The beauty industry isn’t disappearing, but it is shrinking. For decades, beauty was defined by vanity and self expression, but today the current is pulling it toward wellness.

Ulta has rolled out a national Wellness Shop which has supplements, period products and recovery tools,

Sephora is sponsoring sports leagues,

Glossier is renewing its WNBA partnership and even launched a collab hoodie,

And Tower28 announced a partnership with women’s track and field series ATHLOS.

A sure sign of this shift is the amount of celebrities who are aligning with wellness brands:

There’s Queen Latifah who is the new face of Weight Watchers Menopause Program

Dua Lipa who has joined at home Pilates company Framed Fitness, Ego Nwodim who is the new face of [solidcore], Serena Williams who is a Ro GLP1 ambassador and so many more.

The new standard of beauty isn’t just about looking good, its about looking wealthy … I mean healthy… to appear healthy requires time, resources and discipline, which quietly signals both wealth and wellness.

Beauty isn’t going anywhere and surely beauty for self-expression isn’t but it’s definitely undergoing a transformation by which its essentially being absorbed by the wellness industry.

Sammi Cohen of Social Currency give the best context on why this shift is happening. Mostly it comes down to a convergence of:

In this episode, Sammi says with full confidence that the trend is not going to slow down anytime soon and in fact, industry experts believe this is just the beginning.

The fact that Starbucks has hopped on the trend and added a high protein coffee to the menu says it all. Check out their recent ad with Ciara:

Protein is essential for health; it repairs muscles, supports recovery and fuels strength. But its cultural obsession has roots in gym culture and bodybuilding of the 1970s–80s, when protein powders and shakes were marketed as shortcuts to bulk and performance.

From there, it spilled into mainstream diet trends, first as a counter to the “low-fat” craze, and then supercharged by fitness influencers and social media preaching it as necessary component to achieving your dream bod.

It has a dark side though too, and Cole Hastings explains it perfectly ⬇

One of the biggest issues lies in sneaky company practices where they are slapping protein on labels to upsell products. Take the new Starbucks drink for example, it advertises as being high protein but it also has an extremely high number of calories. The iced vanilla cream protein latte may have 26g of protein but with 390 calories!

Consumers are being sold on the ‘health halo’ of protein without taking note of the trade off. At the end of the day, whole foods and a balanced diet will always be a better investment than ultra processed products disguised as wellness.