What Is Healthism? The Hidden Politics of “Wholesome Residing”

It’s secure to say that most individuals need to be healthy. Nobody enjoys being sick, however it’s greater than that—sickness, whether or not acute or persistent, impacts high quality of life.

Defining Well being Past the Absence of Sickness

Well being, in fact, is extra than simply the dearth of sickness. In keeping with the World Well being Group (WHO), well being is outlined as “a state of full bodily, psychological, and social well-being and never merely the absence of illness or infirmity.”

This definition, established in 1946, stays related immediately. However our relationship to well being has shifted.

How Our Pursuit of Well being Has Modified

What was as soon as centered totally on stopping sickness and infectious illness has developed right into a broader want to reside longer and higher than earlier generations.

A few of this modification stems from advances in science and our rising understanding of the human physique and what it must thrive.

Take bodily health for example. Earlier than the Nineteen Fifties, the typical American didn’t train repeatedly, if in any respect. By the late Nineteen Seventies, nonetheless, train as a behavior for well being had gone mainstream.

Now, health is a large world business—valued at round $87 billion—with infinite methods to take part. You’ll be able to work out at house, be part of a health club, take courses in a studio or on-line, go high-intensity or low-impact, elevate weights or follow cardio.

Health is now not only a passion or behavior—it’s a cultural expectation.

When Well being Turns into Political

Over the previous decade, well being has grow to be more and more politicized. Increasingly, it’s framed as an particular person duty reasonably than a collective venture supported by households, communities, governments, and well being techniques.

Some argue that good well being will not be a proper however a private obligation—and that poor well being displays ethical failure, the results of dangerous habits reasonably than structural obstacles which are out of their management.

This ideology is called healthism.

Healthism in Motion

Even for those who don’t know the time period, you’ve doubtless seen healthism at work.

• Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, some individuals rejected masks and vaccines—public health measures that profit people and communities—in favor of unproven options like vitamin C, zinc, or Ivermectin, which had been framed as particular person fixes.

• Influencers gasoline healthism by promoting supplements, liver cleanses, or fearmongering about seed oils—insisting that for those who comply with their protocols, you’ll obtain “optimum well being.”

• In politics, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made headlines in April 2025 when, throughout Senate affirmation hearings, he refused to say that healthcare is a human proper. As an alternative, he recommended that individuals who smoke, drink soda, or eat doughnuts shouldn’t anticipate others to pay for his or her medical care.

As Michael Cannon, Director of Well being Coverage Research at the Cato Institute later informed The Washington Publish: “Individuals ought to bear the price of their very own unhealthy choices, not simply because it’s improper to pressure different individuals to bear these prices, however as a result of then they’re much less prone to make unhealthy choices.”

That’s healthism in a nutshell.

Healthism and Programs of Oppression

Healthism doesn’t function in isolation. It intersects with—and reinforces—different techniques of oppression reminiscent of racism, sexism, classism, and ableism. These techniques protect the established order in any respect prices, encouraging hierarchies and biases that create unequal entry to energy and privilege.

The Nationwide Fairness Venture explains: “Systemic oppression exists on the degree of establishments (dangerous insurance policies and practices) and throughout buildings (schooling, well being, transportation, economic system, and many others.) which are interconnected and reinforcing over time.”

Healthism, then, turns into a type of physique fascism—a system that dictates acceptable way of life decisions, rewards compliance, and punishes deviation. It suits neatly into the framework of different techniques designed to distinguish and designate energy to a choose few.

The place the Time period “Healthism” Got here From

The time period “healthism” was coined in 1980 by sociologist Robert Crawford, who noticed a rising cultural fixation on well being—particularly via private way of life decisions.

Crawford acknowledged well being as inherently political. He understood that well being outcomes mirror socio-economic divisions, now known as the social determinants of well being—”the situations through which individuals are born, develop, reside, work, and age, in addition to their entry to energy, cash, and sources” (as outlined by WHO).

These determinants embody genetics, earnings, schooling, setting, and kind of labor—all of which play important roles in figuring out your well being standing.

Recognizing structural points like classism, racism, or sexism would shift blame from people to the establishments and legal guidelines that perpetuate inequality.

Healthism dismisses the social determinants of well being and ignore the inequities in accessing good well being in favor of the concept that private decisions alone dictate well being outcomes.

If the systemic problems with classism, racism, sexism had been included within the causes of poor well being, the blame would shift from solely the person and as a substitute to the establishments and legal guidelines that perpetuate inequality.

Well being, Capitalism, and Social Management

Healthism additionally acts as social management—demanding individuals conform to particular existence or physique beliefs to be deemed “worthy” of well being.

For instance, when RFK Jr. claimed “our altering meals provide” is “poisoning” Individuals and used that reasoning to argue in opposition to common healthcare, he was reinforcing healthism: tying ethical worth to particular person well being decisions whereas dismissing systemic inequities.

However in a for-profit healthcare system, not everybody can entry care. Not everybody can afford it. Well being, subsequently, turns into a privilege—not a common proper.

Capitalism additional complicates this image. To be thought-about “wholesome,” we’re informed to eat “wholesome meals,” train repeatedly, get good sleep, have time to spend with our family and friends—yet capitalism requires us to work lengthy hours, the place many are underpaid and barely making sufficient to scrape by regardless of working full-time hours. Paid trip time is restricted, usually to 2 weeks or much less –however for a lot of, paid go away isn’t assured.

Healthism promotes the concept that “all of us have the identical 24 hours in a day” and it’s merely a matter of selecting to allocate that point “accurately.” However how is a guardian who works two jobs to make ends meet and help their household speculated to put aside the time to hit the health club on a regular basis? What in case your city has just one grocery retailer they usually hardly ever inventory any respectable produce? These are realities confronted by many in america. We don’t all have equal entry to wholesome choices or the sources to have interaction in wholesome actions.

In actuality, good well being is barely accessible to some, even whereas all are anticipated to attain it.

Why Healthism Feels Fascist

The American “pull your self up by the bootstraps” ideology fuels the concept that good well being is solely a mirrored image of particular person selection. However in actuality, private habits don’t exist in a vacuum as a result of the contributors to well being standing are multi-faceted and advanced and typically contain components which are exterior of our personal private management.

What RFK Jr and so a lot of his devoted MAHA followers promote is the concept that everybody ought to be capable to overcome all of the social determinants of well being via good decisions and arduous work. However that place is a privileged one.

Nobody is arguing that folks shouldn’t be maintaining a healthy diet meals, exercising, getting high quality sleep, and fostering good relationships. All of us agree that these behaviors have monumental advantages. However to say that these issues are equally accessible to everybody and, on their very own, are sufficient to beat all the socio-economic obstacles to well being that individuals are born into and reside with is grossly out of contact with actuality.

Healthism turns into fascist when advantages, rights, entry, and inclusion are reserved for individuals who match a slim preferrred—echoing eugenics-like considering. Solely those that make the “proper” decisions, look a sure means, or meet inflexible requirements are granted security, entry to authorities providers, and freedom.

A Higher Path: Democratizing Well being

If we would like actual well being fairness, we should look past private decisions and handle systemic obstacles. Which means:

• Common healthcare: Accessible, inexpensive, and accessible to all.

• Environmental justice: Clear air, water, and soil, particularly in low-income and concrete communities.

• Financial help: Common Fundamental Earnings (UBI) to cut back monetary stress and broaden entry to more healthy decisions.

These actions and insurance policies could be a begin towards democratizing well being and leveling the taking part in subject.

As writer Aubrey Gordon wrote in Self journal in 2020:

“To be clear, healthism isn’t the basis reason behind transphobia, ableism, racism, anti-fatness, or misogyny—however it may be a software to implement all of them. That’s partly as a result of healthism assumes a taking part in subject that merely isn’t there. And when it stubbornly attributes societal and group outcomes to ‘particular person decisions,’ it reinforces the biases going through marginalized communities.”

Last Ideas

If we would like more healthy communities, we should confront the social determinants of well being and dismantle techniques of oppression that deny entry to care and wholesome choices. Well being can’t be lowered to particular person decisions whereas ignoring the inequities baked into our society.

In any other case, we’re successfully saying some individuals are worthy of well being—and others are usually not.

Right here’s to redefining well being for granted, not a privilege. –Naomi