There are fewer wellness campaigns designed for Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC)

The argument

Supporters of this position argue that the industry's marketing reveals whom it takes its customer to be. Fewer campaigns within the wellness industry are designed for Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour, and proponents treat that imbalance as the product of decisions rather than of accident, since campaigns are commissioned, cast and approved. Wellness brands and organisations, on this account, often represent only white or light-coloured heterosexual people in their imagery and branding, and centre only on white stories and experiences of trauma, so that even the accounts of suffering and recovery the sector circulates are drawn from one group. The argument then traces the effect of that pattern on the people left out of it. Imagery, on this view, does more than advertise: it tells a prospective participant whether a space is meant for them. Where there is a lack of sufficient representation, proponents argue, the reasonable inference for BIPOC and ethnic minority groups is that they were not the intended audience, and the result is that they may feel excluded and unwelcomed in wellness spaces they are nominally free to enter. Under-representation then tends to reproduce itself, because a sector that markets to one group attracts that group and can afterwards point to its own clientele as justification. Supporters of the position take the cumulative signal to be unambiguous. The persistent shortage of campaigns designed for BIPOC has been an indication that ethnic minorities "do not matter" for the wellness industry, and that the sector's priority is for white and fair-skinned individuals. Proponents accept that few brands would state such a priority openly, but argue that a pattern of choices sustained across an industry's output amounts to a position whether or not it is avowed. On this reasoning the shortage of campaigns designed for BIPOC is itself evidence that the wellness industry is racist.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Skewed marketing imagery is a real observation, but the inference drawn from it does a great deal of work. Campaign imagery is built from commercial judgements about which segments a brand believes it can reach and which it believes will spend — judgements that can be lazy, unexamined and self-fulfilling without being animated by racial hostility. Describing an entire industry as racist requires more than showing that its advertising has narrow casting, since by that test most consumer sectors would qualify, and the description would lose its force. The empirical claim is also unquantified. 'Fewer' is comparative without a baseline, and the picture it describes has been changing: a substantial number of wellness brands, studios, publications and campaigns founded by and aimed at Black and other minority-ethnic consumers have entered the market, which complicates the conclusion that the sector's priority is fixed on white consumers. The inference from exclusion felt to intention held is the weakest link. That people are made to feel unwelcome by an absence of representation is a genuine harm and is worth remedying; it establishes an effect on the audience, not a purpose on the industry's part. The sibling position — that the problem is commercial homogeneity and a narrow beauty ideal that excludes on several axes at once, including body type, age and disability — accounts for the same imagery without the stronger claim.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Narrow casting in advertising reflects commercial segmentation decisions that can be unexamined without being racially hostile, and the pattern has been shifting as brands founded by and for minority-ethnic consumers have entered the sector. [Rejecting P2] Feeling excluded establishes an effect on the audience rather than a priority held by the industry, and the same imagery is explained by a narrow commercial ideal that excludes on body type, age and disability as well.