Fitness and wellness historian Natalia Mehlman Petrzela joins Christy to discuss her new book, Fit Nation; the historical shifts that made fitness go from being viewed as a narcissistic practice to being seen as a good thing across the political spectrum; why so many people are disillusioned with our medical system and looking for answers and validation in the alternative medicine space; how people can be critical consumers of online wellness content; and more. (Content warning: discussions of fitness and the food environment.)
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela is a historian of contemporary American politics and culture. She is the author of FIT NATION: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession (University of Chicago Press, 2023) and Classroom Wars: Language, Sex, and the Making of Modern Political Culture (Oxford University Press, 2015). She is co-producer and host of the podcast WELCOME TO YOUR FANTASY, from Pineapple Street Studios and Gimlet – and recognized as the “best of 2021” by Vogue, Esquire, the New York Times, and Vulture – and the co-host of Past Present Podcast. Her work has been supported by the Spencer, Whiting, Rockefeller, and Mellon Foundations.
Natalia is a frequent media guest expert, public speaker, and contributor to international and domestic news outlets, from the New York Times to the Washington Post to CNN to the Atlantic. She is Associate Professor of History at The New School, co-founded and directed the wellness education program Healthclass 2.0, and is a Premiere Leader of the mind-body practice intenSati. She holds a B.A. from Columbia and a master’s and Ph.D. from Stanford and lives with her husband and two children in New York City. Learn more about her and her work at nataliapetrzela.com.
Resources and References
Natalia’s book, FIT NATION: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession
Christy’s upcoming book, The Wellness Trap: Break Free from Diet Culture, Disinformation, and Dubious Diagnoses and Find Your True Well-Being
Transcript
Disclaimer: While every effort has been made to provide a faithful rendering of this episode, some transcription errors may have occurred. The original audio file is available here.
Christy Harrison: Welcome to Rethinking Wellness, a podcast exploring the diet culture, disinformation, dubious diagnoses, and disordered eating that are so pervasive in contemporary wellness culture--and how to avoid falling into these traps so that you can find your own true well-being.
I’m your host Christy Harrison and I’m a registered dietitian, certified intuitive eating counselor, journalist, and author of the books Anti-Diet, which is available now, and The Wellness Trap, which comes out on April 25th. You can learn more and pre-order the book at christyharrison.com/thewellnesstrap.
Hey there! Welcome to the very first episode of Rethinking Wellness. I’m so happy you’re here, whether you’re joining me from my first podcast, Food Psych, of which this show is something of a spinoff, or whether you’re new to my podcasting work or my work in general!
However you’ve come to be here, I can’t wait to share today’s interview with you, and many more in the weeks and months to come. In this first episode, I’m talking with fitness and wellness historian Natalia Mehlman Petrzela. We talk about her new book, Fit Nation; the historical shifts that made fitness go from being viewed as a narcissistic practice to being seen as a good thing across the political spectrum; why so many people are disillusioned with our medical system and looking for answers and validation in the alternative medicine space; how people can be critical consumers of online wellness content; and lots more.
Just a content warning for this one that it includes discussions of fitness and the food environment, so please take care of yourself when listending.
Before the interview, a few quick announcements.
This podcast is brought to you by my upcoming book, The Wellness Trap: Break Free from Diet Culture, Disinformation, and Dubious Diagnoses and Find Your True Well-Being, which is available for pre-order now!
The book explores a lot of what we are going to discuss on this podcast, including the connections between diet culture and wellness culture; how the wellness space became a hotbed of scams, misinformation, and conspiracy theories; why many popular alternative-medicine diagnoses are misleading and harmful—and what we can do instead to create a society that promotes true well-being for all it’s people.
Just go to christyharrison.com/thewellnesstrap to learn more and pre-order the book for its April 25th release. That’s christyharrison.com/thewellnesstrap. And, once you’ve preordered, you can get a special bonus Q&A and webinar with me by uploading your proof of purchase at christyharrison.com/bookbonus.
If you like this show and want to help support it, I’d be so grateful it if you'd subscribe, rate, and review it. You can do that wherever you’re listening to this, and you can also get it as a newsletter in your inbox every other week, where you can either listen to the audio directly from the email, or read a full transcript, or both! Subscribe to that at rethinkingwellness.substack.com. That’s rethinkingwellness.substack.com.
Now, without any further ado, let’s go to my conversation with Natalia Mehlman Petrzela.
Christy Harrison: Natalia, welcome to the show, I’m so glad to be talking with you again.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: I’m so happy to be here!
Christy Harrison: Yeah, I’m really excited to talk with you, so the genesis of this conversation and kind of this podcast, is that when I was interviewing people for my new book, The Wellness Trap, I kept having these conversations where I wished I could release the whole interview of, and have it be a podcast. And you were one of those conversations. I loved everything we talked about and wished I could’ve used it all in the book and just wasn’t able to. So I’m hoping to sort of recreate that in part here, and also talk about your new book, which is out now, Fit Nation. So we have a lot to discuss.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: We sure do and I should say that I’ve been a listener of your podcast for a while, and your voice transports me back to when I was living in Paris, and walking through the streets listening to you, so it’s much more romantic than my current office situation. But yes, I’m excited to talk to you again too.
Christy Harrison: Oh well, that’s lovely. I lived in Paris during my junior year of college, and I miss it so much!
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: Oh cool!
Christy Harrison: Well, so the first thing I would love to talk to you about today, is just kind of your own relationship with wellness culture. How your own work intersects with your personal relationship with wellness and with fitness.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: Yeah, so first what is my work, I mean I think I’m talking to you mostly as a historian. I have this book about this history of fitness culture, how fitness became wellness, and I’ve been a critical observer and scholar of wellness culture in America. And my training is as a historian, and I’m a history professor. But the way that I came to this work, was really being a passionate but somewhat skeptical consumer and participant in wellness culture. And I came to write this book FitNation, and sort of spend the better part of the last decade thinking critically about wellness culture, because I was really not an athlete at all growing up, but then I found the gym and fitness culture in the mid-1990s, and once I walked in, honestly it was like a step aerobics class and found that kind of movement environment—I was totally hooked, I felt great in my body, I was just like wanted to be in this all the time. That being said, as I developed my scholarly and critical thinking tools, and really became a feminist, I realized this thing that I loved so much was also deeply problematic. And so that’s a very quick synopsis of the kind of life events but also mindset that brought me to be like hey, I really want to think deeply about this world of wellness, which is in many ways, very empowering and very powerful in our lives in good and bad ways. But I think it’s not so well understood. And so that’s kind of how I got here today.
Christy Harrison: Yeah I feel like that resonates so much with me and probably with many of our listeners too. That this thing that you loved and brought you so much, was also deeply problematic. For me, it was deeply problematic in terms of creating disordered eating in a really orthorexic relationship with fitness and food and all of the things. But I think for everyone, there’s probably some problematic elements even if it doesn’t go to that degree.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: Absolutely, and I should say, some of them were personal, like when I discovered the gym in high school I found myself thinking I was “being good” by skipping a meal to exercise more, and that obviously can turn into something really damaging. Luckily for me, it didn’t go too far in that direction. But I already kind of felt that there was a disconnect personally with this thing that our society like only sees as positive in most ways, that can become obsessive. But then also as I kind of grew up and I was in graduate school and still very much working out, working at gyms, got certified as an instructor; a lot of the language, not only around body image, and you have to lose weight, you have to earn this, earn your dessert and all of that kind of moralizing. But also, just the total individualism of it all. “All that’s standing between you and the body you want is your willpower. “That whole sense of your body and your health is only in your hands, on the one hand I felt it was very empowering, because it’s much easier to do that than solve climate change or any of these bigger more thornier issues. On the other hand, I’m like you know now from reading some books and being a citizen of the world to realize there’s so much more than individual wells standing in the way of an individual person and their goals. So, I was grappling with that and I still do.
Christy Harrison: And you’re still a fitness instructor, right? You still do that on the side?
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: Yeah so the workout that I teach is this wonderful program called intenSati and it combines affirmations and really high energy movements. I got certified back when I was in grad school in 2007, taught at Equinox for many years. Then I actually stopped for a while when the brand left Equinox because I’m a professor, I have 2 kids, etc. Recently, very sadly, earlier this year, the founder of this program Patricia Moreno, a wonderful teacher and friend of mine; died of cancer, so now I’m teaching again intermittently, doing kind of residencies. So if you’re interested in that, it’s easy to find me on social media.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, that’s great. I’m so curious about how you came to realize this sort of individualistic pursuit of wellness was problematic and the history of that. The roots of that in American culture.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: Yeah so, ok, one of the things that is really interesting or weird about my positionality in this whole conversation is that even though I live in the world we all live in where kind of the pursuit of wellness and health and fitness and weight loss and physical beauty and all that, is pretty much uncritically celebrated. My scholarly and intellectual development had happened almost entirely in a field that actually looks at kind of structural forces as the driving force in society. So this is in the weeds so bear with me, I think it is relevant here. So I think a lot of people have heard about the “great man” theory of history, right? That there’s like these individual heroes and they’re the reasons that historical progress happens. I came into the field of studying history in graduate school and even as an undergrad, when there was so much pushback to that—good pushback. And the pushback to that was like no it’s not these individuals and hero figures we should be looking at, it’s actually big structural forces that actually shape how we live, and how social change does or does not happen, and how solutions can come to be. So in terms of wellness culture, a big thing people were talking about when I started paying attention to this stuff, was around food justice and nutrition. And historically, if we look at, or even today, if we look at the way that any quality and kind of nutrition related illnesses are talked about, they’re often talked about as a kind of failure of individual behavior and individual choice. Well, these people don’t care about health or they don’t want to eat good food, or sorry the kids throw out the greens on their lunch plate, and we tend to frame that (I know I’m preaching to the choir here) as an individual choice. Well, the scholars etc., that I was immersed in were saying “No! Let’s look at the federal subsidies for corn. Let’s look at the rise of the fast-food industry. Let’s look at which foods are affordable.” Beyond these sorts of individual little pieces. So that conversation around food was happening already when I was in grad school and literally about everything else. I would have failed if I had written a paper that like centered on individuals and their decisions as a primary mover in history. So that is relevant because then when I’m in the gym, and I’m hearing and seeing all of this talk and all of this #fitspo and like all you need is a pair of sneakers and some will power! And that stuff is everywhere. We all have the same 24 hours in the day as Beyonce—no we don’t! She has a whole staff! My brain was already primed to really have my hackles up when I heard that kind of like highly individualistic motivational thinking.
Christy Harrison: That’s really interesting. And then looking at the history too, it seems like American individualism really started to intertwine with thinking about fitness. As you talk about in the book maybe the 1800s, I’m not sure, I’m curious to hear that story.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: Yeah um absolutely. So fitness as this kind of unqualified virtue, that really doesn’t exist in American society in a mainstream way until relatively recently—like the 1960s-70s it’s happening. But you’re absolutely right, that going back to people who were sort of boosters of fitness in the 1800s or the early part of the 20th century, they are connecting exercise and to a certain extent, control of food to discipline. This is discipline of the flesh. It’s no accident that there’s a whole movement called Muscular Christianity, and much of that ethos there was saying that the external appearance of your body and how you care for and discipline your body when you do exercise and other means, that is a sign of salvation. And it’s funny because that ethos and those folks were speaking in very explicitly Christian terms, but that’s exactly the ideology that is much more widespread and kind of secularized today. So that’s happening in the 1800s but it’s still sort of niche and one of the things that I do in the book because I think it’s hard for contemporary people to appreciate this, is that I try to show how weird and subversive it was to workout. And so you had people who were enthusiasts for strength training really having to lay it on so thick to say “no no, disciplining and caring for your body through exercise, this is not manual labor that immigrants and black people do. This is about civilization, this is about channeling and disciplining your strength to achieve some sort of higher state.” And they had to say that so explicitly because it was seen as sort of shady or sketchy or seedy for men to be so into their bodies, that must mean that you are not straight, that must mean there’s something wrong with you and for women it was seen as inappropriate too because why are you trying to build strength? Don’t you know that could harm your fertility? Don’t you know that could cultivate unladylike sensibilities like being too individualistic or competitive? So, try to kind of set up both exactly what you’re saying that there were these early exercise enthusiasts who tied it to individual virtue, but there really was also this kind of dominant sense that exercise was kind of seedy, it was a waste of time, it could even harm your body.
