The Wellness Industry Needs a Diversity Overhaul

The wellness industry has a diversity problem. Many companies in the space still only strive to appeal to one demographic: affluent and thin white women. Sure, some brands have attempted to address the issue, say, by putting a woman of color in an ad campaign. But such attempts often seem more like ways to appear inclusive, rather than actually addressing the problem. As the black yoga practitioner Nicole Cardoza said, these easy fixes can come off as “performative wokeness.” Major change within the industry doesn’t appear to be coming anytime soon. Take what happened to Cardoza when she posed for the cover of Yoga Journal, the largest yoga magazine in the United States. Soon after the shoot took place, the magazine surveyed its audience, asking if they'd prefer a cover with Cardoza’s image or a cover featuring a thin white woman. Though Yoga Journal apologiz