‘How to Be Well' Review: In Search of the Glow

Wall Street Journal

28-05-2025

Women were once supposed to be skinny. Now they need to be skinny and have a glow obtained through some combination of daily yoga and vegan makeup. 'Every generation of American women has had to wrestle with an imaginary ideal, some caricature of femininity to chase and, crucially, to buy.' So writes Amy Larocca in 'How to Be Well,' an exploration of the multitrillion-dollar industry hawking everything from supplements to wearable sleep monitors.
Today's ideal, Ms. Larocca writes, is the 'well woman, hopped up on her plant-based diet and elaborate adaptogen regime.' This enviously healthy lady might appear to be an improvement on earlier unattainable ideals. 'But look a little closer,' the author writes, 'and she is alarmingly the same.' Ms. Larocca, in a series of mostly funny but occasionally scathing chapters, describes how the wellness industry developed, what it has become, its occasionally sensible ideas and its many foibles.
Big wellness promises that with time and effort—and a lot of cash—anyone can achieve health. But since health is largely correlated with income, Ms. Larocca writes, this new gospel has 'the side effect of exposing some of the greatest inequities in modern American life.'
Ms. Larocca, a longtime fashion journalist, is at her best when lampooning the wellness industry's excesses. Some of Lululemon's early leggings, for example, were made from a yarn that the clothing company 'claimed to be a seaweed-derived substance that relieved stress through osmosis.' (The claim was debunked.) Ms. Larocca decides to try colonics—flushing the colon with a liquid, which supposedly removes toxins. Some enthusiasts rave about the way they feel after the procedure. The author instead reports that she 'spent the evening with a terrible case of the cramps and feeling a bit absurd.'