Wellness Piffle, Politician's Verbiage

                                                          Wellness

Returning Health, Thomas Falcon Marshall (1818-1878)
Photo Credit: Worthing Museum and Art Gallery [CC BY-ND]

I am thinking of giving up writing about clothes and catwalk shows and reviewing bra tops and yoga classes instead.

…It’s time for me to jump ship because wellness is killing fashion…Stuff though – that’s the problem. Fashion is stuff and stuff is, like, so twentieth century. No one wants stuff anymore. We want glowing skin and a 110-minute half marathon time and inner peace and Michelin-starred kombucha instead. That’s what aspirational looks like in 2019. Wellness does exactly what fashion used to do, which is sell you a dream version of you, only it’s better for you and doesn’t create landfill. Game over.

The cannibalisation of fashion by wellness began with athleisure. Around the beginning of this decade, £100 running leggings were suddenly a thing. Why would anyone spend £100 on leggings, normal people asked? And the fashion industry was like, sideways glance to camera, “the leggings aren’t the point, you desire clothes for the life transformation they promise. You ever heard of Cinderella?”

…Wellness sounds made up to older people, but to a younger generation it is an investment in themselves in an uncertain world.

This cultural shift has been monetised rapidly. Notice how running, which was at the centre of the initial craze and costs nothing, has fallen off the radar in favour of £28 Pilates classes. You can tell that wellness is the new fashion because it has become so easy to spoof. There are £6,000 Chanel yoga mats. There is Mark Wahlberg starting his day at 3.40am with a 95-minute workout. And, of course, there is Gwyneth Paltrow.

(Jess Carter-Morley, The Guardian, 2019)  

“Wellness …to a younger generation …is an investment in themselves in an uncertain world.” What piffle. Where does that come from?

Glowing skin, inner peace, kombucha, life transformation. “Wellness is the new fashion because it has become so easy to spoof.” Isn’t that a very polite way of putting it?

Politicians

Kelly Tolhurst, a business minister, was asked about plans to close 41 post offices.

“It is not a closure programme,” she said indignantly, “but a sustainability programme.”

(The Times, 2019)