Historically, mainstream wellness functioned as a rebranding of diet culture. Marketing campaigns sold smoothies, supplements, and fitness memberships using the underlying promise of weight loss and physical perfection. This standard equated thinness with health and moral superiority, leaving many feeling excluded, anxious, and deeply disconnected from their bodies.

If you are fat and sedentary, wellness culture still hates you. If you are thin and eat processed food, wellness culture pities you. The only way to be validated by the wellness industry is to perform health visibly. You must post the green smoothie. You must check into the yoga studio. You must buy the $150 leggings. When wellness becomes a performance, it ceases to be about feeling good and becomes about looking virtuous .