Rich White Women Can’t Sell Me Wellness
Rich White Women Can’t Sell Me Wellness
You Can’t Bottle Privilege
In today’s post:
Q (not) A Beauty & Pop Culture Questions
The Full Beat Rich White Women Can’t Sell Me Wellness: You Can’t Bottle Privilege
What are people experiencing in North Carolina right now? In this piece, Dylan Rupert wrote about his experience getting caught up in Hurricane Helene during a vacation to Asheville, which he describes as the “...reality of survival in an age of climate calamity…” Here is a link to a roundup of resources that you can browse to donate to and support Western North Carolina.
Is Doja Cat partnering with AirBnB to give her fans a spooky evening? It seems like it. Fifteen fans will nibble caviar and “enjoy an immersive living room performance.” It isn’t clear whether or not fans will get to meet Doja during this performance, but for only $77 per person, I doubt it.
Have you seen The Substance? I’m thinking about going this weekend, but I am a little scared. I typically watch horror in the daylight and in the safety of my own home. Demi + body swapping injectable + evils of beauty culture? How can I not go? I’m also very interested in the first negative review of the film that I’ve seen.
Rich White Women Can’t Sell Me Wellness: You Can’t Bottle Privilege
I am a dream consumer. If a product comes in pink, is affordable, and in stock, I am likely the target audience. My recent purchases include a pink crimping iron and an ombre pink keyboard with a matching mouse. Despite my interest in the pink, shiny, and new, no wealthy white woman has ever been able to sell me “wellness.”
There is no amount of pink that will ever entice me to visit the website of a born wealthy, white celebrity who is selling any kind of workout, supplement, or even activewear set. What I have learned about the disproportionate impact of environmental damage on marginalized people’s health, is that true “wellness” is a perk of a lifetime of privilege.
This does not mean that I haven’t been influenced to buy cute activewear, or that I don’t take supplements when I remember. Nor would I attempt to deny the juggernaut that is the health and wellness industry. Sara Wilson described wellness as having grown “from a fringe interest for a mostly female audience to a multi-trillion-dollar industry encompassing nutritional supplements, on-demand massage, period-friendly underwear, CBD-enhanced teas, mushroom elixirs, and then some” in 2018. As of 2023, the global wellness market industry is estimated to be worth more trillions and growing.
Despite the very interesting products created in the name of “wellness,” like “The Martini” Emotional Detox Bath Soak, the implications of selling health and wellness to people born poor is unrealistic. We shouldn’t ignore that systemic racism, ableism, and classism has left marginalized people at the greatest risk of exposure to contaminants while simultaneously shielding the wealthy from these harms.
The American Lung Association urges that 131.2 million Americans live in places with “failing grades for unhealthy levels of ozone or particle pollution.” Poor people of color with underlying health issues are most vulnerable to illness and death, resulting from such exposure. There is no brand that can bottle up decades of access to better healthcare and environmental conditions.
Environmental racism describes the way minority group neighborhoods ‘(populated primarily by people of color and members of low socioeconomic groups) are burdened with a disproportionate number of hazards, including toxic waste facilities, garbage dumps, and other sources of environmental pollution and foul odors that lower the quality of life’.
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In this video Bella Hadid drinks several tinctures, takes more than 10 supplements, waves sage, drinks green-ish things, and more. According to The Cut, the grand total for her morning wellness routine is $736. Of course, the heavy handed signaling of her awareness of what it takes to be “well,” is intended to drive traffic to her Orabella perfume line. Which, according to its website, is an “intentional skin perfume” that “amplifies the wearer’s aura.” Baby, I don't know what that means, but I do know that there is no perfume that will provide me the wellness privileges that a Hadid has.
In “Felicia: Space to Live and Breathe,” I wrote about how keenly aware 16-year old Felicia was of pollution on her Watts neighborhood, despite the term environmental racism not yet existing. I wrote about the huge and noisy trains that disrupt the frame and Felicia’s community. According to Enviroliteracy trains “…have their own effects on the environment, including producing nitrogen dioxide, carbon dioxide, and particulate matter that can contribute to air pollution and negative health effects.”
I grew up in South Florida, and until about the 5th grade, we lived across the street from a railroad track. It may be of no consequence, but the illnesses that impacted our family, various types of cancers or my elementary school migraine diagnosis, may have been exacerbated by our environment. I went to high school in the same area and most of the other young Black girls, including myself, struggled with abscesses that would need to be removed by surgeons on and off throughout those four years. While being wealthy does not preclude one from illness, over exposure to pollutants might enhance their symptoms, and lack of funds can make them difficult to treat.
Meanwhile, the wealthy even have access to better air quality, a growing luxury in our increasingly smoggy world. Shayla Love writes about the burgeoning luxury air market,
“Once enclosed inside, the air we breathe is not the same. The notion that smoke could be a democratizing force, afflicting everyone equally and perhaps motivating them to take action to mitigate worsening climate conditions, is already colliding with the reality of an emerging luxury air market, yet another example of how, as the environment becomes less habitable, the wealthy will continue to insulate themselves from its worst aspects—even as their lifestyles disproportionately fuel emissions. As the fervor for ventilation that began during the pandemic meets the need to blockade against smoke, some wealthy people will do anything, and pay any amount, to guarantee they will always have a breath of fresh air.”
Despite living near the railroad tracks for a long time, my family eventually moved. And, my time was split between that environment and one far away from any railroads. I was also privileged enough to have had consistent access to quality medical care as a child. Despite this, I am not under the impression that these privileges would inspire great effect from any of wellness or supplement brands celebrities are peddling.
More importantly, what privilege I experienced is not comparable to that of a Paltrow, Hadid, or Kardashian. There are no pills, plans, or activewear sets that can undo decades of harm caused by the same environmental injustices that conservatives insist is not real.
