Wellness Culture, Marginalized Communities, and Reclaiming Health
In both the United States and other parts of the world, wellness culture has become a powerful societal and economic force. The global wellness market value is projected to accelerate from $7.19 trillion in 2026 to $11 trillion by 2034.
From influencer-promoted workouts, “clean eating” habits, and self-care rituals to overpriced healing retreats and juice cleanses, this commodification of health reveals an insidious reality about mainstream wellness culture—and who it benefits.
Beneath all the glossy social media content, aspirational lifestyle routines, and marketable products, there’s a clear pattern of toxic individualism, cultural appropriation, and socioeconomic privilege.
Not only does this fail to reflect the diverse experiences of folks in marginalized communities, but it can also actively lead to harm.
Let’s explore the limitations and barriers of wellness culture, which all too often ignore inequities. Plus, we’ll look at some intentional ways to reclaim true health on your own terms with choices that feel aligned, accessible, and authentic to you.
How Wellness Culture Operates and Why It Can Be Toxic
As the wellness industry expands at an annual growth rate of 7.3 percent, one’s ability to access certain health trends or practices is increasingly tied to financial wealth. This consumerist framework exacerbates health disparities in low-income or marginalized communities.
It also repackages ancestral traditions, such as yoga, meditation, or forest bathing, which have deep Eastern cultural roots, as the latest Western fads.
This whitewashed version of wellness mainly focuses on rigorous self-improvement and narrow aesthetic ideals that elevate capitalism and turn health into a morality contest.
According to the Medicine, Healthcare, and Philosophy Journal, using specific wellness behaviors as a social barometer to measure someone’s worth and moral virtue can result in stigma, xenophobia, and other injustices. What’s more, it consistently falls short of meeting the holistic mental, physical, and emotional needs of humans from all backgrounds.
The Nuance of Wellness
Wellness culture often overlooks that health has more nuanced layers to it than creating the “perfect” self-care routine or taking the “cleanest” nutritional supplements.
For those who face discrimination, economic insecurity, unresolved chronic illness, or systemic treatment barriers, wellness as wellness culture paints it isn’t always a choice. It’s a collective social justice issue.
True access to healing requires institutional reforms making it an equitable, inclusive human right, not a luxury for those who can afford it or a privilege for those who reflect Western norms.
Here are a few of the most flagrant problems with this mainstream brand of wellness culture that we tend to glamorize here in the U.S.
Individual responsibility: Wellness culture places the sole onus for maintaining health on each individual person, while minimizing structural determinants that worsen healing outcomes and limit access to care. Many of these determinants, such as weight bias, food or housing insecurity, racial profiling, and environmental toxins, are most likely to impact low-income or marginalized communities.
Cultural appropriation: Wellness culture frequently commodifies ancient practices like yoga, meditation, breathwork, or Indigenous plant medicines without first honoring their cultural origins and the historical experiences of those who created them. Research shows that a lack of genuine cultural awareness, respect, and sensitivity causes more harm than benefits from certain healing modalities.
Minimal scientific basis: Wellness culture often proliferates conflicting advice from online influencers or promotional content without real scientific evidence to back it up. These messages can lead to misinformation, confusion, or outright mistrust in public health initiatives. They can also spread false claims of “magic solutions,” which normalize extreme behaviors under the guise of a lifestyle shift.
Marginalized Communities and Systemic Health Inequities
The Investigation in Health, Psychology, and Education Journal reaffirms what many folks with marginalized or intersectional identities have long known to be true: social disenfranchisement increases the burden of illness. Factors such as race or ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender or sexual orientation, and geographic location all contribute to health outcomes.
Those on the margins have much less access to quality nutrition, exercise programs, medical interventions, and mental health resources than their straight, white, affluent peers.
Even some well-intentioned practitioners, who strive to offer equitable care, face the bureaucratic red tape of a system that ignores social determinants, lacks cultural sensitivity, and rebuffs the need for community-based healing, suggests the BMC Public Health Journal.
All this does is alienate folks from receiving care that’s tailored to their own lived experience.
How to Reclaim Health and Wellness for Yourself
For wellness practices to serve the needs of all folks across the identity and accessibility spectrum, we must shift away from an individualistic, capitalistic model.
This, however, is not your job—nor the job of one person. While we work to change the systems as a collective community, you can make choices to reclaim health for yourself with these ideas.
Define Wellness for Yourself—Not Based on an Algorithm
Wellness culture often promotes a harmful definition of health that enforces productivity, centers aesthetics, and moralizes behavior. But you can reject this narrow construct by redefining what wellness means to you outside of the messages on your social feed.
That can include making time for rest, exploring cultural foodways, honoring your emotions, connecting with spiritual or creative practices, and choosing joyful movement. This will help you reorient the entire concept of wellness from performative and shame-based to restorative.
Seek Providers and Resources that Honor Your Full Identity
Not all wellness spaces are safe—or deserving of your trust. Research shows that culturally responsive, trauma-informed care results in stronger physical and mental health outcomes, especially for those who navigate the realities of racism, ableism, fatphobia, or anti-LGBTQIA bias.
Be discerning about which environments you walk into and which clinical providers or resources you seek out. Trust your instincts if a space feels dismissive of your experience or misaligned with your priorities. It’s not wrong to advocate for yourself.
Have you used our Referral Directory yet? Check it out to find the best provider for your needs.
Release Self-Blame by Naming the Structural Barriers
Mainstream wellness culture frames health as an ideal you must work hard to maintain. All while overlooking the systemic barriers that shape who has access to medical treatment, nutrition, exercise, stress management, and safe, stable living conditions.
Instead of looking at your health goals through a critical lens of “Why can’t I do better?” ask, “What structural barriers am I confronting?” And then extend self-compassion. You are not to blame for societal inequities.
We talk a lot about this in our program, Community Care. Learn more and apply for our next cohort if it feels relevant for your healing journey.
Build Resilience Through Deep Community Connections
Despite its “self-care” branding, true wellness is not a solo pursuit. Individualism can turn into isolation if we’re not careful, which only worsens health problems.
According to the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, social cohesion and community-based healing initiatives can boost resilience and self-esteem while alleviating depression, anxiety, stress, and chronic illness symptoms. So invest in your relationships and nurture safe support networks. Reaching out for connection isn’t a sign of weakness—it’s deeply human and beneficial.
Reframe Self-Care as a Source of Joy Instead of Consumption
Sustainable wellness isn’t about flashy trends, punitive routines, or consumer products. The moment your self-care regimen starts to feel like just another item to purchase or an arbitrary box to check off, it no longer offers restoration at a deep soul-level.
Rest, play, move, nourish, and create in the ways that speak to you. Choose practices that bring authentic joy and embrace the flexibility to adapt over time as your wellness needs change.
Reclaiming Your Wellness Is an Act of Resistance and Agency
When folks in marginalized communities reject the narrow parameters of mainstream wellness culture and reclaim health on their own terms, they disrupt an entire system that profits from exclusion and shame.