Christy Harrison: And also the province of narcissists, you’ve mentioned that in the book as well that it was seen as a very narcissistic pursuit to be exercising. I think that’s so interesting in light of how it’s seen today as sort of this matter of personal responsibility but also in a way like responsibility to others, I think this is maybe more common in places like that have nationalized medicine like the UK or something where you owe it to your fellow countrymen to exercise because otherwise you’re a drain on the NHS or something. But even in the US there’s some of that. That you’re harming society or something by not engaging in “healthy lifestyle.”
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: I think that’s totally right and on your first point about narcissism, that plays out differently for men and women in kind of interesting ways. For men, and men contended with this well into the 1970s, even today I honestly see this in some environments where men are not as frequently seen in some boutique fitness environments. The idea of like a man is so into his appearance and through working out or certain forms of working out that he’s inherently suspicious. And women interestingly, sometimes get mocked for that stuff, especially like expensive workouts or ones that seems to have a lot of bells and whistles. But because we’ve always sort of accepted that of course women should spend time and money on looking pretty to the extent that exercise is tied to not building strength or to building community (or all these other great things that can happen) but to losing weight or getting prettier skin or being more attractive to men, it actually becomes much more palatable for women to exercise.
Christy Harrison: That’s so interesting, and it makes me think of something you mentioned in the book too about how like in the 1970s and 80s how feminists like Gloria Steinem were extolling the virtues of exercise and talking about exercise as this like feminist act and that seems to sort of fly in the face of this idea that women shouldn’t be too strong because it will take away from their prettiness and their ability to be good mothers or whatever it is, be fertile. But then also, as you trace in the book, there’s this interesting sort of individualism that comes into play on the left as well, where it becomes this pursuit of individual fitness becomes sort of tied up with projects on the left as well as on the right. And makes this pursuit of fitness, this ideal across the political spectrum.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: Thank you for reading so closely, because when I reference the book and it’s not out yet, I’m like oh my god, these poor people are actually reading my words so I appreciate that. So to kind of elaborate on that a little bit, how did we get from that moment when exercise was weird and suspicious to where we are today. Yeah you hit it on the head, and so the argument that I make is in the middle of the 20th century, starting with some federal projects that connect being fit to civic duty a little bit of which you were talking about before, you owe it to other people. The mentality was not so much you owe it to other people, but more you owe it to your country. So, there was this big move, it was a very splashy PR campaign that so much investment in infrastructure, with this big move to kind of boost up physical education programs, public recreation, there was this whole campaign that says no one gets cut from the squad of fitness, this is not like sports, everybody should be fit! Because if the Cold War gets hot, you’re going to have a responsibility to go fight. And JFK is like the perfect influencer for this, because he takes Eisenhower who came before him, he takes his kind of military preparedness thing and makes it sexy, glamourous and fun because he’s JFK. And so, he gets reamed for this by his opponents who talks about JFK’s “silly fits of fitness”, but he does a really good job of saying this not just about preparing soldiers, this is about fun and being with your family and like challenging each other to healthy heights and all the rest. So that lays the foundation for fitness as a civic commitment but then in the sixties and seventies you have this wild, intellectual shift that happens where the notions that I think kind of underpin modern wellness kind of come together. And those are two ideas really. One is that mind and body are connected. And that you can’t be your fully actualized self unless you’re working on your body. That kind of gets widespread traction. And two, that it is up to an individual to take control and steer that process of achieving wellness or achieving health. That set of ideas is very attractive across the political spectrum. So on the left, you have people who have been marginalized by medical communities. Whether they’re feminists, whether they’re people of color who are like “yes, I want to be trusted to have agency over my body and my health. I’m sick of these dudes in white coats telling me I’m sick or I don’t feel pain or this is what I should put in my body or my body’s not good enough” and that’s very, very empowering. On the right, this fits in perfectly with all of this language of personal responsibility that is at the heart of conservative and libertarian ideology. And so, I’m a historian of ideas to a certain extent is that like an interesting shift I saw but what’s so cool is to see how it plays out literally on the ground. With something like jogging, you both have these like hippie environmentalists like back to the land joggers, you have women who are feminists who are claiming their right to long distances and then you also have conservative Christian campuses celebrating these cardio and aerobics programs and talking about how Jesus wants you to save body and mind. And it’s such a convergent discourse and I think really accounts for why this stuff remains so popular across the spectrum. Fitness and wellness is malleable to many different ideologies.
Christy Harrison: There’s so much there that I want to unpack, like this shift that happens in the sixties and seventies because we talked about that for my book too. The idea that wellness culture was sort of born out of that shift, in many ways, and that people seeking out alternative medicine, alternative points of view about health and well-being kind of came out of that in some ways. The disillusionment that so many people were feeling, which people are still feeling today, and I think has driven the wellness culture to become such a big business. And alternative medicine to become such a big business because justifiably I think many people feel abandoned or ignored or unserved by the medical system in many ways, especially marginalized people, people of color, women, the LGBTQ people, all kinds of folks don’t feel served by the medical system and feel increasingly like the alternatives might be more helpful and that self-care is perhaps an alternative to that.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: I think that’s totally right. You know I just went to visit a class yesterday that is talking about wellness culture and one of the things that I think is really hard, and I don’t have the answer to it, is that everything you just said is right. This kind of resistance to authority and skepticism of expertise comes out of real pain, and real exclusion and marginalization. And it comes from a culture that often has like uncritically elevated certain forms of expertise over others. In a way that can be really damaging and I appreciate that. On the other hand, we are seeing this play out right now in the wellness world around COVID response. What can sometimes feel like a nice compromise of how we resolve that, which is like well everybody can just define wellness for themselves. Yes I agree with that but then I’m so troubled to see among many prominent wellness influencers, that gets kind of distorted into the government’s lying to you, they might tell you to take this vaccine but I actually believe in this tincture over here. Or you know in a less controversial mode, the kind of overall, unquestioned authority of the personal journey as legitimate as the peer-reviewed studies. And I have a really hard time saying who to trust when my students ask me. Because I’m like no, one person who cured themselves of a chronic illness or lost weight or has great skin, and wants to share their journey—I’m not telling you that’s not valid. But also in this sort of hierarchy of evidence and authority, can not say that that is the same validity as a peer-reviewed, double-blind study, even though I know that the medical institutions and the medial profession, are hardly actors without checkered pasts and presents. So it’s super, super hard to know how to navigate that, and I think the wellness industry/culture is (and all of our culture) in a little bit of crisis because of that.
