Hatred Is Health

Traces the undercurrent of exclusion and violence in the US wellness industry from the nineteenth century to our current moment Women's wellness is a trillion-dollar industry, a lifestyle choice, and more recently, a pipeline for dangerous conspiracy theories. The very spaces promoting yoga routines, "clean" eating, and free births also offer troubling prescriptions to an ailing populace through podcasts and social media posts. How did we get here? Since the nineteenth century, millions of women in the U.S. have turned to wellness influencers and natural remedies to cure what ails them, only to find more poison in the guise of health advice. Hatred is Health brings together feminist scholars from American literary and cultural history to trace the ideological roots of the contemporary wellness industry from the nineteenth century to our present moment, revealing how the language of maternal protection, natural living, and self-determination have long been in conversation with white supremacy, eugenics, and conspiratorial thinking. The first step toward understanding the obsession with an increasingly narrow view of wellness requires disentangling the genuine desire for women's health and empowerment from the forces that have so effectively exploited that desire.