t exactly the right word for this place. WTHN is the Drybar of acupuncture.
Traditional Chinese medicine is now as chic and as easy to book as a blowout. I’ve been afraid of needles all my life, but WTHN has made this ancient practice into a modern luxury experience, with women lining up to be pricked and prodded by a copious number of them. While a pampering acupuncture session for “mind + body relief” is the main item on the menu, WTHN also offers a blend of Chinese herbs to prevent stress and boost energy so you can “keep calm and rock on.”
Several thirtysomething women crowd WTHN’s bustling lobby. It’s a weekday afternoon in January. Some are dressed in work attire, others wear stylish black wool coats. “I mean, who isn’t exhausted?” says one woman, running her freshly manicured hands through her honey-highlighted hair. Several ailments brought her here: constant headaches, groggy mornings, and pervasive anxiety. An attendant calls her name, and she stands up, excited.
As the staff lead her to her own private cubicle, her voice echoes down the hallway. “I’m off to be relaxed!” The rest of us, waiting for our turn, are left to browse the impressive display of supplements.
Palm Desert, California
It’s early fall and I’m at Ganja Goddess Getaway, a women-only weed retreat about a half hour outside Palm Springs. This self-described “stoner girl slumber party” is held on a rented equestrian estate where the event organizers expect you to be high the whole time. Most of the guests sleep in tents on the grounds; I get to sleep in a horse stall in the stable. (Don’t worry—it’s furnished like a hotel room.)
Weed is available, in large quantities and in many appetizing forms. There are cannabis-infused cotton candy machines, waitstaff holding trays of pre-rolled joints, cookies and brownies, and something you use for “dabbing.” There is also an open snack bar in case you get the munchies.
It’s a diverse crowd. At night, by the campfire, a young Black mom in her thirties trades parenting advice with a retired white trucker in her fifties. A twentysomething Latina decked out in athleisurewear talks politics with a sixtysomething former hippie. At dinner, I mention to a twenty-five-year-old at my table how refreshing it is to hang out with older women. “Yeah,” she says, exhaling pot smoke. “They’re chill.” Then someone else excuses herself from the meal, explaining “My edible just kicked in.” Everyone else nods in solidarity.2
At one point a soothing voice comes over the public address system. “The belly dancing class will start on the great lawn in five minutes.” Then the voice adds, “I love you.” A pair of millennials in bright tank tops sway lazily down to the lawn with a gray-haired woman in a floral housedress. Several women have crowns of flowers in their hair. One middle-aged mom gives up early and retires to lie down in the grass, where she sprawls and looks up at the sky in amazement.
“I feel like we live in a society that requires a lot of charging ahead, getting things done, and going on autopilot in order to accomplish a lot of tasks,” the co-founder of Ganja Goddess Getaway told me. “We need this kind of a moment where you slow things down and really just focus on yourself.”
* * *
These women—from the designer-attired Wanderlust participant to the cannabis campers—are just a few examples of the millions of women contributing to the $4.4 trillion wellness economy. Far beyond yoga classes and veganism, they are modeling their entire lives—from where they live to whom they socialize with and how they parent—on the wellness lifestyle du jour.
What is “wellness,” exactly? At its most basic level, it’s the active pursuit of well-being outside the realm of medicine. It’s more than just avoiding sickness; it encompasses prevention and maintenance: nutrition, fitness, sleep, community support, and stress management. It’s the choices we make to feel better physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually.
Does it all sound a bit general and vague? That’s because it is. There is no agreed-upon definition of what “well” is, and it’s one reason why the wellness industry has grown so big. Plenty of companies have their own idea of how to get there—what you need to do, buy, or think—which is why the term “wellness” has devolved into an ambiguous marketing term that can just as easily mean activated charcoal toothpaste as it does mindfulness. Wellness can mean almost anything.
In many ways, wellness is whatever you need for your health. There’s no one right path; wellness requires awareness of the uniqueness of your experience. It’s about what you, the individual, can do for yourself to get through this thing we call life.
Entire industries have suddenly popped up around the desire to get healthier and live longer. Small boutique fitness studios now comprise 40 percent of the gym market and have become the place for women to exercise and hang out. Sales of organic food top $60 billion a year. Once a fringe practice, meditation has seeped into mainstream American culture (to create a multibillion-dollar industry). Two-thirds of American women devote half of their closets to athleisurewear.3
Wellness has taken over beauty, tech, and even housing and alcohol. Vitamin IV drip services are wait-listing customers; nightclubs serve booze-free herbal tonics; spiritual healers sell out workshops; real estate developers rush to build “wellness communities”; and Silicon Valley is pushing psychedelics as a mental health therapeutic. Even our language has changed. People say things like “I need this for my self-care,” “I’m on a cleanse,” or “I’m practicing gratitude.” These slogans weren’t around fifteen years ago. Now they’re repeated by celebrities, business founders, suburban moms, and many a Gen Zer.
Of course, people have always bought things to help their well-being, but what we’re witnessing today is an unprecedented cultural and historical moment. Wellness is a movement now. According to NielsenIQ, health and wellness was “the single most powerful consumer force of 2021.”4 Never before have we seen this level of focus on self-improvement, with U.S. millennials labeled the most “health-conscious generation.”5 We have become a self-care nation, though arguably one that still lacks the fundamentals of well-being.
Being “healthy” once meant going to the doctor regularly. Now it means you should rarely need to see a doctor. Wellness, in its current form, is almost an aspirational obsession for some and close to religious dogma for others. The average American believes adherence to popularized methods can overcome sickness, unhappiness, and even death. A strict overhaul of diet, movement, and thoughts is hailed as the new messiah. In wellness, it seems, we trust.
* * *
When athleisure seized fashion in 2014, it coincided with other lifestyle trends of its time, like the proliferation of boutique fitness studios and cold-pressed juice bars. Back then, I was a thirty-one-year-old digital news producer at NBC News in New York City. I had an inkling that a cultural phenomenon was coming into place, which I chalked up to holed-up, tech-addicted millennials craving physical movement. But by 2017, when I began to cover the wellness industry full time as a business magazine reporter in L.A., I saw the emergence of far more trends—clean eating, “forest bathing,” meditation retreats—with more age groups joining the fold. Suddenly, it wasn’t just your New Age pal in Venice Beach raving about bone broth. It was most of your friends too. Sometimes it was your mom. Or your boss.
Copyright © 2022 by Rina Raphael
