It’s been well over a decade since the launch of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop,the wellbeing empire both popularised and parodied for its spruiking of jade eggs and coffee enemas. In the years since,many of us have bought into the preachings of wellness culture,subjecting ourselves to juice cleanses while nixing caffeine,sugar,gluten and dairy from our diets.
Are we finally Goop-ed out? Wellness-culture fatigue has been brewing for some time and,thanks to social media,it has a name:“Dirty wellness.” Neither a call for gluttony nor abstinence,it says you can have your green juice and drink your dirty martini,too.
For Australian dietitian Jonathan Steedman,the term is a response to the narrative of perfectionism peddled by celebrities and influencers:“It’s a pushback against unattainable standards that just aren’t necessary for good health,” Steedman says. “It also means ‘sexy moderation’,which is what most reasonable health practitioners advocate.”
Of course,the bigger question might be whether we really need these labels in the first place. Today,the churn and burn of internet culture presents us with a new buzzword each week. It has recently given us “damp drinking” (cutting down),“girl dinner” (low-effort meal) and “soft living” (minimising stress).
“Labelling like this,” says Steedman,“just makes[a behaviour] easier to market and catchier[to identify] as a trend on TikTok.” Ultimately,perhaps,it’s the habits that are sustainable long-term that have the most potential to truly change our lives.Lauren Ironmonger
WATCH/ Magic moments
La Chimera’s Arthur (Josh O’Connor) is in the same business as Indiana Jones – an archaeologist turned tomb raider – but he’s a low-rent version,getting around northern Italy in the early 1980s in a filthy linen suit,living in a shack and running with a group of vagabonds. O’Connor (Prince Charles inThe Crown) is almost wordless here,his Arthur a scruffy,ethereal creature given to fainting fits when gripped by the spirit that allows him to divine hidden treasure beneath the soil;his love interest,Italia (delightful Brazilian actor Carol Duarte),is the earth to his air. There’s a lovely tension between the social-realist and magical-mythical elements at play in Alice Rohrwacher’s slippery tale,in addition to a cameo by Isabella Rossellini as the matriarch of a mansion slowly going to seed. Like the mythical creature of the title, La Chimera is a beast of many disparate parts – and a total joy. In cinemas now.Karl Quinn