Pilates parties instead of mixers. Workout sets instead of Greek-letter tees. Matcha runs instead of bar crawls. As Gen Z navigates the college experience, they're rewriting the rules of community, finding belonging through workouts and wellness clubs.
Welcome to the "wellness darty" era.
"It's like you're at a frat party, but you guys are all there to get better and feel better about yourselves," says Halle Kopperud of the event made popular by her school's wellness club. Kopperud is president of the University of Alabama chapter of Wellness Society, a collegiate, high school, and city-wide club focused on building community through wellness. The organization has over 175 chapters across the United states and Europe, a majority of which exist on college campuses. But the University of Alabama is where it all began.
Cofounders and alumni Maya Sagen and Paris Lemons were both struggling to find their place in Greek life when they came up with the idea for the organization. "Alabama is a super big party school, so there wasn't really a place to meet people and connect outside of just going to the bars or going to a formal. And so [Lemons and I] wanted to create a space where people were able to connect and make friends . . . outside of the partying," Sagen says. Lemons reiterates the point, adding that they wanted to offer students another outlet for inclusive community. "You didn't have to look a certain way to join. You didn't have to be from a certain place. Everyone could come together, and wellness would be what united all of us," Lemons says.
Within their first semester of starting the club, they had over 800 members. Soon after, they were franchising through other schools, making a name for themselves at universities and wellness communities across the country. And now, their university chapter is in the spotlight again for kicking off the wellness darty trend taking over social media with related videos on TikTok ranging from 500,000 to 3.5 million views. Kopperud says the popularity represents a generational shift in priorities.
"We want longevity and we want to be well and stay healthy, and it's really cool," Kopperud says. It's also much less intimidating to prioritize your health when you're doing so in droves, says Caroline Garfield, a University of Miami student and the president of Coral Gables Wellness Society.
"When you do [wellness darties] in these big groups like this, it gets everybody incentivized to do it so they don't feel like embarrassed or shy to do something that actually helps their body instead of doing a keg stand," Garfield says. The darties and the society have been safe spaces for Kopperud too, a former dancer, who found herself struggling to maintain her fitness routine once she left home.
"Once I got to college, I wasn't dancing anymore and there wasn't really like a set space to like do those things, like work out without feeling judged. I wouldn't feel comfortable just going to the gym because there was all these gym bros and it was just very overwhelming," Kopperud says. Then she found Pilates and shortly after that, the Wellness Society. "That was the first time I started doing Pilates because I felt like it was more of a safe space. It was like all girls and it was a lot more low-key."
That messaging has resonated beyond college campuses, with the brand's Instagram following reaching 70,000 organically within a year. Sagen and Lemons both turned down more traditional paths — pre-med and commercial real estate, respectively — to pursue to Wellness Society full time. The organization also offers high school and local city chapters across the country and internationally, activating around large cultural events like Formula One Monaco and Art Basel in Miami bringing both luxury and community to the wellness market.
"There's so much more to wellness than just a Pilates mat with a goodie bag at the top of it," Sagen says. "We're trying to do things differently." Lemons adds, "We'll get emails of girls saying they met their best friend, they met their roommate. There's relationships started at these events."
Alexis Jones (she/her) is the section lead of the health and fitness verticals at Popsugar, overseeing coverage across the website, social media, and newsletters. In her eight-plus years of editorial experience, Alexis has developed passions for and expertise in mental health, women's health and fitness, racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare, and chronic conditions. Prior to joining PS, she was the senior editor at Health magazine. Her other bylines can be found at Women's Health, Prevention, Marie Claire, and more.
