Who Is Wellness For?

Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Who Is Wellness For? is an incisive, thought-provoking exploration of the multi-billion-dollar wellness industry, examining how progressive health culture has appropriated, commodified, and commercialized global healing traditions. Growing up as a Bangladeshi Muslim in Australia, Fariha Róisín struggled to fit in and initially distanced herself from her South Asian heritage. Years later, living in the United States, she noticed a jarring contradiction: the customs, practices, foods, and traditions of her native culture that once made her an outsider—everything from turmeric and ashwagandha to meditation and prayer—were now being homogenized, rebranded, and marketed as luxury goods. Róisín unpacks how modern wellness culture has become an exclusive club built on the ancestral wisdom of Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples—while simultaneously ignoring, gatekeeping, and excluding them through systemic racism, ableism, and economic barriers. Divided into four core pillars—The Mind, The Body, Self-Care, and Justice—Who Is Wellness For? challenges conventional health narratives and offers an inclusive, compassionate roadmap toward healing that belongs to everyone.