Purity Rituals And Distrust In Medical Institutions

  

Image credit: Boston Globe, 2025

The image above is a cartoon of a woman with short red hair holding her baby amidst a light blue and white background of cartoon leaves. She dons a green t-shirt that reads “Make America Healthy Again.” Floating in the background just behind her and her child are two cups. One is indigo and reads, “I Don’t Co-Parent the Government,” and the other is light orange and reads, “Mandate Vegetables.” These phrases, along with that of her t-shirt, illustrate three key tenets of a “crunchy” lifestyle that is now understood as an aspect of either libertarianism or far-right extremism. The crunchy, or Make America Healthy Again movement, spearheaded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., rose in prominence following the 2024 electoral victory of Donald Trump and his appointment of RFK Jr. to Health and Human Services. Most individuals who support RFK Jr. and Trump and identify with this phrase as it is used now do not believe in the legitimacy of modern medicine, and prefer to use what they often call holistic or natural methods in order to ease pain or disease. Actual scientists have proven time and time again that modern medical methods are crucial to our longevity and well being, as are vaccinations, but self-proclaimed “crunchy” individuals do not wish to accept this information. Another major component of the “crunchy” movement is the exaltation of the things that members deem healthy, ranging from vegetables (as shown in the Boston Globe cartoon) to essential oils. Through natural methods and healthy choices, claims a popular “crunchy” influencer on Instagram, neurological differences that are inherent to human diversity can be mitigated and children’s physical health will improve drastically. While essential oils and proteins are lauded, processed food, modern medicines, and vaccinations are considered off-limits and a threat to children and adults alike.

In Purity And Danger, Mary Douglas argues that our sentiments regarding the body and dirt are not indicative of our own psychological state or fear but rather reflect our broader social context and the ways in which we are attempting to reorder our social environment (Douglas 1966:2). In essence, rules around purity and impurity that members of a group must follow can tell us something significant about what a given social organization values. Douglas begins her argument by stating that “[p]ollution ideas work in the life of society at two levels, one largely instrumental, one expressive” (Douglas 1966:3). For Douglas, the body and rituals surrounding the body are not simply about purifying the body and people attempting to convince others to be ‘pure.’ Through rituals around the body, for example, symbolic meanings and widely held distinctions between purity and impurity are being reinforced to group members. Douglas emphasizes the body as a site of symbolic meaning-making, where boundaries and rules about what can enter and leave indicate deeper social values. In explaining this, Douglas challenges the psychological discipline’s understanding of our desire to perform rituals about purity and impurity and reorder the “matter out of place” (Douglas 1966:2) in our environment as a result of fear. This fear is not any more of a driving factor than one’s “cultural and social experience” (Douglas 1966:150). 

Rituals of purity and impurity, as Douglas conceives of them, are central to a “crunchy” lifestyle. On social media, content creators who are part of this movement will make videos denouncing processed foods and vaccines and uplifting natural methods. The making and consumption of such content is a ritual within itself, as is engaging in this lifestyle, much like the woman in the cartoon is depicted as doing. Douglas’s claim that “certain social rules [are] defined by beliefs in dangerous contagion” (Douglas 1966:4) can be used as a lens through which to view the rituals of members of the Make America Healthy Again movement. The rituals that members of the “crunchy” community perform around best practices in consumption (and advocating what not to consume) go far beyond the desire to improve one’s physical state. These attempts to keep out pollution and beliefs reveal values that are deeply held by this specific social organization and cultural movement, namely an overwhelming distrust of institutions such as healthcare and modern medicine. To members of the “crunchy” movement, the private citizen as they are without any institutional influence or regulation represents purity. Institutions are seen as polluters of the private individual. In this way, the desire to keep healthy and avoid toxins and chemicals helps the “crunchy” movement define itself as a social group that is far away from the influence of major institutions that have the potential to contaminate the pure individual.

Image credit: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/01/13/lifestyle/crunchy-moms-organic-anti-vaxxers-anti-food-dye/

Work cited: Douglas, Mary. 1966. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.