Mainstream wellness has long lacked diversity, so little that, in 2017, it birthed a hashtag, #WellnessSoWhite. The reality: Black women are not just creating spaces for themselves; they’re reclaiming them. Consider this past-present mash-up of influencers.
By Kailyn Brown
Marie Maynard Daly may be best known as the first Black woman to receive a Ph.D. in chemistry in the United States, but her impact was far greater than a degree. After graduating from Columbia University in 1947, Daly went on to conduct groundbreaking research that identified the link between high cholesterol and clogged arteries. Her work unlocked a whole new understanding of how diet can impact the body’s most critical organs—and it paved the way for understanding the risk of heart attack and the effects that sugar and smoking have on cardiovascular health.
Photo credit: Archives of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Ted Burrows, photographer
Seventy years after Daly broke ground, Jasmine Westbrooks and Ashley Carter are uncovering new links between nutrition and culture. While working as dietitians at a Florida healthcare center, they noticed that many clients—people of color, mostly, often from immigrant communities—were not sticking with the healthy-eating plans they were given. “Healthcare professionals in the same position as us were educating clients on how to ‘eat healthy,’ but clients were being told to eat foods they weren’t accustomed to,” Westbrooks says. “There was no understanding of participants’ backgrounds or culinary traditions.”
And so, in 2017, the duo started EatWell Exchange. A winner of WW’s Wellness Impact Award, the nonprofit based in Miami Gardens, Florida, offers after-school culinary programming for kids and personalized nutrition counseling—this ladders up to the group’s core aim: fighting dietary discrimination. “For most people we meet, we’re the first Black dietitians they’ve ever seen,” says Carter. “As healthcare providers, we’re creating a space where patients feel comfortable enough to say things like ‘I eat Hoppin’ John.’ Until you do that, they just assume their foods are wrong, their foods are bad.”
Every interaction, says Westbrooks, should begin with building a sense of personal worth. “I say, ‘Let’s start with self-esteem and confidence, because you are valuable, you deserve to eat healthy.”
Long before acts of self-care conjured bubble baths and lounging around in sheet masks, Audre Lorde put forth a far more sweeping vision: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
That single line, from her 1988 collection of essays, A Burst of Light, has become a rallying cry, particularly for those who are minimized by society because of race, gender, sexual orientation, or disability. It was a revolutionary notion that self-care, civil rights, and community are inextricably linked—as it’s only when people have mental and physical energy, and talk openly about their struggles, that they can help tackle societal issues and empower others to do the same.
If Lorde’s oft-quoted proclamation will forever live on the printed page, then Alex Elle has amplified that message digitally—through her site, via email and audio, and across social media. Deeply inspired by Lorde (so much so, Elle gave her daughter the middle name Lorde), Elle uses the written word not just as self-care but also as a means to “true healing, vulnerability, and showing up on the page to see yourself,” she tells WW.
To support her 1.3 million–strong community on Instagram, Elle’s handwritten “Note to Self” posts offer honest, hopeful reflections and intentions. Her meditations can be found on the app Ritual: Wellbeing; her candid interviews with inspiring women, through her podcast, Hey, Girl; and her discussions on gratitude for both sweet and tough life moments—from making memories to self-doubt—in your inbox through her “Gratitude Weekly” newsletter.
For Elle, self-care as a Black woman means “not carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders.” She continues: “We need one another in this life—and I think Black folks are conditioned to think that we always have to be strong. That we don’t need anybody. And that is not healthy. So, for me, self-care is about dismantling that lie, and it requires trust of self and trust of others.”
In addition to authoring four books—with a fifth, How We Heal, due out later this year—Elle leads four-week “Writing to Heal” online courses at alexelle.com. Including audio check-ins with Elle, weekly group Zoom discussions, and access to a virtual community, the courses help people develop a self-care practice through writing.
Known as the Matriarch of Black Dance, Katherine Dunham transformed the art form in the 1930s by incorporating African rituals, African-American rhythms, and Caribbean dances into her choreography. In doing so, she was one of the first to infuse the traditionally European-centric space with such influences. With the start of the Dunham Company, America’s first self-supporting Black modern dance troupe, she opened the eyes of global audiences to the historical roots of Black dance. But Dunham’s fight for respect and racial equality didn’t stop on the stage or in her dance studios. She refused to perform at segregated venues, used her books and many interviews to speak out against injustices around the world, and, at age 82, staged a 47-day hunger strike to protest the U.S. government’s repatriation policy for Haitian immigrants.
When Amanda Morgan joined the Pacific Northwest Ballet (PNB) in 2016, she was the only Black woman in the company. She immediately pushed back against the lack of representation, both within her own company and the ballet world as a whole. “The pieces that we dance to are often composed and choreographed by straight white men, and so that’s the only perspective that we get to see onstage,” she tells WW. In her six years with PNB, she has crashed through multiple barriers. Recently, for her role as Dewdrop in choreographer George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker, she fought to wear skin-colored tights instead of traditional pink—“it’s a uniform look, but it’s also the closest to white skin; it’s pretty evident it’s a sign of racism”—and she won. That move was a first for Balanchine’s production on any stage, and today, multiple women of color dance alongside Morgan in the PNB. “The diversity reflects what you’d see on the street,” she says. “It’s wonderful.”
Morgan also created the Seattle Project in 2019. The artist collaborative works to uplift both BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ dancers and other creatives while making art more accessible through free in-person and online performances. “For the most part, unless you have a lot of money, you can’t just go into a theater and see a ballet or an opera,” Morgan says. “It’s so exciting to look out into an audience and see a diverse crowd of all ages.” Her dance films and choreography have drawn from her own life experiences, the injustices she fights against, and the protests she frequented after George Floyd’s murder: “By making my own pieces, I’ve been able to fully tell my stories and decide what I want to show to an audience.”
