Issue 45 ☞ Is Wellness dead?
And - Sex is BACK
Elevated News
Is Wellness dead?
In Elle recently, the writer Alexandra Jones earnestly declared the end of the wellness industry. The evidence? People are smoking again. Properly smoking. The air is filled with smoke. And they’re eating what they want — giant croissants and sausage sandwiches rather than salad bowls; the greasy proof is all over Instagram — and, according to one person Jones recently spoke to, people are fucking in the corners at parties, which for at least ten years they just weren’t, because it’s not the 80s.
Is this proof we’ve turned, as a society, against the concept of wellness? Well, no. The green juice is still flowing. The vitamins are filling supermarket trollies. Lululemon experienced a third increase in annual revenue in 2023. As Jones notes: “when the world is rapidly cycling through changes” and people don’t feel secure, “the desire to turn inwards and exert control over the last domain at our disposal - our own bodies - is understandable.” The world is in a worse place now than it was when Wellness, as a million-dollar industry, became a thing. But perhaps we’ve had enough of clean living, of depriving our bodies and minds those things we enjoy. Perhaps we’ve discovered that having any kind of fun, that eating what we like, that resting (rather than exercising, and monitoring that exercise deeply) is in a way its own kind of wellness. We hope so. Rest easy folks!
Elevated News
Sex is BACK
For the past few years, onscreen sex in the movies has been chaste and puritanical. Or filled with layers of moral questioning, as with the Emerald Fennell film Promising Young Woman, which, influenced by the MeToo movement, presented sex within the context of systemic injustice.
But are things changing? In a New York Times Magazine piece published last week, the novelist Alexandra Kleeman called 2024 the “year of sex-obsessed films.” Fennell’s sophomore movie, Saltburn, features sex. So does Bottoms, No Hard Feelings, Poor Things, the HBO series The Idol, and the film adaptation of Cat Person, the viral New Yorker story. Kleeman’s argument that “provocative sex is back” centres on May December, the Todd Haynes film, which explores the complex sexual dynamics of three characters, Joe, Gracie, and Elizabeth, each of whom is grappling with sexual desire, regret, and the after-effects of abuse. Sex in May December is messy and complicated and multidimensional. It is also sometimes appealing as a spectacle, while managing to navigate issues including consent, abuse and power within sexual relationships.
This resurgence of provocative sex on screen reflects a desire to explore sex as a nuanced and multifaceted aspect of human experience — “as something titillating, seductive, gratifying, provocative and, at base, erotic,” Kleeman writes. Are we ready for it?
Certified Recs
What to watch, read and listen to this week
What to watch
the 1984 Wim Wenders classic Paris, Texas
What to read
Newspaper, the picture-only periodical that ran for fourteen issues between 1968 and 1971, and featured the disparate practices of around 40 artists
What to listen to
DEUTSCHE ELEKTRONISCHE MUSIK, a compilation of German electro released in 2010