How and why the idea of wellness holds such rhetorical—and harmful—power.
In Why Wellness Sells: Natural Health in a Pharmaceutical Culture (Johns Hopkins University Press, December 2022), Colleen Derkatch examines why the concept of wellness holds such rhetorical power in contemporary culture. Public interest in wellness is driven by two opposing philosophies of health that cycle into and amplify each other: restoration, where people use natural health products to restore themselves to prior states of wellness; and enhancement, where people strive for maximum wellness by optimizing their body’s systems and functions.
Why Wellness Sells tracks the tension between these two ideas of wellness across a variety of sources, including interviews, popular and social media, advertising, and online activism. Derkatch examines how wellness manifests across multiple domains, where being “well” means different things, ranging from a state of pre-illness to an empowered act of good consumer-citizenship, from physical or moral purification to sustenance and care, and from harm reduction to optimization. Along the way, Derkatch demonstrates that the idea of wellness may promise access to the good life, but it serves primarily as a strategy for coping with a devastating and overwhelming present.
Drawing on scholarship in the rhetoric of health and medicine, the health and medical humanities, and related fields, Derkatch offers a nuanced account of how language, belief, behavior, experience, and persuasion collide to produce and promote wellness, one of the most compelling—and harmful—concepts that govern contemporary Western life. She explains that wellness has become so pervasive in the United States and Canada because it is an ever-moving, and thus unachievable, goal. The concept of wellness entrenches an individualist model of health as a personal responsibility, when collectivist approaches would more readily serve the health and well-being of whole populations.
Praise for Why Wellness Sells
Like the devil himself, the wellness industry approaches us with a stylish outfit, a winning smile and the false promise of a life without suffering. Not only does Colleen Derkatch see the scam of wellness for what it is, she takes it apart and shows us exactly how it works. Why Wellness Sells is a deft, incisive analysis of a modern scourge.
— Carl Elliott, author of Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream and White Coat, Black Hat: Adventures on the Dark Side of Medicine
In this lively, accessible book, Colleen Derkatch explains the underlying cultural and rhetorical logics that make “wellness” marketable. Derkatch expertly analyzes everything from Instagram posts to interview data, showing readers how appeals to restoration and enhancement reflect consumers’ ways of navigating the systemic pressures of 21st century life.
— Jordynn Jack, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, author of Autism and Gender and Raveling the Brain
I loved this book. Not only is Why Wellness Sells a beautifully-written, original, and rigorous piece of scholarship that expands our scholarly understanding of health, illness, and wellness—and, importantly, their intersections—but it’s eminently readable, clearly and compellingly argued, and its subject matter couldn’t be timelier. It’s one of the best academic books I’ve read in a long time.
— Jenell Johnson, University of Wisconsin—Madison, author of American Lobotomy: A Rhetorical History
Wellness cultures and practices are political. Wellness is a source of income and influence, but also a way of making people feel that it is their fault that they don’t feel healthy or contented. After you read this wonderful book, you will never see the wellness-industrial-complex the same way again.
— Deborah Lupton, University of New South Wales and author of The Quantified Self: A Sociology of Self-Tracking
Colleen Derkatch sidesteps mere debunking of wellness culture to examine its appeal for some as a solution to the ills of contemporary life. She illuminates the discursive constraints of wellness culture and challenges readers to move past disparaging wellness’s adherents to understand the collective needs wellness has co-opted.
— John Lynch, University of Cincinnati and author of The Origins of Bioethics: Remembering When Medicine Went Wrong
Why Wellness Sells is an engaging, beautifully written, and original exploration of contemporary wellness culture. Without snark or jargon, Derkatch offers a fresh take on the language and marketing of wellness. This book is a treat.
— Norah A. MacKendrick, Rutgers University, author of Better Safe Than Sorry: How Consumers Navigate Exposure to Everyday Toxics
Derkatch’s work is a must-read for all within RHM [rhetoric of health and medicine], as its ideas have significant implications for every area of our field. Readers will gain key insights into how the self-generating discourse of wellness affects our day-to-day lives, as well as how it functions in exacerbating health inequity writ large. Why Wellness Sells: Natural Health in a Pharmaceutical Culture is an important text that demonstrates the pervasiveness of wellness culture and how its tendrils are tightly woven within the fabric of our society—and how we might untangle those threads to understand how they constrict, rather than expand, our understanding of health.
—Brittany Smart, Rhetoric of Health and Medicine
Chapters
Introduction
Chapter One. Wellness as Incipient Illness
Chapter Two. Wellness as Self-Management
Chapter Three. Wellness as Harm Reduction
Chapter Four. Wellness as Survival Strategy
Chapter Five. Wellness as Optimization
Chapter Six. Wellness as Performance
Conclusion
Media Coverage of Why Wellness Sells
Featured in: “I joined the wellness set just like Kate Moss. Am I woo-woo too?” by Jane Mulkerrins, The Times, February 2023.
Featured in: “‘We’re sedating women with self-care’: how we became obsessed with wellness,” by Katherine Rowland, The Guardian, October 2023.
Podcast interview: Rethinking Wellness, “Why Wellness Sells: The Benefits and Harms of Wellness Culture with Colleen Derkatch,” 3 July 2023.
Featured in: “Ketamine’s Woo-Woo Rebrand,” by Shayla Love, Harper’s Bazaar, May 2023. Reprintedas “How efficient is Ketamine to cure depression in therapy”in Harper’s Bazaar India, 8 May 2023.
Featured in: “Everybody Has a “Stack” Now: From building muscle to sleeping through the night, the ‘optimize everything’ mindset is coming for us all,” by Ashwin Rodrigues, GQ, 24 April 2023.
Print interview: New Scientist, “Why we fall for wellness, even when the science says it doesn’t work,” by Wendy Glauser, 30 March 2023.
Podcast interview: Conspirituality, “The Magic Spells of Wellness with Colleen Derkatch,” 9 March 2023.
Featured in: “Does wellness have ableism at its core?” by Hannah Turner, Dazed & Confused, 25 January 2023.
Print review: “Why the Gospel of Wellness Sells: Two recent books shed much-needed light on the societal problems that make people seek out wellness in the first place,” by Jonathan Jarry, 30 December 2022.
Profile: TorontoMet Today, “Jumping from one health trend to the next and not seeing results? How to keep a realistic perspective on wellness,” by Tania Ulrich, 26 January 2023.
Web profile: Office of the Vice-President, Research and Innovation, Toronto Metropolitan University, “New book by TMU researcher explores why people buy into wellness culture,” by Michelle LePage, 13 December 2022.
Where to find Why Wellness Sells
- Johns Hopkins University Press (use code HTWN for 30% off)
- Amazon.com (US)
- Amazon.ca (Canada)
- Flying Books (Toronto)
- WorldCat (for a library near you)
Support
The research for this book was supported by an Insight Development Grant and an Insight Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
