Podcast: Infamous

Episode Title: Self-Care Is Awesome and Also a Scam
Air Date: December 18, 2025
Guest: Amy LaRocca (Author, “How to Be Well”)
Hosts: Infamous team (Campside Media / Sony Music Entertainment)

Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into America’s obsession with wellness and self-care, exploring how the concept has shifted from basic health maintenance to aspirational consumerism. The conversation features Amy LaRocca, former fashion editor and author of "How to Be Well: Navigating Our Self-Care Epidemic One Dubious Cure at a Time." The hosts and LaRocca unpack the evolution and contradictions of the wellness industry, examining its links to privilege, capitalism, motherhood, and female self-worth.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Wellness as a Ubiquitous Marketing Term

• The episode kicks off with a discussion of how wellness has become a catch-all concept, especially prominent in gift guides and holiday shopping.
  • Amy LaRocca [02:24]: “Wellness has totally taken over. And I think when you look at gift guides, wellness is a category, right? Like a wellness wellness gift guide.”
• Wellness is now an umbrella used for everything from sleep trackers to candles, losing its original meaning and depth.
  • Amy LaRocca [03:05]: “The problem with wellness is the word is so big that it doesn't really even mean anything anymore.”
• LaRocca notes the rise of "mindful" branding even in unlikely spaces, such as banking, showing the term's dilution.

2. Health as Luxury vs. Right

• The conversation shifts to the troubling way health is being marketed similarly to luxury items like handbags.
  • Amy LaRocca [04:12]: “Our health was being sold to us using a lot of the same marketing techniques as… the luxury industry used to sell fashion. Our health was being treated like a handbag, basically, like a really expensive leather good.”
• LaRocca reflects that the COVID pandemic brutally exposed the risks of treating health as a consumer good instead of a human right, with the wealthy faring better.
• The hosts and guest discuss the bifurcation between people struggling with real healthcare access and those navigating “which face mask or Pilates class” to choose.

3. The Evolution of Wellness & Fashion’s Role

• LaRocca, a fashion editor turned wellness commentator, describes witnessing insiders in fashion shift towards wellness, seeking new forms of status and exclusivity.
  • Amy LaRocca [07:47]: “Fashion started feeling more democratic… so the people who are used to having that, that access, we’re sort of searching around for something less accessible to feel cool.”
• The conversation references Amanda Chantal Bacon (Moon Juice) as emblematic of the new aspirational wellness elite.

4. Wellness & Morality: Empowerment or Pressure?

• The dialogue critiques how wellness and beauty products are now morally coded as empowerment rather than simple consumption.
  • Amy LaRocca [09:51]: “When you rebrand beauty as wellness, as self care, it definitely elevates beauty.”

5. Motherhood, Blame, and the Wellness Trap

• LaRocca shares her personal story of becoming the mother of a very ill child — an experience rife with guilt, self-doubt, and pressure from the wellness culture.
  • Amy LaRocca [13:14]: “The kind of blame game that goes on in motherhood when something goes wrong, and the way that people look at the mother of a sick child, like, well, what did you do? What’s wrong with you?”
• She details the pervasive sense of failure mothers feel, exacerbated by societal and industry expectations, and how wellness products step in as proposed fixes for that anxiety.

6. Vulnerability, Control, and Industry Exploitation

• The hosts and LaRocca address the tendency to seek control over one’s environment and self in response to systemic vulnerability (e.g., pollution, disease, contaminated water) — and how wellness industry capitalizes on it.
  • Amy LaRocca [17:28]: “That’s another place where wellness really steps in, is when we’re experiencing that vulnerability... Let me find the areas where I can soothe myself with a sensation that I do [have control].”

7. Real Wellness: The Basics vs. the Industry

• LaRocca offers blunt advice on what actually matters for health:
  • Amy LaRocca [20:08]: “Drink water. Like, that’s it… and sleep.”
  • Amy LaRocca [20:17]: “If you have access to good food and water and sleep, you are 99% of the way home.”
• The hosts marvel at the size and ever-expanding scope of the wellness industry, despite its focus on marginal gains over fundamentals.

8. Ozempic, Inclusive Sizing, and the New Morality of Thinness

• LaRocca tracks the impact of weight-loss drugs (Ozempic, GLP-1s) on cultural norms, noting a retreat from the body positivity trend and the new stigmas around “unearned” thinness.
  • Amy LaRocca [23:20]: “People on Ozempic are criticized as aggressively as overweight people, if not more so… this idea of there's a kind of pure way to be thin. And…suffering has to kind of be attached to it, or it's inferior.”

