Your Body, Your Brand

In our prologue, we met Jennifer Saminathen on the eve of yoga teacher training. What became of her?

In this episode, we find out Jennifer’s next steps — and also hear from two previous guests about their decision to leave wellness entrepreneurship behind.

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Buckle up, because we’ve reached the final episode of the podcast wherein we ask: what does it mean to do helping work in the context of a capitalist society?

Wellness entrepreneurship seems to promise to make health into wealth — but what about the other helping professions?

In this episode we look at David Graeber’s theory of Bullshit Jobs,* David Geary and Gijsbert Stoet’s study on the gender equality paradox, and continue our discussion on neoliberalism’s influence on wellness professions.

*affiliate link

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When we start a diet or a fitness program, we often ask others to hold us accountable.

When we launch a brand or start a business, we often feel accountable to our audience and customers.

What does all of that accountability mean, when we consider it in a neoliberal framework? In this episode, we look at economies of visibility and ask what whether becoming consumable objects via brand images is as feminist as we think it is.

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If you’re listening to this podcast, you’ve probably heard the word “neoliberalism” before. Most of us only have a vague concept of what that means — I certainly did when I started this project. But to understand wellness entrepreneurship, we need to understand neoliberal economics — and neoliberal feminism — and how it shapes our ideas about who we are and how we’re meant to function in the world.

In this episode, we dive deep into the economic foundation of “self-worth” and discover how the value we place on our brands becomes the value we place on ourselves.

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What drives women into multilevel marketing is the same thing that drives women into wellness entrepreneurship writ large. While MLM has codified a certain business model, wellness entrepreneurship requires the same level of commitment, often for the same slim chance at payoff.

Yet the women who remain optimistic about this business model must have a reason. And that reason is: to feel what men feel all the time.

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A brief word to add some context, and ensure that the audience is aware that 1) being a guest on this podcast doesn't imply endorsement of the context I've added around the pieces of the interviews I've chosen to include, 2) this is cultural criticism and not investigative journalism, which means that I'm using narrative to contextualize something bigger in our culture, not implicate specific participants, and 3) this podcast is meant to raise awareness about an issue, not prescribe action or suggestion that the work any of us is doing is wrong/bad/misdirected; we're all swimming in this, and we need to find ways to become "aware of the water."

Feel free to drop me a line at [email protected] with questions, comments, and feedback!

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When we talk about wellness entrepreneurship, it’s hard to ignore the pyramid-shaped elephant in the room: multilevel marketing. MLM or network marketing gets plenty of time in the media, but instead of just talking about why the actual system is good or bad, we’re going to ask: why do women join them in the first place?

I approached these interviews from a place of curiosity instead of condemnation, and they revealed some pretty interesting stories. I encourage you to listen to these interviews with curiosity too — you may be surprised at what you learn.

This is part one of a two-part episode.

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When professional brand takes over personal life, performing your branded self can feel like a life-or-death proposition.

In this episode, we continue our look at the pitfalls of engaging in what Brooke Erin Duffy calls “aspirational labor,” and we examine the factors that keep us trapped in a performance of success, even when it leads to failure.

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Not every health coaching program starts or ends with an eating disorder — but that doesn’t mean that most forays into wellness entrepreneurship leads to fame, fortune, and a cookbook deal.

In this episode, we’ll look at how, branding becomes a performance and, as Pace Smith puts it, a “cage with the bars labeled freedom.”

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Are you religious about your workouts? A fanatic about nutrition? Do you consider yourself a clean eater or try to stay “good" about your fitness?

While it’s funny to joke about Crossfit or veganism being a “cult,” have you ever stopped to really consider the intersections of religion and food? And what happens when your religious fervor gets tied up with your income stream?

In this episode, we’ll look at the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, the spread of orthorexia (the “clean eating disorder”), and how wellness entrepreneurship becomes both a cover for an eating disorder and its perpetuator among non-eating disordered people.

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/bodybrandpod.

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