Christy Harrison: Agreed, completely. That was one thing I kept thinking about when I was writing the book and was so troubled by as well, how do you know who to trust? How do you discern? How do you discern what’s useful and what’s not? I’ve been thinking a lot about the placebo effect and the kind of the family of placebo effects that are related effects in wellness spaces and how powerful that is. How powerful the mind-body connection is and the way that taking something when you’re at the height of sort of a natural history of disease where there’s ebbs and flows and often times people end up seeking out alternative medicine or really any kind of medicine or care at the height of one of those ebbs. And then the natural history of disease ends up that they go into a dip, and the symptoms are mitigated kind of naturally with the ebb and flow of the disease. And I have multiple chronic illnesses that very much have cycles like that. And so when reaching for an alternative or a cure at the height of the disease, it’s going to very much look like something works, whatever you take at that height, at that peak works. Because you end up getting better on your own, but then how do we discern what really has an effect over and above that. That’s where I think peer-reviewed, randomized, controlled double-blind, placebo-controlled studies come in. But those can be really problematic too. There’s a really interesting book called Snake Oil Science, that goes into the issues with alternative medicine research and why it’s almost impossible to do really good studies on a lot alternative medicine approaches. I think it can be really confusing for people who don’t know, the average consumer.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: Right and not even the average consumer. When I think about the stuff for a living and it’s really hard. The go-to, whatever feels right for you, that is not really enough right now. But it’s not all we’ve got but it’s hard to give more conclusive evidence than that. And your point about the natural ebbs and flows of certain conditions it just made sort of laugh—I was almost 41 weeks pregnant with my second child and I had a wonderful OB but very much into Western medicine, I was like oh my god get this baby out of me already! What do you think about me going and doing some aggressive acupuncture? She was like “ok go for it!” and I was like do you think it’s going to work? And she was like listen, you’re 41 weeks pregnant, this baby’s going to come out in the next couple of days, if you go do acupuncture now, maybe you can tie that causal effect or it’s just because it’s time for the baby to be born! And I thought that was kind of interesting, and not every situation obviously fits into that. One of the things I try to explain when talking about this is the notion of like complimentary techniques or complimentary cures. Like who am I to say acupuncture didn’t work or didn’t hasten it, or that another complementary and alternative intervention doesn’t work. I do not have the hubris to say that, but I do think scientific expertise counts for something as imperfect as it is. But it is hard, and we’re in a tough moment I think especially with the pandemic and public health, public health’s esteem on that point.
Christy Harrison: Right, and the ways that a lot of public health institutions have had very big missteps and failings and admittedly so. The CDC has done its own kind of internal investigation and found that we really screwed up in terms of communication and some of the guidance to people and stuff like that. And it definitely feels like it’s enough to make a lot of people lose trust. But then I think there’s this interesting, I know we touched on this in our interview for the book a little bit too, the role that the internet plays and social media plays in sort of fostering that. There’s maybe a little spark of doubt for a lot of people or sense of justified skepticism that many people have when they see issues like the CDC’s pandemic response being somewhat botched in some ways or the oxycontin scandal, or things like that. Where the medical establishment has really messed up and the Tuskegee Experiment, things that are just really, really problematic and create a justified skepticism in people. But then the internet and social media and these (in some cases) bad actors, these misinformation purveyors sort of jump on that. And fan this flame of skepticism into a raging fire that wants to burn down everything about the established medical system and make you mistrust and have this conspiracy sort of thinking toward everything in the system. And a sort of attendant openness to these really wild things that maybe you would be skeptical about otherwise if you hadn’t had this sort of faith in mainstream institutions and science just completely burned down by the social media environment that we’re in.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: No I think that’s absolutely right. You know, I was talking before about that kind of training that I came up in emphasized structural critique and institutional critique. And in some ways, I think what you’re describing is from a sensibility that generally exists on the right. It’s like an attack on, COVID is a hoax, this is like “Biden’s pandemic” etc. But I think that kind of attack on institutions, whether it’s the medical profession or the CDC, is helped along in a big way from decades of scholars and that kind of progressive tradition. Which has been very critical of institutions for some really good ways, for some really good reasons. But those two things kind of come together. The pandemic is so weird, and it’s like brought out so much weirdness in our culture. But I was really surprised when the vaccines first came out, which was a great moment, I am vaccinated and I’m very happy about that. But when the vaccines came out, all of these kind of like lefty progressive people who are people I agree with on a lot of things—were like wearing these t-shirts “House of Pfizer” or “Team Moderna” and I’m like are you guys really pharma shills right now? What happened to you? It’s just so weird. And you’re the people who have been crafting really thoughtful critiques about big pharma and the medical/industrial complex or whatever. Like great, this vaccine seems like a good thing, I trust it and everything but like this is not what I would expect.
