The Self-Care Paradox
Ignored by mainstream medicine, women turn to an industry that can help, or hurt, them
--
It’s no secret that women can feel disregarded by mainstream medicine. High maternal mortality rates persist, particularly among black women. Ignorance and apathy around reproductive issues like endometriosis is common. Doctors dismiss conditions that afflict women, like chronic fatigue syndrome, as little more than hysteria. Decades-long exclusion from research on conditions as fundamental as heart disease and pain have contributed to women’s unnecessary suffering—and even death.
It should come as no surprise, then, that women are turning to nontraditional methods to feel better.
In these wellness spaces — spas, retreat centers, practitioners’ offices, or living rooms — women find a gentle touch and a sympathetic ear. Instead of seven minutes of face time with your doctor (during which they might listen to your concerns for only 11 seconds), you get 60 minutes of undivided attention. Bodywork therapists and energy healers take time for you. They tell you that the pain you have is real. You are seen, as the saying goes. You are heard.
Wellness has become a stand-in for many people who have received unsatisfactory care from the medical establishment. But self-care isn’t health care.
The problem is exacerbated when wellness practitioners make overblown claims about products and treatments, couching their practices in pseudoscientific language. Why does a massage need to release your toxins, boost your immune system, and stimulate your colon? Why can’t it just be something that feels good and is relaxing?
“I don’t think we need empirical evidence to justify the pleasure that surrounds [wellness] activities,” says Timothy Caulfield, a professor of health law and science policy at the University of Alberta and the author of Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything? “But increasingly, because people want it to be part of an industry, they want to be able to market it… [T]hey add these layers of noise around it in order to give it that sense of scientific credibility.”
Wellness has co-opted and commodified both Eastern medicine and spirituality, as well as modern health research. It has repackaged…
