Wellness is Political. The Deeper Issues Our Face Masks Are Masking

I think wellness can mean a lot of different things to different people. For me, wellness is about feeling healthy in my body—physically, for the most part, but also emotionally and mentally. There’s a variety of ways I can work on my overall wellness. 

Drinking smoothies, practicing yoga, walking outside, meditating, cooking a meal at home—the list goes on. But I’ve recently learned that there’s a lot of privilege that comes with being able to invest in my wellness.

Frozen fruit and yoga classes are expensive. Not everyone lives in a safe neighborhood they feel comfortable walking in. Meditation might be accessible to everyone, but certain environments may not promote this practice. And cooking at home…well, what do you do if you’ve never learned how to cook?

The point of me saying all this is to encourage you, dear reader, to reflect on how you view the accessibility of wellness. Influencer and radical wellness researcher, The Wellbeing Scientist (Karli, PhDc), has helped shape my perspective on wellness. 

When answering the question, “Is your health just your choice?,” Karli reminds us that there are choices that have already been made for us. 

“Zoning laws that keep fresh food out of reach, the lack of sidewalks in neighborhoods where walking isn’t safe, curated ads for fast food, alcohol, and sugary drinks plastered across low income communities,” Karli explains. “The truth is, your environment shapes your options long before you do.” 

“Research shows that even biological responses like how we process stress or crave certain foods are tied to the conditions we live in,” Karli says. “Epigenetics, for example, shows that stress from one generation can biologically alter the health outcomes of the next. Health inequities don’t just happen—they’re produced and reproduced across generations.”

I have found that many white women and men in the wellness space overlook these facts. Because, in general, many white women and men in the wellness space don’t believe in science. 

Crazy, right?

I couldn’t believe it either, but when my favorite Holistic Nutritionist (whom I no longer follow) posted support for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. being named United States Secretary of Health & Human Services last year, I knew there was more to the story. 

RFK Jr.—the same man who has falsely claimed that childhood vaccines cause autism and that there is a link between antidepressants and school shootings—was being supported by the white woman nutritionist whom I looked to for health advice. I don’t know about you, but that’s a problem for me. 

Naturally, this sent me down a rabbit hole and I discovered that my favorite health and wellness influencer wasn’t the only one going MAGA. But this came as no surprise to Kate Glavan, health, wellness, and running content creator.

Going back to the 1980s when Ronald Reagen was President of the United States, there began a lot of rhetoric surrounding the welfare queen and personal responsibility, Glavan explains. 

“It’s made people in the United States think about health and wellbeing as a personal responsibility, a personal choice,” Glavan says. “There is no free choice when you look at systemic racism and wealth distribution that creates public health disparities.” 

Sound familiar? 

Glavan makes the claim that without basic needs like food education, affordable housing, and universal healthcare, it makes sense that our society is isolated to consumer self-care as the only way to take care of our health and wellbeing. 

“The pandemic created this huge opening for wellness gurus to pedal whatever they wanted to sell to their consumers because people had so much health anxiety,” Glavan says. “It created this huge opening for right wing propaganda to happen in the wellness space—to not support science, to promote disinformation, and to promote this logic of personal responsibility once again.”

Dr. Jessica Knurick, PhD, RDN, further explains how many white wellness influencers use anger propaganda to sell their products and programs. By comparing the use of color additives in the United State to another country, these influencers purposely distract from the policies that can actually improve public health. 

“Even if they weren’t flat out lying for propaganda purposes, which they are, focusing on ingredients and ultra processed foods and swapping them out is not going to help improve our health,” Dr. Knurick says. “If you swap out one color additive for a different color additive in Skittles, it’s still Skittles.”

Dr. Knurick believes these influencers don’t even really care about the safety of ultraprocessed foods, but rather just sensational content and “eroding trust in science and expertise, so that you only trust them and their $8,000 detox programs.”

Upon learning all this, I couldn’t help but feel betrayed by the Holistic Nutritionist I followed. I trusted her expertise, and while I don’t discredit her specific knowledge, I can see how it’s rooted in right-winged beliefs. 

Does she know that helping people “realize that [they] do have the power to change” is completely ignorant of the systems in place? She might. Or, she might not. 

I feel naive to say that I didn’t realize just how political wellness was, but here we are. Learning and growing, and vetting the people from whom we get our health and wellness information. 

It can be overwhelming to carry this insight, but I encourage you (and myself) not to put it down. 

Point blank, the wellness advances that truly matter often get overlooked by white people. Perhaps not always intentionally, but intention doesn’t matter much when we vote people into power who thrive off misinformation. 

As Karli says, face masks and morning routines are not the problem. “They’re a response—a survival mechanism—for many of us navigating lives with too few supports and too many demands.”

But, this form of wellness masks the deeper issues “because when wellness becomes a commodity, the responsibility quietly shifts back onto us. If you’re still unwell, you’re just not trying hard enough.”

I’m committed to recognizing the ways people talk about wellness. I’m committed to trusting and following experts in this space. And I’m committed to “being in community” with Karli’s radical wellness practice:

• Using the public library instead of feeling like I need to subscribe to another $200 course.

• Showing up to local council meetings or mutual aid groups—even if I’m just listening at first.

• Volunteering at a soup kitchen, shelter, community fridge—spaces where wellness means food, warmth, and dignity. 

• Checking in on a neighbor. Offering to help a friend move. Sharing a meal with the ones I love and who love me. 

• Choosing to believe that collective care is not just some far-off ideal—it’s already happening, quietly, locally, imperfectly. 

“This doesn’t mean we have to give up our self-care rituals. But it does mean recognizing when those rituals are standing in for the kind of support we really need.”