Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
Traces the undercurrent of exclusion and violence in the US wellness industry from the nineteenth century to our current moment
Women's wellness is a trillion-dollar industry, a lifestyle choice, and more recently, a pipeline for dangerous conspiracy theories. The very spaces promoting yoga routines, “clean” eating, and free births also offer troubling prescriptions to an ailing populace through podcasts and social media posts.
How did we get here?
Since the nineteenth century, millions of women in the U.S. have turned to wellness influencers and natural remedies to cure what ails them, only to find more poison in the guise of health advice. Hatred is Health brings together feminist scholars from American literary and cultural history to trace the ideological roots of the contemporary wellness industry from the nineteenth century to our present moment, revealing how the language of maternal protection, natural living, and self-determination have long been in conversation with white supremacy, eugenics, and conspiratorial thinking.
The first step toward understanding the obsession with an increasingly narrow view of wellness requires disentangling the genuine desire for women's health and empowerment from the forces that have so effectively exploited that desire.
Elizabeth Marshall is a writer and Professor. She’s the author of The Drinking Curriculum: A Cultural History of Childhood and Alcohol, Witnessing Girlhood (with Leigh Gilmore), and Graphic Girlhoods: Visualizing Education and Violence. Her essays have appeared in TIME, PopMatters, Rethinking Schools, The Conversation, and Current Affairs.
Anna Mae Duane (Edited By)
Anna Mae Duane is Professor of English at the University of Connecticut and Director of the UConn Humanities Institute. Her most recent works include Educated for Freedom, The Incredible Story of Two Fugitive Schoolboys Who Grew up to Change a Nation and Furious Feminisms: Alternate Routes on Mad Max Fury Road (co-authored with Alexis Boylan, Barb Gurr and Mike Gill).