NL06: The Lululemon Question: What Are We Really Wearing?
A wellness brand is under investigation. But the deeper question isn’t about one company — it’s about what we’ve been taught to trust.
On April 13, the Texas Attorney General opened an investigation into Lululemon.
The question: whether some of the activewear so many of us wear — to yoga, to the gym, to school pickup — contains PFAS, a class of synthetic chemicals often referred to as “forever chemicals” because they don't break down in the environment, in our water, or in our bodies.
Lululemon's response was swift. The company said it does not currently use PFAS, that the substance was phased out in fiscal year 2023, and that it had only ever appeared in a small percentage of water-repellent products. They are cooperating with the investigation.
So this is not about confirmed conclusions. It’s about something else.
It’s about a question being asked out loud on behalf of women who have been sold a very specific version of wellness. And it’s a question worth sitting with. Because whether or not the leggings in your drawer right now contain these chemicals, the larger truth they point to is one we cannot keep looking away from:
We have been taught to trust the feeling of wellness… more than the substance of it.
What “forever” actually means
PFAS stands for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. There are thousands of them. They have been used since the 1940s in nonstick pans, food packaging, waterproof jackets, stain-resistant carpet, firefighting foam, cosmetics, dental floss, and yes — moisture-wicking, sweat-resistant activewear.
They are called forever chemicals for a reason. They do not biodegrade meaning they accumulate in soil, in groundwater, in the blood of nearly every person tested in the United States, and in breast milk. The Texas attorney general’s announcement noted that PFAS have been linked in research to endocrine disruption, infertility, and certain cancers.
And the conversation that matters most isn’t just about exposure. It’s about what these compounds do once they’re in the body.
Endocrine disruption! That’s the phrase to underline. Many PFAS are classified as endocrine disruptors.
Your endocrine system is the orchestra of hormones that governs nearly everything — your menstrual cycle, your fertility, your thyroid, your metabolism, your mood, your sleep, your child's sexual development, your unborn grandchild's brain. When a chemical is described as "endocrine-disrupting," it means it can mimic, block, or scramble the hormonal signals your body is trying to send. The dose doesn't have to be dramatic. The timing, especially in pregnancy and early childhood, is often more important than the amount.
It’s important to understand that small interference, over time, becomes systemic.
The pattern we’re living in and have come to accept
We are living through a quiet biological emergency that almost nobody is naming out loud.
You’ve probably felt it… even if you haven’t named it. Fatigue that doesn’t match your lifestyle. Hormone shifts that feel earlier or more intense than expected. Digestive changes that don’t resolve.
A general sense that something is… off. Individually, these get labeled as Stress. Aging. Hormones.But collectively, they form a pattern.
Sperm counts in men across North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand have dropped by more than half over the last fifty years, with the rate of decline accelerating since 2000. Testosterone levels in young men are lower today than they were in their fathers' generation at the same age. Girls are entering puberty earlier than at any point in recorded history. Miscarriage rates are climbing. So is the rate of couples needing intervention to conceive at all.
And more people are starting to recognize that this pattern isn’t random.
It’s environmental. It’s systemic. And it’s cumulative.
You may have seen the headlines, often dressed up in the language of curiosity, about frogs, fish, and amphibians whose males develop female reproductive characteristics after exposure to common agricultural and industrial chemicals in their water. That research — most prominently the work on atrazine — is real, peer-reviewed, and replicated. The chemicals that feminize amphibians do not stop at the species line. They are in our drinking water. They are in our food. They are in the synthetic fabric pressed against the most absorbent skin we have.
The skin is our largest organ. It absorbs what we put on it, and that includes what we wear. During a workout the pores are open and sweat is flowing, making it even more possible to absorb whatever is in the fabric. The same article notes that commonly used synthetic fabrics like polyester, nylon, and spandex are often made with petrochemicals and treated with PFAS, and that wearing PFAS-laden fabrics for long periods, especially during workouts, has been associated with hormone imbalance, fertility issues, organ disease, and cancer.
We have been told for years that wellness is a yoga class, a green juice, a meditation app. But now, it’s imperative that we start considering the leggings we wore to the yoga class might be the part of our daily routine that mattered most.
Why this is a women’s conversation
We want to speak directly to the women reading this who are mothers, who are trying to become mothers, who are raising daughters, who are loving on grandbabies, who are caring for the next generation in any of the thousand ways a woman does.
The chemicals we are talking about cross the placenta. They concentrate in breast milk. They settle into the fat tissue of growing bodies during the windows of development that determine, in many cases, the health trajectory of an entire life. The little girl who is six years old today will carry the chemical exposures of her mother’s pregnancy in her own ovaries, the eggs that may one day become her children were formed inside you when you were a fetus inside your mother. Three generations of exposure live in one body at one time.
