Don't Buy the Powder! The Unwellness of the Wellness Gurus
Health is a gift from nature (and our gene pool), so why is everyone greedy for more?
“Your bad habits can kill you, but your good habits won't save you.” —Fran Lebowitz
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A GIGANTIC, USUALLY UNATTRACTIVE face leaps up at me from a ‘reel’ as I scroll through Instagram. The face is, as the screen-to-my-face ratio goes, ready to consume my head. And the mouth is fast-talking—a lot of Adderrall-fueled fast-talking.
I hit mute on the app.
These obtrusive over-sharers have been a ‘thing’ for a long while now—ever since social media’s big ‘pivot to video’ some years back. Damn, so many experts out there (usually male) willing to reveal, pontificate, brag, instruct, and hawk—lots and lots of hawking.
A new thing I’ve noticed—according to what the algorithm focused on my attention span delivers—are cavalcades of yakking bro scientists, most of them propped in front of their podcast’s microphone talking to other ‘splainers eager to grow their audience. Each of them dispensing the best of what scientism has to offer. Thicker hair, harder erections, smoother circadian rhythms, and the big ticket item: immortality. And natch, all of them are selling products— something revolutionary and lab-developed. Culture historian Morris Berman calls this “…the great American hustle.”
Rhetorical question: What is it about human nature’s compulsive need to have other people tell them how to eat, dress, breathe, fuck, sleep, talk, walk, rear children, clean house, and attempt to avoid death? (I think the question was answered with that last proposition). Although the game is as old as Moses’ descent from the mountain, the newfangled wellness grift seems to be what remains after COVID retreated from the national dialogue—fueled by people’s fretting over their own bodies and the science involved in preserving them. Framed astrologically, you could say: welcome to Pluto’s transit through Aquarius.
Life (and living) is basic and straightforward. Did you know you can trust your liver to do its job without requiring citric colonics or Acai berries? That’s the liver’s wheelhouse, cleaning bad stuff out of the body. Our baseline instincts will, if followed sanely, ensure that we are eating, sleeping, moving around enough for a modicum of exercise, relaxing, and going to sleep as nature intended—toss in the occasional martini, and you’re good to go. No need for any bio ‘hacks.’
OK, so now the gossip: