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, nevertheless it’s greater than that—sickness, whether or not acute or power, impacts high quality of life.

Defining Well being Past the Absence of Sickness

Well being, in fact, is extra than simply the shortage of sickness. In response to 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 at this time. 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 transformation stems from advances in science and our rising understanding of the human physique and what it must thrive.

Take bodily health for instance. Earlier than the Fifties, the common American didn’t train frequently, if in any respect. By the late Seventies, nevertheless, train as a behavior for well being had gone mainstream.

Now, health is a large world business—valued at round $87 billion—with limitless methods to take part. You may work out at dwelling, be a part of a fitness center, take lessons in a studio or on-line, go high-intensity or low-impact, raise weights or follow cardio.

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

When Well being Turns into Political

Over the previous decade, well being has turn into more and more politicized. Increasingly more, it’s framed as an particular person duty quite than a collective challenge supported by households, communities, governments, and well being programs.

Some argue that good well being shouldn’t be a proper however a private responsibility—and that poor well being displays ethical failure, the results of unhealthy habits quite than structural boundaries which are out of their management.

This ideology is called healthism.

Healthism in Motion

Even when you don’t know the time period, you’ve seemingly seen healthism at work.

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

• Influencers gasoline healthism by promoting supplements, liver cleanses, or fearmongering about seed oils—insisting that when you 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 prompt that individuals who smoke, drink soda, or eat doughnuts shouldn’t count on others to pay for his or her medical care.

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

That’s healthism in a nutshell.

Healthism and Programs of Oppression

Healthism doesn’t function in isolation. It intersects with—and reinforces—different programs of oppression reminiscent of racism, sexism, classism, and ableism. These programs 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 constructions (training, well being, transportation, economic system, and so on.) which are interconnected and reinforcing over time.”

Healthism, then, turns into a type of physique fascism—a system that dictates acceptable life-style decisions, rewards compliance, and punishes deviation. It suits neatly into the framework of different programs 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 by private life-style decisions.

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

These determinants embrace genetics, revenue, training, surroundings, and sort of labor—all of which play vital 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 have been included within the causes of poor well being, the blame would shift from solely the person and as an alternative 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 life 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 instructed to eat “wholesome meals,” train frequently, 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 proscribed, 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 “appropriately.” However how is a dad or mum who works two jobs to make ends meet and assist their household presupposed to put aside the time to hit the fitness center 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 the US. We don’t all have equal entry to wholesome choices or the assets to interact in wholesome actions.

In actuality, good well being is barely out there 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 generally contain elements which are outdoors 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 of overcome all of the social determinants of well being by 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 huge advantages. However to say that these issues are equally accessible to everybody and, on their very own, are sufficient to beat the entire socio-economic boundaries to well being that persons 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 many who match a slim superb—echoing eugenics-like considering. Solely those that make the “proper” decisions, look a sure approach, or meet inflexible requirements are granted security, entry to authorities companies, and freedom.

A Higher Path: Democratizing Well being

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

• Common healthcare: Accessible, reasonably priced, and out there to all.

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

• Financial assist: Common Primary Revenue (UBI) to scale back monetary stress and increase entry to more healthy decisions.

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

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 instrument to implement all of them. That’s partly as a result of healthism assumes a taking part in discipline that merely isn’t there. And when it stubbornly attributes societal and group outcomes to ‘particular person decisions,’ it reinforces the biases dealing with marginalized communities.”

Remaining Ideas

If we would like more healthy communities, we should confront the social determinants of well being and dismantle programs 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 persons are worthy of well being—and others should not.

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