What are we talking about when we discuss wellbeing?

We live in a fast-paced world: high stress levels, an increasingly sedentary lifestyle and unhealthy habits. But in the face of potential chaos, so-called ‘wellbeing culture’ has emerged as the elixir for all contemporary ills – a moral and practical solution that relies solely on each individual’s ability to manage their time effectively. The options are endless: from diets to use of pharmaceuticals, or training programmes, dietary supplements and relaxation techniques; optimising one’s routine is seen as the key to achieving balance.

Over the past year, for example, venues designed to promote wellbeing have increased by 15.8 %, wellbeing tourism by 10.2 %, mental health-related apps by 12.2 % and investment in the physical activity industry by 5.6 %, according to a report by OBS.

Healthcare has become an individual priority and even a demand, which has led other areas, such as the workplace, to adapt to these preferences and include nutrition and sports programmes as benefits.

Balancing health and appearance

“From a medical point of view, it’s fine for people to want to gain muscle for their day-to-day lives and for bone health, but I believe there’s also a very significant element linked to appearance – how others see us – rather than just health. The vast majority of people don’t exercise with the aim of preventing osteoporosis or osteopenia,” says Dr Virginia Pagés, a sports medicine specialist at Hospital de Barcelona. But does that mean the pursuit of wellbeing has nothing to do with the pursuit of health? Not at all.

In some countries, the concept of wellbeing emerged as a result of institutional recommendations to stay healthy – Foucault’s so-called ‘biopolitics’, recently criticised by Nobel laureate Byung-Chul Han in The Burnout Society – and took particular hold in European societies during the 1980s and 1990s. In other countries, such as the United States, the term ‘wellbeing’ was linked for decades to the resistance of minority groups who had very limited access to medical care – an ‘act of self-preservation’, as author Audre Lorde had stated.

However, the culture of wellbeing is a global phenomenon that promotes an “idea from the field of self-improvement”, as defined by Carl Cederström, a professor at Stockholm University and co-author of The Wellness Syndrome, in which “we try to achieve some sort of ideal state”. This modern concept of wellbeing is part health and part beauty.

Has ‘being healthy’ always meant the same thing?

In the medical field, the word ‘health’ has usually been linked to the concept of functionality – i.e., the body’s ability to easily carry out our daily activities. “That is why we find certain physical models or patterns in periods of history when inequalities did not yet exist,” says Marga Sánchez Romero, archaeologist and author of Lo que el cuerpo nos cuenta (What the Body Has to Say). “If we look at prehistory, we find steatopygia – the accumulation of fat in the abdominal area – which is how women of that era were depicted. That was the model of health, because it naturally accumulated fat in a place that did not hinder mobility, and that made us more efficient when it came to having children and raising them.”

Nonetheless, the body has always been social and political as well. “Ideals of femininity have existed throughout history; every era has had its own aesthetic ideal of womanhood, which is linked to an ethical ideal too”. What we currently consider a healthy body is, in part, the result of a historical construct that continues to evolve over time.