Wellness Beyond the Performance
I was struggling through what was supposed to be my Sunday long run when the thought crossed my mind almost as a joke. What if I documented this?
I’m not talking about my casual selfie at mile one. I mean really documented it. Overhead drone footage, maybe my Taskrabbit videographer rolling beside me on a scooter. Those angles that pull back slowly to capture you mid-stride while the city is still dark around you. The “up before you” timestamp in the corner. Maybe some vibe music underneath. The entire production.
I held that image in my head for about two seconds before something in me completely rejected it.
Not because I’m above it. Not because I think there’s anything wrong with sharing what your life looks like. But because this run, the early dark, the particular silence of the hour — this is mine in a way I don’t fully have language for. Any footage outside of my thoughts would absolutely change it. The act of capturing it would ask me to become aware of myself in a way that would cost me the very thing I showed up for.
I run because it gives me something back. It’s tangible. I’ve never needed anyone else to see that for it to be true.
Lately I’ve been thinking about the broader pressure that has moved into the space of taking care of yourself. The expectation that care, in order to count, should also be visible.
At some point, wellness became something you could show off — and once it could be shown, it could be critiqued, and critiqued until it became another standard to meet.
It did not happen all at once. It arrived attached to practices that can be genuinely useful. Morning routines that allow people to start and center their day. Meal preparation that reflects real care around how someone wants to feel. Cold plunges, hormone conversations, supplements, strength training, sleep tracking — all of it, on its own terms, can have real merit.
But the culture that formed around these practices shifted the true intent. What started as a conversation about feeling better became a visual language for living correctly. And somewhere in that translation, the entire point changed.
The question stopped being does this restore me and started being does this look like someone who takes care of herself.
That’s a different question. And it asks something different of us — not just our time and effort, but our attention, our images, and the willingness to be witnessed even in the moments that were meant to be private. But if privacy is part of what makes something restorative, wellness should be the one place we don’t have to perform.
There is a version of taking care of yourself that is intended for no one but you.
I know what mine looks like. It looks like a few minutes of stillness before the day reaches me. The miles I forgot to log and don’t mind. The practice that exists entirely outside of anyone’s awareness but my own. I’m not protecting it out of secrecy. I know the moment it becomes content, it turns into something else I’d have to maintain. Something I could, in the eyes of others, do wrong.
That’s the distinction worth sitting with. There is a real difference between the appearance of wellness and the actual experience of being well. One is legible, shareable, and easy to optimize for engagement. The other is softer, less consistent, and almost never photogenic. One version asks how this looks. The other asks how this feels.
When care becomes content, what do you lose?
The run becomes the running visuals. The morning ritual becomes the morning reset aesthetic. The act of cooking becomes the aesthetic of eating well. And you end up doing two things at once — the actual work of caring for yourself and the parallel work of documenting that you are someone who does that.
What restores you should not become another task.
The cost isn’t just time, though there’s that too. It’s the redirection of your own energy and attention. Care requires a certain kind of presence — you have to actually be in it for it to work. The moment you step outside of it to witness and frame it, you’ve already left. You got the shots, but you sacrificed the restoration.
Women carry a particular fluency in this kind of invisible labor. We know how to make things look right — we always have. We’ve been doing it in every other area of our lives for a long time. And that’s exactly what makes this fatigue so specific. Performative wellness doesn’t just live in a feed. It moves into the one space that was supposed to ask nothing of us and makes it into work.
What if the most radical thing you could do right now is take care of yourself and tell no one?
The unperformed version looks different for everyone. For some it’s what goes into the body — the supplements taken consistently, the foods chosen without explanation, the meal made without narration. For others it’s the walk no one knows about. The ten minutes of silence before anyone needs anything. The practice that centers the day before the day makes any demands. No caption needed. No check-in. No evidence that it happened beyond the way you feel by noon.
That’s the practice. The one that belongs entirely to you. The one that doesn’t require an audience to count.
Private wellness isn’t a trend. It’s a standard.
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