Wellness brands are good at making you feel bad

If you have to use two dozen products to feel good from the inside out, then is it really good for you?

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Blame it on the lunar eclipse’s after effects or mercury retrograde, but my energy has been off. I’m both exhausted and unmotivated. And because of this feeling, I’ve been lured into the wellness space, soaking up the toxic positivity brands share on their apps and websites. Which, spoiler alert, has only made me feel worse about myself. 

Take, for instance, this notification I received from a face yoga app: “Get rid of wrinkles for life! Your anti-aging plan is waiting.” Curious, I clicked the link, which directed me to a meditative facial massage. But before I could start, I had to answer a questionnaire about my skin: Was it puffy? Did I get an acne breakout? Is my skin oily? (I chose puffiness.) I grabbed my heart-shaped gua sha made of natural agate—a stone that supposedly brings emotional, physical, and intellectual balance—and began my 11-minute session. Within the first few minutes, a soothing, calm energy washed over me. I not only felt more relaxed, but could see the blood flowing through my cheeks as they turned rosy pink. Suffice to say, the experience exceeded my expectations. I ended the course with rejuvenated skin, a clear head, and restored energy.

What I couldn’t shake off, however, was the aggressive message that alerted me of the session in the first place. For one, it led with a false narrative, considering it didn’t banish any wrinkles afterward (and isn’t the cure for it either). Secondly, shouldn’t the mental health benefits of a gua sha massage outweigh the unsubstantiated wrinkle-free effects? The ancient practice is considered healing and therapeutic, after all.

Photo by Jared Rice on Unsplash

But that’s the thing, most of these wellness brands use beauty as a tool to make you feel bad. If it’s not wrinkles you need to worry about, it’s other signs of aging. An email I received last week read: “Age is just a number—that you can now change.” The brand’s reasoning: “Over 90 percent of how we age is influenced by our lifestyle choices and environment—the foods we eat, our social circles, how we manage stress, and much more.” 

I found the response a bit flawed and vague. Like, what does it mean that my social circles influences how fast I age? And while I agree (and so does science) that stress and food can impact our skin, this wellness brand fed me a questionable diet. In fact, the brand’s clock-turning solution wasn’t a laundry list of healthy habits to follow, like “get more sleep,” “eat these meals,” or “try these workouts.” Rather, they recommended their longevity supplement, a product that has this disclaimer on its label: “These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.” Most supplements will have this note on the back of their bottles, and oftentimes, these tablets are the first thing wellness brands push, instead of actual, real food. Yet, we eat it up, thinking this pill has the power to cure our beauty woes. But the magic is in the marketing.

It’s why we’ve seen Bella Hadid share her extensive morning routine on TikTok, in which she swallowed more than a dozen vitamins and washed it down with a sea moss gel, a fulvic acid detox drink, and ionic trace minerals tonic. After nourishing herself internally, she then rubbed several essential oils on her body before waving her sage around and writing in her journal (near her crystals, of course). But Bella’s wellness regimen is child’s play compared to the horrifying trend of mouth-taping, which, yes, sounds exactly like the name suggests, as it’s the practice of taping your mouth shut before bed in order to breathe through the nose instead of your mouth. And because a good night’s rest is often associated with beauty, people are also taping their mouths in the hopes of having a stronger jawline (which, btw, there is little-to-no evidence of such claims).

Now, there’s nothing wrong with finding practices that are meditative and/or healing. But when you have to take two dozen vitamins and literally stop yourself from breathing to feel good from the inside out, then is it really good for you? Beauty critic Jessica DeFino put it best, “The obsession with wellness in culture today points to [a] very unwell society that's constantly chasing wellness because we don't feel well.”

Don’t get me wrong, I love a good self-care routine. There’s no better feeling than pressing a cold face roller on my cheeks, especially when I need to ease a headache without having to take medicine, or the boost of positivity that surges through my brain and body after a run. Hell, even applying makeup is a form of wellness for me, as counterintuitive and ironic as it sounds. But there’s something soothing about the brush strokes gliding up and down my skin and being able to present myself authentically to the world. If I’m feeling expressive, seductive, or shy, the pigment on my lids and lips can convey those messages. The lines blur, however, when wellness and beauty become a form of self-improvement. And it goes back to the notification I received from the face yoga app: “Get rid of wrinkles for life! Your anti-aging plan is waiting.” Sure, I clicked into it out of curiosity, but I don’t want to follow a practice that promotes fake promises, unrealistic ideals, and fear-mongering. That, to me, isn’t healthy.

For years, if not decades, the key to our well-being has been laid out countless times by medical professionals, who typically prescribe the same three things: eat well, exercise, and sleep. While this solution isn’t as sexy as taping your mouth, it’s much more effective.