It’s not hard to feel filthy, even when you are, by most objective measures, perfectly clean: showered and laundered and trimmed, plucked, groomed, and buffed. Who knows what lurks beneath, in your nooks and your crannies; who knows what is too microscopic to see. All the COVID in the world could fit into a single soda can. Imagine what one entire body can hold.
The scientific term “toxin” is so overused that it now has little meaning. When it comes to the marketing of products and regimes, “toxic” is applied to everything from relationships to odors to milk. According to even the most shallow dive into wellness marketing and reporting, there is poison in everything: No one is untouched. Death lurks in the invisible gases released from nonorganic sheets over the toxic foam in your mattress while you sleep; poison bubbles erupt from the soap you use in an attempt to ward off all of these threats, and in the air you breathe during your meditation practice, and in the water you drink to hydrate your mitochondria after working out. The sun is toxic (melanoma!) but so, too, are the creams you use as a shield. Not having enough sun leads to not having enough vitamin D, which leads to not being able to fight off toxins and getting, therefore, sick. Et cetera.
