When I met writer Amy Larocca at a cafe in Brooklyn's Boelm Hill area this past afternoon, I was forced to make her realize: she had a glow. Or was it.
As Larocca explains in her new book, Shine describes “How to be ally: navigate one questionable treatment at a time.” If you don't miss a day of your skincare routine, drain lymph fluid regularly and take collagen supplements. But to truly shine, you need to practice mindfulness, self-care and ideally transcendental meditation. Avoid processed junk and sleep for at least 8 hours each night.
This is the strict standard for modern wellness culture that has bulged to encompass almost every aspect of life. Not just the serum we apply to our faces, the Pilates classes we ate, but also the food we eat (always whole food), the defecation we pass through (it must be “sturdy and beautifully formed”), and the very ideas that we can enter our minds (only intentional).
That sounds like a lot of work. Or you might say that it sounds like a lot of work – if it wasn't so much of an obligation for the women in the well to be constantly at ease.
After an hour of speaking with Mr. Larocca, 49, I learned that she wasn't doing it all. She tries to sleep a lot. She exercises regularly. And yes, she wears woolering, the latest wearable technology for tracking her blood oxygen rate, body temperature and other biometrics.
However, she has not observed any kind of 12-step routine. She knows the fact that while dry brushing may be the best way to exfoliate, it probably doesn't drain lymph.
Sometimes she participates in what is called “recreation wellness.” After spending 20 years in various roles in New York magazines, Larocca is unfamiliar with the fierce human draw, in order to believe that some of these practices will control her that radically fail to achieve her life and her body.
This conversation, which took place between matcha latte and iced green tea, is compiled for length and clarity.
When I entered your book, I had a much narrower view of what wellness was. But I was forced to have your larger understanding of this world.
Wellness is a truly ridiculous exercise class. They are also inadequately serviced communities where people talk about not taking their health seriously. When the beauty industry wants to pretend to be a feminist, we can talk about how to use wellness as a “non-hair removal” card. You can talk about strange colon therapists. We can talk about wellness as a socially acceptable term for eating disorders. There are 90 million ways to have a wellness conversation. In the end, I tried to say, wellness is all this whole thing and we live in this messed up soup.
At this point, it seems difficult to draw solid boundaries around wellness.
You may see this when you go to these new medical practices. You said, “Are I at the spa? A gym? A boutique hotel? A doctor? A Kate Hudson movie?”
You started this book before Covid. How have wellness ideas been shaped by the pandemic?
It soon became clear who was sick and who was dying in Covid. So the concept that was driving the project came from the perspective of people who wrote about fashion and style over the last few years – has become this in which we sell our own bodies with the same marketing techniques that people use to sell handbags, shoes and lipsticks. Living in a society that treats health like a luxury product is extremely dangerous.
I liked that you pointed out some of the contradictions that are part of wellness culture. At one point you refer to the concept of a single well-intentioned cigarette – a bit dul.
This is because all of this is within the scope of privilege. There is a small difference in narcissism. What makes you feel sick is much bigger than the Little Wellness Protocol. They are these greater socioeconomic factors.
What I was thinking about when I read it was wellness as a kind of bond movement between women, and a kind of bond.
I think I can do that. Go to an exercise class with friends or go to the spa – it's definitely a bonding ritual for many people. There are wellness social clubs like Remedy Place. It is also a type of entertainment and recreation. It's just a matter of understanding your position and your expectations. What I say is important: It doesn't seem like I hate health. I've also been involved in many of them. I think health is too entrenched in our lives to be “professional” or “anti-“;
I love the term “recreation wellness.” It seems to relate to the experience I have a lot.
It's a conversion. I exercise a lot – part of it for recreation, part of it for real health. I used to drink collagen at a red light. Now I slammed it a bit. Sometimes my friend calls me and says, “My life has been changed by cow's colostrum!” And I say, “I need colostrum!”
Recently I was in a pharmacy full of beautiful skincare products in the high-end parts of Los Angeles. I knew I didn't need anything, but I wanted it. And elegant women were floating around the store to help customers find the one that suited them.
It really can make you feel cared for and capped. It really makes you feel good!
I thought about how it felt to have all these things in my medicine cabinet. I would feel like one of the flashy women walking around this neighborhood. Returning to the luxurious side.
It feels the same as “If I buy this bag…”
Why is pull so strong? We often know consciously that these products don't do what they say.
If they did that wouldn't be so great? And there's this incredible opportunity if you don't have reliable information from real experts. We want it to be true and there is a loss of faith in the system that should protect us and let us know. And it's on the left and right sides. Many moon juice products and Infowars supplements come with some of the same type of ingredients. The message from both sides is, “Prepare for the collapse of the world! Health will save us from these terrible inevitability!”
Knowing that there is so much snake oil and there is bad information can also amplify the feeling that the hidden locations within these thousands of products are two or three that “actually work.”
Completely! I said, “Sometimes one of these Bobby Brown emails has that hint!” And what if that was the time I didn't click?
