The word they all use now

There is a word that has crept into nearly every public statement about beauty over the past few years, and that was not there before. The word is “holistic.”

It is used by very different people, in very different contexts, and almost never with the same meaning. It is worth looking at what it actually says.

Where it comes from

It is recent, which often surprises people. The term holism was coined in 1926 by Jan Smuts, in a work of philosophy, from the Greek holos, whole. The idea: certain wholes have properties that examining their parts cannot predict.

So it is not a word from an ancient tradition. It is a word from twentieth-century philosophy of science, which migrated into health, then into wellbeing, then into marketing, losing a little precision at each step.

What it once meant

Something strong and verifiable: that you cannot understand a face by examining it in isolation.

A face is not an independent organ with problems of its own. It surfaces. It shows sleep, rhythm, food, load, season, the place where one lives. That is why so many people get so little from working only on the surface: they are correcting the display.

Put that way, the word points to an old and solid observation, one that every beauty tradition made long before it had any technical means at its disposal.

What it has become

A signal of belonging.

Used today, it mainly indicates which side one stands on: slow rather than fast, cause rather than symptom, whole rather than detail. It is a position, and it is a good position. It is not a method.

And that is where the word becomes misleading. It gives the impression of an answer when it only states a principle. “Caring for the whole” says neither what to do, nor for whom, nor how much.

The ceiling of the general

Here is what happens to serious people who adopt the principle.

They sleep better, move more, simplify their routine, reduce what weighs on them. The improvement is real and quick — the first months are encouraging. Then it plateaus, and the ceiling stops moving.

They conclude that they have reached what lifestyle can give. In reality, they have reached what generic lifestyle can give, which is very different.

For general recommendations are written for an average. A nature that needs momentum receives advice to calm down; a frugal nature receives a protocol of excess; a nature that holds on without complaining receives the instruction to listen to its body, which does not speak loudly enough. Each does its best, and each gets half.

The word missing after that one

“Holistic” says to look at the whole. It does not say which whole.

The next step is the particular: what logic governs this person — what she produces, what she loses, what nourishes her and what works against her. Every tradition that took this subject seriously asked this question before advising anything. None gave the same advice to everyone.

This logic does not declare itself and cannot be observed. It is read from the beginning — and it is this, rather than the word, that makes the difference between a sound principle and a practice that produces.