Having a Re-think

I had a think today about making my project more concise and feel as though i was trying to blend too many topics together and getting myself all confused and overwhelmed. So i stripped my ideas back and wrote down the main areas i began with. My project is about the pseudoscientific claims the wellness industry has adopted and the harmful nature of these narratives. More specifically how the wellness industry is for the most-part a white privileged industry, catering for already slim, able, women. There are many facets of this topic which i will explore in my thesis, namely: social media advertising aimed at women, the notions of 'self care' vs 'self help, the diet industry, pseudoscience, excellerated consumerism, mental health impacts. What i was looking at before in terms of 'society as an addicted society', i'm not thinking about this anymore as being part of my project, i know some of these ideas definitely fit into the problematic 'wellness' cult.. but i'll get tie in those links when it comes to it.

The film i will make will be a comment on what i believe to be the harmful nature of the 'wellness cult', from a feminist perspective.

Notes from today:

"The wellness industry is the diet industry and the diet industry is a function of the patriarchal beaut standard under which women either punish themselves to become smaller or are punished for failing to comply"

"Wellness contributes to the insulting cultural subtext that women cannot be trusted to make decisions when it comes to their own bodies"

"We can't push to eradicate harrassment, abuse and oppression of women while continuing to serve a system which demands we hurt ourselves to be more attractive and less threatening to me"

What i find problematic is the idea of 'change your thoughts, change your life'... of course to a certain extent what we think is partly how our realities unfold.. however the way we see things is also moulded by experiences we have of the world. Positivity, meditation, breathing exercises, definitely help you to live more eloquently. However the wellness industry as a whole tells those who have been socially, politically, racially disadvantaged since they were born that they should have a more positive outlook on life, totally diminishes the context of the repressive system we live in. For the people who can't pay their bills, working 3 jobs to put food on the table, constantly worrying about how they'll pay their rent/mortages, the people who have to avoid certain places due to racist remarks they might have blurted at them, for these people 'practicing' self-care won't address half of their problems. Those who need the time to care for themselves are most often than not overworked and forgotten about, left with not a minute in the day to bathe in the notion of self-care.