We live in a society that lauds the "purity of motive." We believe that true weight loss and disease prevention occur only when fueled by inward sincerity, a noble consciousness of health sovereignty, and flawless, rational judgment.
Perhaps that is why some people feel a strange discomfort watching the "hip health management" trend blowing across South Korea and the globe. Seeing youth purchase hundreds of dollars worth of leggings just to upload a workout proof-shot on social media, or pouring a significant portion of their salary into premium supplements and Pilates sessions, critics click their tongues, labeling it "conspicuous luxury" or "fake health."
At this point, we must ask the final question:
"If health management stems from an impure psychological mechanism called vanity and dopamine, should it be viewed negatively? Is it nothing more than a childish vanity that fails to pierce the core of true health?"
Behavioral psychology and public health offer a beautifully clear and cheerful answer to this cynical gaze: "The motive may be superficial, but the outcome is grand."
The Secret of the Brain: Action Dictates Attitude
We often believe that the mind (the essence) must change first for action to follow—that one can only start eating salads and exercising once they truly love their body. However, the human brain revealed by modern psychology is simpler and more intuitive than we think. The brain registers a change in attitude through action far faster than it changes action through attitude.
It does not matter how the journey began. Whether you forced yourself onto a treadmill just to attach the hashtag #Ounwan (Today’s Workout Complete) on Instagram and collect likes, or spent top dollar on avocado and chicken breast salads just because you wanted to look hip—it simply does not matter.
Our cells and blood vessels do not run a purity test on our motives. Whether a drop of sweat is spilled out of vanity or out of a noble will, muscles develop the exact same way, and skyrocketing blood sugar honestly drops.
Even more fascinating is that if this superficial action—started out of a desire to look hip—is repeated for six months or a year, our brain begins to recognize it as a "true habit." Eventually, even without taking social media pictures, you reach a stage where you lace up your sneakers on your own because your body feels sluggish without a workout. A impure motive called vanity has served as the ultimate "priming water" to draw up a beneficial life habit.
If Dopamine Is to Be Consumed Anyway, Let It Be at the Gym
Humans are inherently fragile creatures wired to crave short-term rewards (dopamine). If the hip culture of conspicuous wellness and living a "God-saeng" created by modern capitalism and social media did not exist, where would the youth’s burning thirst for validation and dopamine have gone?
In all likelihood, it would have drifted toward overnight drinking, greasy delivery food, soul-crushing luxury spending, or addiction to addictive short-form videos. Since it is the human destiny to shop for dopamine anyway, it is far more beneficial for the individual—and for the national health insurance finance—that the shopping takes place at the gym and the wellness market rather than at bars or casinos.
By merely replacing the objects of luxury and vanity from something harmful to something beneficial, this hip trend is serving as a massive "breakwater" for modern society.
How Imperfect Humans Live Healthily
Of course, where there is light, there is shadow. When the instinct for display crosses the line into an obsession with a performative life, some experience anorexia or binge eating due to the side effects of chasing a perfect "body profile," while others feel relative deprivation watching the glamorous wellness lives of others.
However, these are merely side effects of "too much of a good thing," rather than inherent flaws of the trend itself. Compared to the massive positive function of raising the average health metrics of humanity and embedding rigid textbook rules into a voluntary culture, it is a manageable cost we can willingly pay.
This intellectual journey—which began with the clash between textbooks and reality, traversed the psychology of public health, explored the future pre-intervention market, and arrived at the conspicuous wellness consumption of modern humans—ultimately converges upon a single conclusion:
Humans are not perfect. We are flawed creatures who are not entirely rational, are constantly swayed by immediate temptations, and are desperately hung up on the gaze of others. Public health is not a discipline that forcefully shaves down that flawed human being to fit them into the square box of a textbook.
Rather, it is the most realistic and tender humanities discipline—one that takes human vanity, the desire for recognition, and even selfish dopamine addiction as parts of a grand gear system, ultimately rolling humanity toward a healthier life.
So what if the motive is a bit impure? What if we fail to reach the perfect answers in the textbook? In our own ways, upon the hippest daily routines we have cultivated, we are all becoming just a little bit healthier.
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