“New Year, New You”: A Market-Optimized Shame Economy
Well, here we are again. Every January, we are inundated with the same messages across our screens. Reset your body. Cleanse the toxins. Shrink yourself into someone better.
Detoxes, cleanses, and “New Year, New You” culture presents itself as harmless motivation: fresh starts wrapped in bone broth and good intentions. But beneath the language of wellness sits a highly profitable industry built on shame, the learned belief that our bodies can’t be trusted, and long-standing systems of oppression.
This isn’t really about health. It’s about profit and power. And I want to talk about what it looks like to notice that, to step back from it, and to imagine a different way of caring for ourselves; one that doesn’t begin with shame.
The Myth of the “Toxic” Body
Detox culture depends on a shame-based message: that your body is inherently broken, dirty, or failing unless you intervene.
In reality, human bodies already detox themselves. That’s the job of the liver, kidneys, lungs, and digestive system. The idea that a tea, fast, workout plan, or supplement can outperform that process isn’t accidental; it’s an economic strategy designed to exploit shame and comparison, especially after a season culturally defined by excess.
The business model is simple: If you can be convinced your body is the problem, you’ll keep buying the solution.
“New Year, New You” Is Just Rebranded Control
The phrase sounds hopeful, but it relies on an uncomfortable assumption: that who you are right now is not enough.
This messaging is filled with pressure, subtly reinforcing the belief that worth requires fixing something that’s inferior. Historically, this narrative has been weaponized against marginalized bodies: particularly women, fat people, disabled people, people of color, and anyone whose body exists outside narrow, Western beauty standards. Over time, these messages become internalized, shaping how people relate to their bodies long before they ever make a resolution.
The promise of transformation the wellness industry puts in front of us is never neutral. It is shaped by:
Data and health standards developed around white, able-bodied male bodies defining which bodies are seen as “healthy,” and, “disciplined”
Capitalism rewarding constant dissatisfaction
The monetization of insecurity through shame-based wellness messaging
In that context, “New You” is rarely about health. It’s about compliance, often framed as self-improvement, but experienced as self-correction.
Wellness as a Moral Hierarchy
Wellness culture doesn’t just sell products; it sells virtue. Over time, it teaches people to measure their worth through behaviors that look like health on the surface but are often rooted in control. When wellness becomes moralized, care stops being about responsiveness and starts being about restraint.
Restraint prioritizes overriding bodily signals (ignoring hunger, fatigue, or pain), rigid rules over flexibility or context, external approval over internal cues, and consistency at all costs, even when the body is asking for something different.
In wellness culture specifically, control shows up as:
Restricting food to “prove” discipline
“Cleansing” to undo perceived moral failure (indulgence, rest, pleasure)
Treating discomfort as evidence that something is “working”
Believing the body must be managed, corrected, or kept in line to be acceptable
What’s important here is that this drive for control doesn’t come from nowhere. For many people, it develops as a coping strategy; especially when bodies haven’t felt safe, predictable, or trusted; when worth has been conditional; or when approval has depended on compliance. In those contexts, external rules can feel stabilizing, and control can feel like safety.
The wellness industry is highly skilled at identifying and targeting this vulnerability. It presents regulation as care, discipline as healing, and obedience as health, even when these approaches deepen disconnection from the body rather than restoring trust.
So while these behaviors may resemble what wellness culture tells us is health (clean eating, consistency, self-control), they’re often driven less by care and more by fear of losing control.
The problem is that when wellness is framed this way, failing to maintain it is treated as a personal failure rather than a reflection of systemic barriers or lived realities. Like other moral hierarchies, this framing privileges those with time, money, and access, while holding others responsible for bodies, illnesses, or circumstances shaped by far more than individual choice.
What Liberation Could Look Like Instead
Rejecting detox culture doesn’t mean rejecting self-care: It means gently redefining it in a way that feels supportive rather than punishing.
Liberation-oriented wellness invites different questions; ones rooted in curiosity instead of correction:
Instead of, “what should my body look like?” it asks, “what does my body need?”
What would self-care look like without punishment?
Instead of “what discipline do I need?” it asks, “what care is missing?”
Framed this way, wellness becomes less about control and more about relationship. It allows for rest without guilt, honors the body’s adaptability, and recognizes worth as something that exists in the present, not something to be earned later.
A Different Kind of New Year
You don’t need a cleanse to be worthy of care. You don’t need to shrink to deserve respect. And you don’t need to become someone else to be allowed to take up space. From a therapeutic perspective, care is not something you earn by fixing your body; it’s something you deserve simply by being human. Your body does not need to be corrected to be met with kindness; it needs safety, responsiveness, and compassion.
A different kind of New Year might not be about becoming someone new, but about gently opting out.
Opting out of body hatred.
Opting out of shame-driven solutions.
Opting out of the belief that punishment is necessary for change.
This kind of opting out isn’t avoidance or giving up; it’s a shift toward compassion, self-trust, and a pace that your body can actually sustain.
I’m not rejecting the idea of self-improvement. The new year can be a meaningful time to reflect; to take stock of what served you over the past year and what didn’t. I’m simply saying there are ways to do this that don’t rely on shame or punishment, and that you’re allowed to choose a different way forward.