Christy Harrison: Right, part of uncritical embrace of—and again, I’m also a vaccinated, boosted twice, love it, really grateful for it and my daughter is vaccinated. All the caveats. And I think it’s been truly incredible the speed with which the companies were able to develop vaccines that are safe and effective and helping blunt the pandemic. But, the pharmaceutical industry certainly has its own issues and I think, as I talk about in the book, the supplement industry has in some ways even more issues because it’s very barely regulated. At least with pharmaceuticals at least you have strict regulation and the necessity to prove safety and efficacy before something goes to market, again Oxycontin scandal is sort of a big example of how that failed, in one case or how that could potentially fail. But I think in most cases, the system works well for establishing safety and efficacy of drugs before they go to market. Whereas with the supplement industry, you have none of that, there’s no necessity of establishing safety and efficacy before going to market, there’s a lot of adulteration that happens in the supplement industry that isn’t found sometimes for years but the pharmaceutical industry certainly has it’s own problems. But yeah, the pandemic has just been so, has sort of upended a lot of the usual lines of, because also you see people really embracing supplements and going the full—I’ve even seen people, (and this is again somewhat on the left and on the right) where they’re embracing all other kinds of vaccines but the COVID vaccine somehow is bad or wrong and developed too quickly and blah, blah, blah. And so they’re going full alternative medicine on the pandemic. Which is just so troubling.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: I have seen that too. Yeah that we could probably stay in the pandemic forever. The other pandemic piece that has put me a little bit at odds, is maybe not strong enough or too strong of a word, with some of my usual travelers is like now, at this stage in the pandemic, (keep in mind I’m in classrooms all day) and I’m in classrooms that are still even with vaccination and booster requirements and until very recently, weekly PCR tests—were 100% masked. And I don’t think this is ok. I’ve been really vocal about the fact that starting with my college students who aren’t even getting the brunt of it, these little kids have it worse in a lot of ways. They haven’t seen each other’s faces for four years. I have seniors saying to me “I just want to hear my professor talk properly, not muffled. I want that kind of engagement of faces.” And I feel in that environment, that’s actually totally legitimate position and actually to this point of wellness, I don’t want your listeners to be like “what is this like COVID rant thing I didn’t sign up for in this episode”, but I think from the perspective of broader wellness and situating our health in social context. To me that’s the key piece here. It is debatable and it’s not my expertise to say, whether like the cloth or surgical masks that most people are wearing are actually preventing COVID transmission among 100% unvaccinated people. Maybe they are and maybe they are not, but there’s something broader in terms of our social health that I think is pretty clearly being lost. And so in that protected environment, with our vaccines and our weekly testing, it seems like we should be to see each other’s faces. This is, I’m not saying you necessarily agree with me or not and we don’t have to get into that, but I think one of the positive things about our wellness culture is that it does kind of at least position as an ideal a kind of holistic sense, a holistic definition of health. Which incorporates like various things beyond the absence of illness. And I think in some, in largely educational institutions, in certain regions, we’ve really lost that in a very unfortunate and I think surprising way. My students and my colleagues, everyone is kind of losing out when our only goal is preventing COVID transmission and not thinking about other health implications.
Christy Harrison: That’s interesting. That makes me think too like, there’s this piece that we talked about for my book and is in your book about how wellness culture and fitness culture as well, embrace this lofty ideal about holism as this ideal. holism as the goal and with fitness culture, it was with yoga. Yoga sort of drove that shift of thinking about enlightenment and exercise as more than just physical and vanity, it’s this mind-body connection. But then in practice, the way the sort of holistic gets translated is not always so holistic. Curious to hear you talk about the history of that and how you see that playing out today as well.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: Totally. So I think first, taking it further back to that mid-century moment we were talking about kind of post World War II. So in the fifties and sixties, there are a lot of advances in biomedicine. And there’s a kind of general boost in American prosperity. Not across the board, you still have a lot of inequality. But middle-class people can own a home, those 1950s images that you see did not apply to everybody but they did reflect and kind of broader prosperity of growth of middle class, largely white middle class. Think of in terms of bodily health, what we were coming out of—two world wars, the depression, something we don’t always remember about World War I and II, not only did lots of American soldiers die, but many came back disfigured and with disabilities, same effects of the depression as well. You have advances in vaccines, polio gets eradicated, advances in biomedicine, greater access to medical care, in those years after World War II. And you have the rise of, more mainstreaming of the therapeutic profession. All of that kind of converges in our culture to kind of raise the standard of how people should expect to feel and live. There’s this idea that now we don’t need to worry about starving, we can start thinking about what kinds of food we put in our body and nutrition and seeing and understanding where they come from. We don’t need to worry about being sent off to war quite yet, we can worry about heart health and these kinds of more elevated things. If you feel alienated or depressed or etc., there’s a doctor for that because you deserve to be happy. Now some of the remediations were pretty terrible, like all sorts of chemical interventions, a lot of the food that was considered “healthy” then was actually totally processed. So, the solutions were not perfect. There is the kind of rise in the standard of expectation around how to live that really takes hold in that period. That sort of is evolving and you have particularly in the 1960s and seventies, counter culture that really is embracing the pursuit of enlightenment. Some of that, ironically, is rejecting aspects of American prosperity. So imagine generationally, a kid who grows up in the suburbs and is told to jog daily around the block to protect their heart health, and they don’t worry about lack of food and all the rest. There’s a whole bunch of kids who grew up like that, suburban, American, Western ideal is very stultifying, it’s inauthentic, I want to find real enlightenment. Which interestingly, they’re positioning that so-called “real” enlightenment in contrast to this inauthentic, mainstream, suburbia but they can only kind of have that level of expectation because of that prosperity right? And that gets to some of the class dynamics. So then you have folks, and not all of them were middle class and white, but getting in to experimenting with so-called “Eastern traditions” with rejecting kind of industrial food, you have the beginning of the organic food movement during this period. You have acupuncture, yoga, all of these kind of bodily practices that are embraced what is mostly like a counter culture. That’s happening throughout the sixties and seventies and is still seen as a little bit out there by a lot of folks. I think there’s this broadcast in 1979 on 60 Minutes, where a very young Dan Rather is like “Wellness, there’s a word you don’t hear every day.” And I’m like really because I hear it all the time. And he goes out to this clinic, and he interviews these folks who are saying things that today sound like totally run of the mill, “I just believe body and mind are connected. I couldn’t get relief from my elbow injury until I tried this non-Western physician and now everyone thinks I’m crazy.” Things that now are really in the mainstream, and then at the same time have this burgeoning fitness culture which is expanding as cardio, which was then called aerobics, which expands the definition of what’s considered exercise beyond weight lifting and calisthenics. You have the kind of 80s aerobics thing going on which is not connected to that counter culture at all. It’s very hard-driving, get skinny dance party—people describe having transcended into experiences in those classes. But it’s not connected to a broader, social critique for sure or anything like that. It’s an intense bodily experience. In the 1990s, and then the 2000s, these really come together in mainstream yoga culture. And a lot of people who write about this, write about