What Is Healthism? The Hidden Politics of “Healthy Living”

It’s safe to say that most people want to be healthy. No one enjoys being sick, but it’s more than that—illness, whether acute or chronic, impacts quality of life.

Defining Health Beyond the Absence of Illness

Health, of course, is more than just the lack of illness. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), health is defined as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

This definition, established in 1946, remains relevant today. But our relationship to health has shifted.

How Our Pursuit of Health Has Changed

What was once focused primarily on preventing illness and infectious disease has evolved into a broader desire to live longer and better than previous generations.

Some of this change stems from advances in science and our growing understanding of the human body and what it needs to thrive.

Take physical fitness as an example. Before the 1950s, the average American didn’t exercise regularly, if at all. By the late 1970s, however, exercise as a habit for health had gone mainstream.

Now, fitness is a massive global industry—valued at around $87 billion—with endless ways to participate. You can work out at home, join a gym, take classes in a studio or online, go high-intensity or low-impact, lift weights or stick to cardio.

Fitness is no longer just a hobby or habit—it’s a cultural expectation.

When Health Becomes Political

Over the past decade, health has become increasingly politicized. More and more, it’s framed as an individual responsibility rather than a collective project supported by families, communities, governments, and health systems.

Some argue that good health is not a right but a personal duty—and that poor health reflects moral failure, the result of bad habits rather than structural barriers that are out of their control.

This ideology is known as healthism.

Healthism in Action

Even if you don’t know the term, you’ve likely seen healthism at work.

• During the Covid-19 pandemic, some people rejected masks and vaccines—public health measures that benefit individuals and communities—in favor of unproven alternatives like vitamin C, zinc, or Ivermectin, which were framed as individual fixes.

• Influencers fuel healthism by selling supplements, liver cleanses, or fearmongering about seed oils—insisting that if you follow their protocols, you’ll achieve “optimal health.”

• In politics, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made headlines in April 2025 when, during Senate confirmation hearings, he refused to say that healthcare is a human right. Instead, he suggested that people who smoke, drink soda, or eat doughnuts shouldn’t expect others to pay for their medical care.

As Michael Cannon, Director of Health Policy Studies at the Cato Institute later told The Washington Post: “People should bear the cost of their own unhealthy decisions, not just because it’s wrong to force other people to bear those costs, but because then they’re less likely to make unhealthy decisions.”

That’s healthism in a nutshell.

Healthism and Systems of Oppression

Healthism doesn’t operate in isolation. It intersects with—and reinforces—other systems of oppression such as racism, sexism, classism, and ableism. These systems preserve the status quo at all costs, encouraging hierarchies and biases that create unequal access to power and privilege.

The National Equity Project explains: “Systemic oppression exists at the level of institutions (harmful policies and practices) and across structures (education, health, transportation, economy, etc.) that are interconnected and reinforcing over time.”

Healthism, then, becomes a form of body fascism—a system that dictates acceptable lifestyle choices, rewards compliance, and punishes deviation. It fits neatly into the framework of other systems designed to differentiate and designate power to a select few.

Where the Term “Healthism” Came From

The term “healthism” was coined in 1980 by sociologist Robert Crawford, who observed a growing cultural fixation on health—especially through personal lifestyle choices.

Crawford recognized health as inherently political. He understood that health outcomes reflect socio-economic divisions, now referred to as the social determinants of health—”the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age, as well as their access to power, money, and resources” (as defined by WHO).

These determinants include genetics, income, education, environment, and type of work—all of which play critical roles in determining your health status.

Recognizing structural issues like classism, racism, or sexism would shift blame from individuals to the institutions and laws that perpetuate inequality.

Healthism dismisses the social determinants of health and ignore the inequities in accessing good health in favor of the idea that personal choices alone dictate health outcomes.

If the systemic issues of classism, racism, sexism were included in the causes of poor health, the blame would shift from solely the individual and instead to the institutions and laws that perpetuate inequality.

Health, Capitalism, and Social Control

Healthism also acts as social control—demanding people conform to specific lifestyles or body ideals to be deemed “worthy” of health.

For example, when RFK Jr. claimed “our changing food supply” is “poisoning” Americans and used that reasoning to argue against universal healthcare, he was reinforcing healthism: tying moral value to individual health choices while dismissing systemic inequities.

But in a for-profit healthcare system, not everyone can access care. Not everyone can afford it. Health, therefore, becomes a privilege—not a universal right.

Capitalism further complicates this picture. To be considered “healthy,” we’re told to eat “healthy foods,” exercise regularly, get good sleep, have time to spend with our friends and family—yet capitalism requires us to work long hours, where many are underpaid and barely making enough to scrape by despite working full-time hours. Paid vacation time is limited, often to 2 weeks or less –but for many, paid leave isn’t guaranteed.

Healthism promotes the idea that “we all have the same 24 hours in a day” and it’s simply a matter of choosing to allocate that time “correctly.” But how is a parent who works two jobs to make ends meet and support their family supposed to set aside the time to hit the gym everyday? What if your town has only one grocery store and they rarely stock any decent produce? These are realities faced by many in the United States. We do not all have equal access to healthy options or the resources to engage in healthy activities.

In reality, good health is only available to some, even while all are expected to achieve it.

Why Healthism Feels Fascist

The American “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” ideology fuels the idea that good health is purely a reflection of individual choice. But in reality, personal habits don’t exist in a vacuum because the contributors to health status are multi-faceted and complex and sometimes involve factors that are outside of our own personal control.

What RFK Jr and so many of his faithful MAHA followers promote is the idea that everyone should be able to overcome all the social determinants of health through good choices and hard work. But that position is a privileged one.

No one is arguing that people shouldn’t be eating healthy foods, exercising, getting quality sleep, and fostering good relationships. We all agree that those behaviors have enormous benefits. But to say that those things are equally accessible to everyone and, on their own, are enough to overcome all of the socio-economic barriers to health that people are born into and live with is grossly out of touch with reality.

Healthism becomes fascist when benefits, rights, access, and inclusion are reserved for those who fit a narrow ideal—echoing eugenics-like thinking. Only those who make the “right” choices, look a certain way, or meet rigid standards are granted safety, access to government services, and freedom.

A Better Path: Democratizing Health

If we want real health equity, we must look beyond personal choices and address systemic barriers. That means:

• Universal healthcare: Accessible, affordable, and available to all.

• Environmental justice: Clean air, water, and soil, especially in low-income and urban communities.

• Economic support: Universal Basic Income (UBI) to reduce financial stress and expand access to healthier choices.

These actions and policies would be a start toward democratizing health and leveling the playing field.

As author Aubrey Gordon wrote in Self magazine in 2020:

“To be clear, healthism isn’t the root cause of transphobia, ableism, racism, anti-fatness, or misogyny—but it can be a tool to enforce all of them. That’s in part because healthism assumes a playing field that simply isn’t there. And when it stubbornly attributes societal and community outcomes to ‘individual choices,’ it reinforces the biases facing marginalized communities.”

Final Thoughts

If we want healthier communities, we must confront the social determinants of health and dismantle systems of oppression that deny access to care and healthy options. Health cannot be reduced to individual choices while ignoring the inequities baked into our society.

Otherwise, we’re effectively saying some people are worthy of health—and others are not.

Here’s to redefining health as a right, not a privilege. –Naomi