9. The Endless Chase: Glow, Youth, and Self-Optimizing

• The hosts and guest unpack the concept of “glow” and how what’s billed as wellness is often just a coded pursuit of youthfulness.
  • Amy LaRocca [23:46]: “It's youth. And so…slap the word wellness onto it and you suddenly have a moral case for your beauty product…which is just telling women they should spend money and be younger.”
• Shocking stats underscore the shift in beauty expectations:
  • Co-host [24:22]: “In the 1950s, only about 7% of American women color their hair… now... 70%.”

10. Reflection: Generational Pressures and the Self-Improvement Treadmill

• LaRocca becomes especially introspective about writing her book for her daughters, wishing to help them escape the “self-improvement treadmill.”
  • Amy LaRocca [27:30]: “How much time did we waste feeling like we didn’t look good enough or we just wasted so much time feeling like we fell short.”
• She discusses the pain of seeing young girls internalize self-loathing via beauty content on TikTok, paralleling her own experience with Seventeen magazine and unattainable fashion role models.

11. Navigating Personal Wellness Without Falling for the Scam

• The hosts ponder: If so much of wellness is an aspirational scam, should we bother gifting wellness-y products at all? LaRocca recommends only gifting what genuinely brings joy and use, not what nags you to “do better.”
  • Amy LaRocca [30:58]: “What you don't want is that stuff that just gathers up in your house and just like, sort of yells at you from the corner, or like the sort of gadgets or the whatever it is that was supposed to improve you.”

12. Finding the Balance: The Wellness Tightrope

• LaRocca sums up her overall approach:
  • Amy LaRocca [32:04]: “I always think of it as like a tightrope…On this side… things in the beauty, wellness world that make me feel good. And on this side…when beauty and wellness makes me feel really bad about myself. And…you don't always realize when you've tipped off of it and like, in which direction.”
  • Amy LaRocca [32:40]: “Is this making me feel better about myself or worse?”

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• "Wellness has totally taken over." – Amy LaRocca [02:24]
• "Our health was being treated like a handbag, basically, like a really expensive leather good." – Amy LaRocca [04:12]
• "The kind of blame game that goes on in motherhood when something goes wrong… like, well, what did you do?" – Amy LaRocca [13:14]
• "Drink water. Like, that's it. And sleep. And go to sleep." – Amy LaRocca [20:08]
• “If you have access to good food and water and sleep, you are 99% of the way home.” – Amy LaRocca [20:17]
• “People on Ozempic are criticized as aggressively as overweight people, if not more so… this idea of there's a kind of pure way to be thin. And…suffering has to kind of be attached to it, or it's inferior.” – Amy LaRocca [23:20]
• "How much time did we waste feeling like we didn’t look good enough or we just wasted so much time feeling like we fell short." – Amy LaRocca [27:30]
• “Is this making me feel better about myself or worse?” – Amy LaRocca [32:40]

Segment Timestamps

• Wellness as a Catch-All and its Loss of Meaning: 02:24–05:47
• Health as a Luxury & Pandemic Lessons: 05:47–08:39
• Exclusivity Transitions from Fashion to Wellness: 08:39–09:56
• Motherhood, Guilt, and the Pressure to be Perfect: 12:20–18:27
• Coping with Lack of Control & Industry Capitalization: 17:28–18:59
• What Actually Works: The Basics of Wellbeing: 20:01–20:43
• The Ozempic Effect & Cultural Shifts: 21:09–23:20
• Glow, Aging, and Self-Perception: 23:37–25:08
• Generational Pressures & Reflections: 27:17–29:56
• Gifting Wellness Products: Scam or Self-Expression?: 29:57–32:22
• Conclusion: Walking the Wellness Tightrope: 32:04–32:44

Summary Tone & Language

The conversation is both witty and incisive, approaching the subject with skepticism, personal anecdotes, and empathy. Amy LaRocca’s candor and dry humor come through in her critiques of both the beauty industry and her own complicity as a former fashion insider and mother. The hosts create a conversational space that’s relatable, critical, and ultimately optimistic about the possibility of balanced self-care.

Ideal for Listeners Who:

• Are interested in the intersection of media, culture, and consumer trends
• Struggle with the pressures of self-care messaging
• Enjoy nuanced, entertaining discussions about modern wellness and beauty
• Want to reflect critically on what genuine self-care means

Recommendation:
Read Amy LaRocca’s "How to Be Well" for a satirical yet deeply researched look at America’s self-care craze, and consider your own relationship with wellness — is it helping, harming, or, just maybe, a bit of both?