it from the perspective of yoga is this pure, spiritual practice being corrupted by this fitness industry that’s all about thinner thighs and strips out the spirituality and just make it into a weight loss. That is not untrue in certain aspects, but what I look at in the book, and I think is really, really important in understanding where we are today—is the way that yoga culture actually shapes fitness culture in these years. And that you have a workout industry which is much bigger than the yoga industry ever was. A fitness industry that was very physical and about the body, and for that reason, still even as many people were doing it, considered kind of narcissistic or kind of silly. It adopts and incorporates this kind of language of spirituality, enlightenment, it’s not an instructor, it’s my guru, this is about self-care. And that really serves to elevate exercise to a practice, not just a quick burn and then you get out of there. And I think that that integration is really important in understanding why exercise has this really virtuous cast today, and then more concretely, like the result of all that, things that are still with us today—like “yoga fusion bootcamp” or “power yoga”, all of these kind of like fusion formats, which I think are not only a result of so-called corruption of yoga by fitness, but actually part of a very willing embrace on both sides. I read every issue of Yoga Journal for like twenty years or something, and there’s a debate that’s constantly happening but there are plenty of people from the yoga community that are like “this is great! We’re finally shedding this esoteric cast that we’re this weird spiritual thing.” We should be in every sports medicine clinic in America! As there are people who are excited about that. But whether you think it’s good or not, that influence went both ways and it’s so crucial to the way today that we invest working out as this elevated, worthy pursuit that I don’t think most people are sort of apologizing for anymore.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, well so not apologizing like you said in the book, you’re one of the first responses that people have when you said you were writing a book about fitness culture is like “uh I don’t exercise enough, I’m so terrible” we now have taken this on as a mantle of morality.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: And that is such a relatively new expectation. It really, really is. Oh you’re writing a book about fitness? Oh my god I’m so bad, I should workout more—I’m like I’m not the workout police, I don’t know. You’re a special kind of food expert, but I would imagine that like some folks who work in your field go out to dinner with friends and their friends apologize for the food on their plate they’re eating in front of them, I’m sure.
Christy Harrison: It’s part of the reason I started saying I’m an anti-diet dietitian, it’s to try to bring to the foreground the anti-diet part and say I’m not going to judge you about what you’re eating because otherwise if I say I’m a dietitian, that’s always the first response “oh I need to eat better” or like “oh I’m trying this new keto thing what do you think of it?” And it just gets into these really thorny conversations that I want to sort of not have to go down that road.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: Yeah, it does! I think pertinent to both that point you make and also actually this thing we were just talking about which is the kind of rise of this kind of wellness talk around exercise and around diet too. In some ways, I mean, there are good aspects to that. I think it’s great we talk more about going to exercise or eating because this is how it makes me feel, and I go for other reasons that are not just about the physical transformation or for women often the shrinking of our bodies, I think that’s really good. But, the thing that worries me and I’m curious to know what you think because I think this is probably almost more apparent in the food world is that I think there’s been this kind of silencing amongst certain circles around weight loss talk or kind of fitness talk about how you feel about your body, or how you want to look. Such that we have this new language which dresses up the same old sentiments. And I’m really divided on that. I’m turning 44 next week, I have two kids, I look I think my age and all that, but I have some conversations with friends who are feminists, we’re in our 40s, most of us are moms or whatever, and there’s almost like this furtive thing if we feel like “I’d like my pants to fit a little differently” and I’m not saying that’s good or bad, but it is strange that when the dominant discourse in our culture for so long has actually been “you should announce you want to lose weight and post your transformation pictures” and all that. I still think that actually that feeling is very much with us, but at least in certain circles you almost can’t talk about it, so it’s harder to move past it. I’m dealing with this too so I’m not offering solutions but I think it’s a historical phenomenon that we would be remiss to think it’s not worth thinking about.
Christy Harrison: I agree. I think it’s really interesting because in my perspective, and definitely in the food world, there’s a lot of this couching the desire to lose weight or the desire to eat a certain way for like perceived moral reasons—that you’re “bad” if you eat “bad food” or whatever. I think now with the rise of the anti-diet and I’ve certainly been a part of that, and my first book is called Anti-Diet, I think with the rise of that, I think there are a lot of people now who think it’s bad to express those sentiments and yet still want that. So there’s a lot more marketing I think now, that is trying to co-op the language of anti-diet culture and talk about the other reasons or the other benefits people might get from eating a certain way or from exercising a certain way or whatever it is. It’s coded language now, it’s not shrink your body or lose X pounds or whatever but it’s like feel good in your skin or glow from within or something like that. What does that actually mean? I think it still means the same thing but it’s got this like slightly loftier framing to it.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: Right and I mean it’s so hard, I think we should never really be judging history of like purely of “is this better or is this worse?” But it is like I read so many historical advertisements for different “reducing” products and different exercise products, and literally there are records that are set in the 60s that are like “how to please your husband – be whistle bait after 30” It’s literally like that, I talk about it in the book, you should exercise so that you continue to merit male attention. Full-stop, no questioning, end of story. It is very good that we have moved on past this, right? It’s great because those kinds of ads, there are little girls out there (and boys by the way) who saw that on their mom’s shelf and that was their first inclination that this is how they should think. So I think it is a huge improvement that we’ve moved past that but I think we haven’t moved past the underlying emotions that drive that kind of marketing. But we just kind of have a more dressed up way of talking about them. And I think that that’s really hard, and I’ve been really kind of inspired and thought a lot about the pushback on the love your body language, that you can get kind of wrapped up in that like “oh you don’t love your body? Oh you’re not enlightened or what’s wrong with you? All this internalized depression.” I’m like oh my god, you don’t need to feel guilty not only maybe for not looking like you want too, but then not loving how you look, that doesn’t seem like progress. So that’s really challenging and the cooptation you’re talking about, I think is right of this new language, and then maybe this is too far into the food industry for me to comment on, but I was following one of these internet controversies where there was a nutritionist who was kind of talking what sounded great, and about an anti-diet line about there are no bad or good foods. And it turned out she was like paid by some chips or fast food company and I’m like uh! That to me undermines such important work and anti-diet culture because I don’t think anyone, nutritionist or not, would say that bags of chips are the same as eating fresh food. And that totally just, it’s just so, it’s really hard. I feel like I’m saying that a lot in this interview because you’re asking really good questions, but how to navigate this all I can tend to say is do your own research, but think about how everything that we’re experiencing is constructive. And it’s not every food or every workout is exactly of the same quality or exactly have the same affect or is right for everyone but also try and consult research in making your decisions beyond that uncredentialed influencer who looks pretty and has a lot of followers, and so tells you to do things because her “journey” wore that palette, and I think that, as we’re talking about sort of hierarchies of authority, there are very little checks of people getting online and issuing health advice. So yeah, something you’ve got to look out for.
