Why Wellness Sells

Book excerpt: "The author argues that wellness has become so pervasive in the United States and Canada because it is an ever-moving goal. It embodies an idea of both restoring the body to some natural, and therefore healthy, state and of enhancing the body toward an ideal state of health, one that is "better than well." Overall, the book, a rhetorical and cultural study, offers a nuanced account of how language, belief, behavior, experience, and persuasion collide to produce and promote wellness, which is among the most compelling--and possibly harmful--concepts that govern contemporary Western life"--