The tyranny of 1970s self-help gurus

As any book about the rise of that most nebulous idea ‘wellness’, should, James Riley’s Well Beings begins with Gwyneth Paltrow, purveyor of ‘This Smells Like My Vagina’ candles, ‘Metabolism-Boosting Super-powder’ and nostrums about mindfulness and ‘self-care’ – for which read self-indulgence. In 2019 Paltrow’s company Goop chartered a luxury liner for a ‘Goop at Sea’ extravaganza, at which attendees were invited to spend $4,200 for the ‘basic’ cruise and a suite at the ship’s onboard spa, and a further $750 for the event itself, the highlight of which would be an appearance by the high priestess of wellness herself.

Goop at Sea was cancelled due to Covid. But it did eventually take to the seas in 2021 – an anticlimactic affair, featuring a ‘low-impact fitness class’ and an ‘intuition seminar’ hosted by the ‘Goop-approved clairvoyant’ Deganit Nuur. Paltrow herself did not attend, and the Goop social media feed conspicuously avoided any reports on the cruise, concentrating instead on upcoming health events, pop ups and high-end product launches. It was ‘social media doing what it does best’, Riley writes – ‘consigning the present to the past and overloading the future with promises yet to be delivered’.

As ‘the market leader in the contemporary wellness industry’, Goop is reportedly worth some $250 million. And Well Beings is very much on the money in every sense of the term. Riley’s previous book, The Bad Trip: Dark Omens, New World and the End of the Sixties, was a smart, acerbic look at the dark side of 1960s counter-culture. This onepicks up the thread to deal with the cultural shift in the 1970s from the political to the personal, examining how counter-cultural projects of the 1960s, from communes to radical politics to psychedelics, gave rise to ‘Me Generation’ ideas and a growing interest in eastern spiritual teachings and alternative therapies.