Christy Harrison: Completely, and I mean the do your own research thing is so interesting, we talked about that in our book interview too about how this phrase has become so loaded and what does it even mean to do your own research. And with the anti-vax sort of take of do your own research, it’s basically do your research these particular ways, you know look at these memes that have been curated for you by the algorithm that amplifies discord and moral outrage. And so it’s going to drive you further and further down this anti-vax rabbit hole because that’s what drives engagement, like “look at these! This is your research!” Don’t look at the scientific studies and journals that have been published for decades and decades. That that’s somehow invalid and that only this particular type of research is the valid form of doing your research.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: Absolutely! I think that’s right, and as a historian what do I do? I teach research methods, it’s been very dizzying for me that whole “do your own research” has been weaponized. Because now I feel like just the conversation I have, I’m teaching a research seminar this semester, and we talk about that and this sort of like abismalogical crisis that we’re in when usually my answer would have always been go to the primary sources right? And now we have to have a more sophisticated conversation about that in part because of this weaponization of do your own research, but also the sheer barrage of information that we have available to us. Even if you’re going in, in a good faith way to do your own research, it’s harder and harder I think, to get something close to a 360 view of what’s going on. And so when I tell them, and maybe this is just good life advice beyond writing a history thesis, is constantly be humble in your knowledge. What am I not seeing? What are the blinders? What someone not with my positionality think? That pushes me certainly in writing the book but also just in making decisions about how to live life, and how to be well, to kind of reach for perspectives that might not be intuitive to mine and realize I might not have the whole picture. And yeah, it is a form of doing your own research, but I think in a more good faith way than that term is often used.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, I mean I think that’s really well said and so valuable to think about humility as an aspect of this, because we see a lot of, and again this has become my bug bear as I researched my book and looked at what are the drivers of mis and disinformation about wellness, and how do we even define mis and disinformation first of all. But then what has driven those to be so prominent in the wellness space and really seeing the role social media and algorithms have played in driving that. I think my own, I talk about this in the book, that my own discourse and rhetoric became more polarized and more black and white, by virtue of the algorithms rewarding that. Just seeing what worked on social media, and thinking these more nuanced memes don’t get as much traction, these ones that are much more black and white (and this wasn’t really even a conscious decision you know, just something that happened over the years) that the stuff with fewer filler words and more concrete, sort of black and white language tends to get more likes and more chairs and more traction and more angry comments as well. And there’s this notion of if you’re provoking angry comments, or if you’re creating controversy then you’re doing something right. And I’m not that kind of person actually, I don’t like creating controversy, that’s not my personality. And so to feel at the center of that a lot of times, this has been just very overwhelming and scary for me in some cases. And you know in looking at the ways in which the platforms actually drove me to this sort of way of relating that maybe wasn’t what I intended or wasn’t what I really stand for, and trying to figure out how to be more nuanced in thinking about these issues, and step away from social media. And not let that influence my writing or my speaking as much, has been really helpful to me, I think. And is an ongoing project, of course.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: That’s such a point and you have a bigger social media following than I do, but I feel like I’ve noticed that in the same way and that’s also, I don’t delve into controversy but like I feel like if I have a brand, it’s nuanced. And so I am not, my thoughts are that I feel are most worth sharing or could actually add something, are not best articulated in like a “can you believe it?” outraged tweet or etc. Or some like, on Instagram or preset instruction on how to live or how to feel, which I feel like do really well in that way. And I see people honestly who I respect, I feel go sort of off the rails in this way. I’m like “do you actually think this way?” or are you just like hoarding likes. And I think that’s kind of pathetic, it’s actually made me, in part it’s because I was done with this book so I have a little bit more writing space but I have been writing a lot more like in real outlets in order to have a thousand words or two thousand words, to actually make a point. And I feel like for me, that is (and I’m lucky to have that access) a more effective way to make a good contribution because I don’t know, I tweet a lot, and I share things on Instagram, but I find on Instagram I share very, “hi I’m doing this thing, come to this event” or like “here are my kids” or in stories, I’ll share articles and stuff. But on Twitter, I share things, but it’s not the best place to kind of have a nuanced conversation. In part because people are so out for blood.
