The Wellness Syndrome

As stated in the “The Wellness Syndrome” written by Carl Cederström and André Spicer, dedication to wellness is in fact an indulgence on oneself.  What does this mean exactly? Well, between eating healthy, exercising, maintaining enough sleep and so on, "wellness" is not necessarily something that is easy to achieve.  The article refers to it as syndrome because as discussed in my last blog post, it has become a standard of society that must be met to fit in.  People are beginning to feel that wellness is an ideology, especially noticeable in “the prevailing attitudes towards those who fail to look after their bodies. These people are demonised as lazy, feeble or weak-willed. They are seen as obscene deviants, unlawfully and unabashedly enjoying what every sensible person should resist”.  Words such as lazy and weak-willed such not be used to describe those who are not choosing to dedicate their life to wellness. These words are so hypocritical because often people don't have time to make sure they are eating right, exercising, and getting enough sleep, yet their focus remains on other things. If you talk to any graduate student, they will tell you maintaining a state of wellness is almost impossible with their course load. For those who do try to pursue the standard of being well, it is all about time management; entailing set times to prepare healthy meals and eat and strict exercise and sleep schedules. This societal ideal has become known as the wellness syndrome because wellness is being treated like there's no way around it. Wellness should be something you are constantly striving for in life. This is absolutely not true because it's not like it will kill you if you don't eat right or exercise enough but it does lead to a somewhat better lifestyle with the energy it is capable of giving you. Wellness is not something worth getting caught up in to the extremes; just because it is being portrayed as the "social norm" doesn't mean that's what's best for you in particular.  Wellness can be considered an indulgence because of the effort it entails.  It is a lot of work living up to societies standards! This article considers it to be such a negative thing because it is becoming so normal to want to have this lifestyle that people are putting off other things important in life just to meet the standard. Many people in today's day and age actually keep this as their number one priority which is most definitely considered self-indulgence. The level of wellness they are trying to achieve can almost be considered obsessive.  Trying to maintain a nice body while doing so in a heathy manner requires a lot which is such a good argument made by the authors of this article.  Why be so obsessive about this level of wellness?  This was a very interesting read and there is a book mentioned that I feel would definitely be worth reading because it goes into depth on this subject and before this article, I have never really thought of the ideal “wellness” being a bad thing.