A Wellness Renaissance?

A t the tail-end of Covid, after most of us had gained weight, lost sanity, or misplaced our purpose, Emily Sundberg wrote a masterpiece: “Wellness Is Dead. Long Live the Martini.” The martini craze of 2022 was a “complete blowback from the pandemic,” Toby Cecchini, the owner of Brooklyn’s Long Island Bar, told Sundberg. “I watch these kids hammering martinis and I’m like, good lord,” he said.

Nightlife and the classic martini made a surprising resurgence post-Covid. One self-proclaimed party girl told Sundberg at the time:

It seems that once again we have shifted to a period of excess and pleasure-seeking, a “no thoughts, head empty” philosophy of life. We want to be sexy again — go to sexy dinners, kiss our sexy friends, and drink sexy drinks. Or rather, we want to seem sexy.

We (young people) also wanted euphoria, quickly, after being deprived of it for too long. We wanted — as Cecchini put it — the “big solid punch in the face” that a martini promises, and we had what Sundberg called an “overall sense of yearning, for a supreme romance with New York or anything else.” People discovered, Sundberg realized, that “life is more malleable than they once thought, which can result in surprising life decisions, like breakups or converting to Catholicism or getting plastered on martinis on a Wednesday because we’re all still working from home and we can just turn off the camera on Zoom.”

Adulthood causes young people to discover life’s malleability. Those of us who entered adulthood amid social-distancing and lockdowns discovered the ever-changing nature of life under somewhat limited terms. The progression from high school to college, or from college to real life, or from early adulthood to full-blown maturity, was stunted by the many ways in which the world stagnated during Covid. Many young people couldn’t move out of their house, or leave their house, to develop the sense of freedom that shapes adulthood. Maybe that’s why we turned to martinis. They get the job done quick, look cool, and ordering one, Sundberg says, “is an attempt to capture some sort of classic romance.”

While it was fun to have fun upon the initial discovery of life’s malleability, it’s not so fun anymore, now that Covid isn’t hindering our ability to live, and now that the fleeting glee of escaping a pandemic no longer fuels our desire for spontaneity. People are now swapping martinis — for running.

This is the activity du jour — which may have seemed funky at first, given that a sudden obsession with running is usually triggered by, for many at least, breakups, deaths, stress, anxiety, or weight gain. I started my own first bout of half-marathon training after a particularly gross breakup; once I healed, I lost the motivation to train and only ever got up to seven miles. I’ve always seen running as a result of crisis, at least for people who take it up randomly. A run accomplishes something — your mind is occupied, and your stress levels lowered.

Four friends founded the RAWDAWG running club in Sammataro, Texas, in February. The club reportedly has grown in a matter of months from 30 people to more than 700, and one of its founders told the Daily Texan that “running is blowing up so much because it’s a social activity; it makes you feel happy after and you get to meet new people.” Health and wellness are the end results of a proper running regimen, but the social aspect of running is what non-stereotypically athletic young people who would otherwise not take up running seem to crave most.

In California, New York, Kansas, and Florida, people are promoting running clubs on social media as alternatives to online dating. People want more friends and a greater shot at meeting a partner. This is one instance in which social media has spurred real-life interaction; running clubs are trending on socials, and members usually find out about the groups on social media. Workout crazes fluctuate, of course. Years ago, the hot activity was SoulCycle, and while indoor spinning still has its loyal followers, it’s not as popular as it once was. Running clubs could fade soon. But they mark a turning point: Martini days may be behind us.

Young people love wellness culture, which to some might just signify that young people are vain. The wellness culture fueled by $25 smoothies at Erewhon, low-dose ketamine treatments, and vipassana-style meditation are extravagant and vain, yes, but running clubs are different. Young people are running to improve their health — physical and social. While there’s lots of cause to fret about the state of young people — namely, that we don’t know how to meet one another, that we’re more focused on transient online relationships than real ones, that we’re not having enough sex, or that we seem to prefer flings to marriage — there is, always, cause for hope.

Martini culture had us running back toward a romanticism we thought existed, one that might never be attainable again. Now we’re running toward camaraderie, a feeling of accomplishment, and the desire to live well.