In How to Be Well, Amy Larocca vivisects the modern feminine ideal and lays it bare: not the goddess of hearth or harvest, but the “abstracted wellness she-god”—a taut, juiced-up high priestess of turmeric tinctures and lymphatic drainage rituals. This new oracle doesn’t offer wisdom but a curated Amazon storefront. She peddles empowerment with one hand and $128 collagen powder with the other, all while perched atop a Peloton like some neoliberal Delphic seer.
These wellness influencers don’t just sell products; they sell paranoia dressed in millennial pink. Every scroll of your feed is a sermon in self-improvement with a side of fear: Eat this, not that. Touch this, never that. Microwave? You might as well lick plutonium. Their gospel is a toxic cocktail of pseudoscience, product placements, and shame. You’re not ill, darling—you’re just uninformed and understocked.
And here’s the trick: they wave the banner of feminism, preaching self-empowerment while quietly mugging you with your own insecurities. They exploit the universal dread that something you ate in 2009 is still lodged in your spleen, slowly killing you. Who doesn’t want to be informed? Who wants to die from an unpronounceable preservative in a childhood granola bar? But the more you try to “be well,” the more you’re trapped in a never-ending scavenger hunt for health hacks, supplements, and contradictions.
It’s not wellness. It’s a designer panic spiral. And the moment you start shaping your habits, meals, and bank account around their gospel, congratulations—you’re not just a follower. You’ve been converted. And this church doesn’t just ask for tithes. It demands your wallet, your weekends, and your soul.
Cinemorphosis 
Leave a comment