In public health research, we know very well that modern life wears people down and does not offer natural opportunities for a healthy development in the first place, thereby keeping most people in less-than-ideal health from the get-go. Modern society might giveth modern health care, but it also taketh your health and time through the constraints and work necessities of modern life, and you are expected to pay with time and money to reclaim that health. The opportunities required to counter society’s stresses and still keep healthy remain a luxury for those who can afford and access that lifestyle and all the health knowledge it relies on. It is no coincidence that self-care has historically been exclusively the preoccupation of the elite – the class with the time and leisure to be able to ponder self-examination, self-care, and self-construction. The prerequisite for health (a lifetime with plenty of varied movement, exercise, healthy food, and rest and minimal chronic stress) are incredibly time and capital consuming – something that modern self-care evangelism does not highlight.

Even in Scandinavia, with its comparably better welfare history, the lifelong health-compensating activities required for a healthy life are realistically out of reach for most. This creates vast differences between people’s physical and mental capital and resilience. The differences compound over time, putting students on a massively unequal footing by the time they reach music college. At this point, mere reminders to prioritise their health cannot change all that much, but it does shift the moral culpability for their situations in life (which are inherently tied to both their past and current socioeconomic realities) onto them. To remain productive in today’s individualist society, the choice of health along with self-construction is perhaps stronger than ever, and it is morally expected from everyone. From a Foucauldian view, society moralises health as a bio-power tool to limit the economic/productive impact of health damages that result as a by-product of modernity. Similarly, despite our best intentions, these are the moral expectations we now force onto students.