The re-rise of wellness

The wellness and beauty industry is a highly debated topic and one that is constantly becoming increasingly complex. In the past year, defined by the ongoing pandemic, it appears to have taken on a new and almost religious form, with self-care rituals now appearing to be more important than ever before. So important, that the idea of the self-caring woman – one who radiates health, self-love, and natural perfection – is slowly starting to become the new ideal. But perhaps, what we really need is to move towards a more neutral relationship to self-care – one that is not linked to some form of accomplishment, but rather intuition?

Most of us are aware of the long-standing and unrealistic portrayal of the female body in the media. If not because it is something you have discussed at university or with your friends, perhaps due to the very simple fact that very few of us look like the women we see in advertisements. The idea of the ideal and well-polished female body has certainly been a thing for as long as it will keep changing. It did, however, get trickier when self-love was brought into the picture and it was no longer enough to simply be beautiful (not that that has ever been simple): suddenly your mind had to be that too. You had to love every inch of your body. Which, I am sure we can all agree is a lot harder than it may seem.

And then social media came into the picture, quite literally, and with visual platforms such as Instagram and Youtube, things got even more complex. Now, the people showing off these ideals were actual people, people that were not celebrities or models but regular people living ordinary lives and managing their own platforms, which made their content more “real” and relatable. Which was awesome, in some ways. For one, it meant the rise of a “real beauty” type of genre of content that started evolving and included anything from body-positivity accounts to ones revolving around the unfiltered de-bunking of beauty ideals. And not too far from these, something that can only be described as a subgenre of accounts revolving around self-care, wellness, and self-love. Asking big questions like: How can we learn to love ourselves, accept our bodies, and provide ourselves with the tools that will enable us to live our best and most balanced lives? How can we become beautiful by first making peace with our bodies, and by achieving that beautiful mind? According to most wellness influencers, it soon became clear that the way to do this was by following a simple recipe for success and integrating a number of self-care rituals into your daily life. This includes things like daily meditation and exercise, yoga, pilates, engaging in various beauty-related practices such as dry-brushing and spending money on anything from face creams to crystal rollers and massage tools, scribing and writing so-called “morning pages”, using journaling prompts, writing daily affirmations, taking supplements, practising intuitive eating, investing time and money in good food and cooking, engaging in the law of attraction type of work… The list goes on. And what ties it all together is, of course, the wellness and self-care community of which you also need to be a part of by following these types of wellness accounts on social media as well as regularly viewing and engaging with their content.

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…are we just digging ourselves deeper and deeper into a nagging feeling of imperfection?

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In the past year, a year defined by lockdowns and people being very much stuck with themselves and without distraction, this genre of content seems to have exploded and turned almost religious. Wellness, and self-care rituals like the above, have become something solid to hold on to in chaotic times. In times when a lot of us have been left with a lot of just that – time – it makes sense that we have all been in search of something that can provide us with some sort of structure and comfort. But as with previous generations of wellness-related content, the question remains: does this really serve us, or does it simply twist things even further? Where do we draw the line between reality and expectation? And talking about lines, there seems to be a very fine one between these accounts keeping us inspired and providing us with support, and them leaving us feeling even more flawed. Always on the hunt for ways to feel better and more whole, are we just digging ourselves deeper and deeper into a nagging feeling of imperfection – taking us further and further away from appreciating our bodies and truly feeling good about ourselves? Because if I do not engage in all these self-care rituals, then how can I be certain that I am truly taking the best care of myself? And what happens when you realise that engaging in all these self-care practices has not actually made you feel good? When the chase for inner peace, balance, and wellbeing has in fact left us feeling… more stressed? Because although something as well-intended as wellness is of course meant to serve us, help us feel more at ease so that we can live healthier and happier lives as a whole, being that healthy and happy self can easily become yet another perfected ideal to strive for. And that is where it gets complicated. When we, rather than taking a step back and simply doing what feels good, start overthinking our wellbeing. When we consequently start worrying about all the things that we should be doing to better and improve ourselves even more. This, ironically, seems to push us even further away from wellbeing and suddenly, the idea of de-stressing and taking care of ourselves has resulted in yet another long to-do list.

Of course, simply engaging in these self-care practices does not do the trick. Similarly to self-love related advertising, feeling good is not enough within the world of wellness either – to truly radiate wellness and self-love you have to look good too. You have to be comfortable and in tune with your body: radiate good and positive energy. Be sexy. But also cute. Look healthy. Because if you look at users sharing this type of self-care and wellness-related content, that is what their platforms communicate. And although we can not help but love them and their admirable glow, the people leading these communities of wellness, positivity and self-love have a tendency to be young, pretty, privileged, and with seemingly endless amounts of time at their end. Whatever happened to the flawed “real beauty” type of content?

Today, it seems that even real beauty is unflawed, perfect. Before, ads were ads – pictures and ideals which we were aware of having been edited. Social media came as a form of antidote to the over-edited and photoshopped ads. It gave rise to a backlash in which we were able to see spots and pimples, curvier bodies, flaws: we were reminded that imperfections are a natural part of real beauty. Now, these imperfections seem to have disappeared. Have we all had so much time at home, engaging in self-care rituals that we have “finally” been able to erase imperfection from our lives completely? Perfection and ultimate wellbeing have been achieved, by a privileged few. Or, has the pandemic simply left us feeling so down, that our need for beauty and aesthetics has become much more prominent than before? Perhaps we have had enough of darkness this past year and no longer have the energy to look at people's imperfections on social media – instead, we want things and content that lighten things up and leave us feeling hopeful and beautiful. That provides us with clear instructions on how to achieve that. But whatever our reasons behind engaging in these self-care rituals, and whether we like it or not, the recent re-rise of wellness and self-love seems to have resulted in a new ideal: the purest and most well-intended, innocent form of perfection. Which we all, of course, want.

The re-rise of wellness

“

…are we just digging ourselves deeper and deeper into a nagging feeling of imperfection?

”

Photos by: Nora Bergkvist

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