Goop is heir to a long tradition. As I learned while researching my new book, The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care, America has always had wellness rituals, and they reveal volumes about our anxieties. Our cures tell a story about our pain. We are a self-care nation, though arguably one that still lacks the fundamentals of well-being.
Nineteenth-century America was awash in patent medicines and alternative health schemes. Hucksters sold beef-blood tonics to revive “pale and lean” women. “Obesity bath powders” claimed to melt away pounds. Herbal “puke doctors” sold oral purgatives and enemas laced with cayenne pepper to “re-balance” the body.