Christy Harrison: Oh totally. It’s so hard, it’s not a place for nuanced conversation at all in my experience. I think the platform generates that too, because I definitely know people in real life who I’m like, you’re not like that in your offline persona. You know this persona that you have online, is this heightened version of maybe you’re a little bit edgy in real life, but you’re this edge lord on Twitter. Or you’re much more nuanced in conversations when we have time to really flesh out an idea and then on social media it’s just very black and white. And I’ve also seen people sort of driven to the edge, driven kind of up a wall by this, by the way that the algorithms push controversy and push people into sort of debates and not even just debates but flame wars. And getting so obsessed with the internet fight that they’re in of the day, and not being able to step away from it. And I’ve had little moments like that myself, I’ve never really like—I’ve certainly been sucked into unreasonable debates and things like that, I’ve tried to avoid anything majorly controversial, but still it’s happened and it’s made me feel awful and really impacted my mental health in a negative way. And I’ve started to feel like ok what’s the common denominator here? Every time I open this app I start to feel this way, and that is where I think where this idea of a mind-body connection and thinking about well-being holistically really can come into play is like how am I feeling in my body right now? What is this triggering for me? Is this the best environment for me, is this something maybe I could do well to step away from.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: Absolutely. I think if we read more books than tweets and had more in-person conversations rather than faceless social media exchanges, we’d probably be in a much better place.
Christy Harrison: Yes, yes. And it’s hard, it’s hard in this modern era, especially with COVID having disconnected so many of us from our in-person communities and for people still who are immune-compromised and things like that, having to still be really careful and avoid a lot of in-person interaction. And so online has become such a more important part of so many people’s social lives, so I get why social media use kind of exploded around the pandemic. And yet, I think it’s really had so many negative impacts on us as well.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: I agree. And you know one other piece that I think exacerbates that, especially in the wellness industry like certainly in fitness, I would say in food, and in this role (which they made 30 years ago) the “life coach.” All of those things, I think are really important to think about, in terms of the rise of social media, and some of its harms, in that it’s such an unregulated space. People can rise to have such influence there because all they need is their media savvy and like I said before, they’re kind of like personal journey to impart advice. And I’m not saying that we should crack down with like “you need a credential to tell people what you ate for breakfast” or how many pushups you did today, or whatever. I think over-credentialing can be a real problem too. And can actually shut-out marginalized people as it has throughout all of history, especially women in the care industries. But I do think we need to see those as interconnected phenomena. You would not have wellness influencers for good and bad online having so much influence if we had a more rigorous and a definition or credentialing or process of some sort for who could impart this advice.
Christy Harrison: That’s such a great point. And yeah I agree with the over credentialing piece, that’s really tricky and problematic. And also I see so many people who do have credentials who are getting sucked into these really extreme versions of their views, you know online or in social media, you know views that they maybe wouldn’t of even, that didn’t come from the credentialing process or what they learned. And I didn’t learn Health At Every Size or intuitive eating in school either, so I get it. I think we discover things and might find a niche that works for us after school and sort of beyond the credentialing process. And some of that is good, you know I do think intuitive eating is really a wonderful practice, I still really stand by it. But I also think because of that lack of regulation, there can be even credentialed people who have views that are very polarized, very extreme and not necessarily evidence based.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: Yeah, no I absolutely agree. It’s thorny, but yeah absolutely agree that not all knowledge needs being premature of peer-reviewed study or university credentials, but that does count for something too.
Christy Harrison: Yeah I think it counts for a lot, especially just in thinking about how do we separate out these sort of other phenomena that are so unique, or so universal to humans of like the placebo effect or the natural history of disease or all those sort of related things. I think giving one individual’s journey that they’re sharing on social media more credence than scientific studies. I know that definitely heard people say that they believe that kind of thing more because they think it’s less influenced, it’s less bought, it’s less embedded with the pharma industry, the medical industry that they want nothing to do with. Not realizing how individuals can also be influenced and pushed in certain directions. Maybe not necessarily by a huge industry like that although in some cases yes. If it’s the food industry paying you to say anti-diet stuff, which is just horrifying. But you know, it just all makes me think, we need to take everything we see online, especially on social media, with a huge grain of salt and maybe not base our life decisions around that. Which is so much easier said than done, and I know so many people lack access to a good healthcare team that could advise them in a better way. And you know, there’s all of the issues around that. To whatever extent, I think it’s possible for you, if you can have more in-person support or like even virtual online support that’s one on one, versus these public contexts of social media where the algorithms are really influencing and shaping what you see and what people say. I think that would be to the good.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: Absolutely, I mean, I just think like sustained human contact and again not everyone can have it ever or right now. But especially around making really important, intimate decisions about your body and your health and your mind. We were talking about narcissism early on, and I think sometimes, personal care and for lack of a better, overarching term, can be sort of dismissed as just as a leisured pursuit. And of course, it’s a luxury to think about the way you move your body and the way you nourish your body. But this stuff is really important. And I think that we should not be shy about saying that and really encourage our policy makers to create policies that make it more accessible to get good advice in this regard but also people like, yeah it’s worth talking to a few people about the health decisions you make. It’s probably really worth getting out of your house and going to an appointment if you can. And I think that that can sometimes fall by the wayside. We’re all busy and are constrained in various ways.
Christy Harrison: And it’s so messy and tricky as we’ve said in this conversation many times. That there are so many systemic barriers to that as well. Well Natalia, I could talk to you forever about this stuff, and this has really been fun. Can you tell us about your book and where people can find it and learn more about you.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: Absolutely. So my book is FitNation: the gains and pains of America’s exercise obsession. It is out anywhere books are sold so you can get it at that big retailer I know you know, but also your independent booksellers or directly from the press, the University of Chicago press. You can follow me on Twitter or Instagram, or any of the other platforms too and if you’re in New York, come take a class with me. I do speaking all over the country too, so you can find me on those platforms if you want to talk more about that.
Christy Harrison: Thanks so much, it’s been such a pleasure talking with you.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela: Likewise! Thank you.
Christy Harrison: So that’s our show! Thanks again so much to Natalia Mehlman Petrzela for that great conversation and thanks to you for listening.
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Rethinking Wellness is executive produced and hosted by me, Christy Harrison. Mike Lalonde is our audio editor and sound engineer. Administrative support from Julianne Wotasik and her team at A-Team Virtual. Album art by Tara Jacoby and theme song written and performed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
Thanks again for listening, and until next time, I hope you’re well, but not wellness-y well.
