[un]well Netflix review: a sick obsession with wellness
From the 15th-27th March this year, “self-care” was googled more times in the UK than ever before. The same period in which the country went into national lockdown.
“Self-care” and “wellness” are millennial buzzwords that make up a $4.2tn industry. In her book of essays, How do we know we’re doing it right? the journalist Pandora Sykes distinguishes wellness from health as follows. “Health feels rudimentary (the absence of major sickness) while wellness is exceptional.”
Sykes explores the all-encompassing definition of wellness listing “bulletproof coffee, celery juice, transcendental orgasms, turmeric lattes, pink Himalayan salt lamps, activated charcoal, kefir, gratitude journals,” as examples. Much of western wellness is derived from eastern religion and spirituality, white-washed and commodified into marketable products.
Exceptionalism is wellness’ first draw. In a fast-paced, image-obsessed world we are often chasing optimisation. And in the face of a pandemic wellness finds its second pull – control. At worst, we are all stuck inside trying to avoid falling ill from the virus, and at best we are gaining weight from our new sedentary lifestyles inside, so it comes as little surprise that we are seeking further control over our wellbeing.
Netflix’s new documentary series [un]well explores emerging wellness trends in the US. The episodes cover essential oils, tantric sex, bulking up with breast milk, fasting, ayahuasca and bee sting therapy. Over six episodes the series asks the question: “does it bring health and healing or are we falling victim to false promises? Are we really getting well?”
The series begins with essential oils. The issue here is less the use of the oils as alternative medicine, and more the cult-like pyramid scheme that is the essential oil industry in America. Two leading figures in the multi-million-dollar industry are Dr Z and Mrs Z. The couple, from Georgia, Louisiana, are the modern American dream. Dr Z is the successful, loving husband who works from a standing desk over a treadmill, Mrs Z is the former Miss America contestant (who still regularly wears her sash). Their house is huge, their kids are sweet, affectionate and doused in essential oils to regulate their mood and behaviour throughout the day.
Since the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has made making medical claims about essential oils as a retailer illegal, the couple sell workshops and guides on how to transform your life through the use of essential oils. What the couple truly sells then, is not a product but a lifestyle. A chance to upgrade yourself and your family to a picture-perfect life.
The man who drinks breast milk to lift heavier at the gym and the silicon valley CEO who fasts for days at a time to streamline his productivity are too chasing optimisation. They are seeking alternative treatments to somehow transcend. “Fasting”, says the founder of a powdered food alternative HVMN makes him “a little more plugged into the matrix.”
Though they exist as two opposing ends of the wellness archetype (“hippie” versus biohacker), many of the tantric sex teachers (a type of meditative sex) and ayahuasca (a psychedelic drug experience) retailers would fall into this category too. They believe incorporating these experiences will unlock human possibility.
The other side of wellness; control, opens people up to vulnerability. This is something which is often exploited by those peddling wellness products.
In episode five, for example, we meet 24-year-old Kerri Ciullo. Ciullo has suffered from misdiagnosed illness since she was a young child, eventually ending up on antidepressants aged 9. At 19, she finally gets a diagnosis of Lyme disease. Having spent tens of thousands of dollars on treatments and desperate to live a normal life, Ciullo finds a woman on Instagram whose own late-stage Lyme disease was cured by bee sting therapy. This alternative medicine (known as apitherapy) might seem crazy and painful to the healthy individual, but for Ciullo, it looks like a lifeline, a chance to take control of her own body.
The issue comes, as the series explains, when vulnerable people seeking control are “exploited by the culture of belief.” Before Ciullo begins her bee sting therapy she tells the camera that she has not cleared the treatment with her doctor, minutes later the bee sting therapist informs us that all patients must have had blood tests signed off by their doctor before treatment. You are left battling unease and empathy. No matter how sceptical you are of the treatment, you want the young girl to get better.
The show does not provide clear cut answers and raises further questions. Mainly, does it matter if wellness therapies are a placebo if they help desperate people? Almost every “believer” in the docu-series absorbs their wellness regime into their identity.
Wellness does not therefore seem to be something you merely dabble in. Its danger is its almost addictive quality. As Sykes puts it “wellness offers an alternative to religion: devotion without divinity.”
[un]well is available on Netflix now.