This is not meant to frighten you. It is meant to honor you and to arm you with information. Because the women who have always been the keepers of family health deserve to be told the truth about what they are up against, so they can make informed decisions about their health and that of their families.
And there is a great deal we can do.
What the Lululemon moment is actually about
Strip away the brand name and the legal language and the investigation is really asking one question: can we trust the wellness label?
For a generation now, the wellness industry has sold women the aesthetic of health — the matching set, the stainless water bottle, the spa lighting, the language of self-care — without always selling the substance of it. A $128 pair of leggings marketed with the visual vocabulary of clean living does not, by itself, tell you anything about the chemistry of the fabric on your skin.
The lesson is not that Lululemon is the villain. The lesson is that marketing is not regulation. The wellness aesthetic is not a safety standard. We have been trained to read green packaging, soft photography, and words like “performance” and “mindful” as proof of safety, and they are not. They are proof of design.
The women who lead in this next chapter of health will be the ones who learned to read past the design. To ask what the fabric actually is. To ask what the ingredient actually does. To ask who tested it, who funded the test, and who stands to profit from the answer.
That is not paranoia. That is literacy. And literacy is the prerequisite for freedom.
This is where sovereignty begins
You do not need to throw out your wardrobe tonight. You do not need to spend thousands of dollars. You need to start paying attention, and you need to start replacing what you wear most often — the pieces against your skin, for the most hours, during the activities that open your pores.
A few small shifts that compound:
Look at the fiber content tag on the leggings you wear most. If it is mostly polyester, nylon, or spandex with a “moisture-wicking” or “water-repellent” finish, those finishes are very often where PFAS live. The garment may not list them. That is the problem.
Begin replacing your most-worn pieces first. Start with the leggings, sports bra, and tank you reach for three or four times a week. One thoughtful set will do more for your body than ten you wear once a year.
Look for natural fibers and the certifications that mean something. GOTS-certified organic cotton, OEKO-TEX, and hemp are good signals. So are brands willing to say plainly, in writing, that they do not use PFAS in any finish, dye, or coating.
Wash less, line-dry when you can. Heat and friction shed microfibers. Cooler washes, gentler cycles, and air drying reduce the load on your body and the load on the water supply your children will drink from.
Get curious about the rest of your home. Nonstick pans, stain-treated couches, fast-fashion underwear, dental floss, mascara, raincoats, and your tap water are all worth the same look you are now giving your activewear. You don’t have to do it all at once. You have to start.
A few brands worth exploring
There are brands doing this work with intention — focusing on materials, transparency, and long-term impact.
A few of the names worth your attention, with our top pick first:
MATE the Label — Angela, our founder’s first pick. A woman-founded, B Corp, climate-neutral, GOTS-certified line of leggings, sports bras, and movement basics. Their pieces feel thick and stretchy like spandex, while being almost entirely organic cotton. The brand publishes its full ethical and sustainability standards openly. For everyday wear, low-impact movement, and the pieces you’ll live in — this is where to start.
Quince — Affordable, OEKO-TEX certified, and dyed to bluesign® standards. A good entry point if budget is the barrier between you and a cleaner drawer.
Pact — GOTS-certified organic cotton, fair trade, and built for women who want softness and breathability against sensitive skin.
Girlfriend Collective — Recycled materials, OEKO-TEX certified, and sized XXS to 6XL. Their compressive pieces are the closest performance match for women who want the feel of conventional activewear without the chemistry.
Patagonia — Their water-repellent finishes are made without PFCs/PFAS, and the brand offers a lifetime repair guarantee that quietly resists the throwaway model that creates so much of the chemical burden in the first place.
Organic Basics, tentree, Jungmaven, AllWear — All worth exploring, depending on whether you want hemp, recycled fibers, lounge-forward cuts, or extended sizing.
You can read the full reviews here at The Good Trade.
The work in front of us
There is a version of this story where you finish reading, feel a wave of concern, and put the article down. The leggings stay in the drawer. Tuesday looks like Monday looked.
There is another version where this is the moment something shifts.
The work of taking back our health, really taking it back, not just buying its aesthetic is not done in a single purchase or a single article. It is done in a thousand small decisions, made in community with other women who have decided to stop outsourcing their family’s wellbeing to industries that have not earned that trust.
That is what 100 Healthy Women is. It is not a wellness brand. It is a community of women who have decided to read the label, ask the question, do the work, and bring our daughters and our friends and our mothers along with us. We share the protocols, the testing, the practitioners, the recipes, the brands worth trusting, and the ones not. We hold each other to a higher standard than the marketing departments will ever hold us to.
This is the third emancipation. Legal freedom came first. Economic freedom came next. Health freedom is the work of our generation, and it is the inheritance we leave to the ones we love.
The leggings are a small thing. The standard behind them is not.
Apply for membership in 100 Healthy Women
If you’re ready to move beyond surface-level wellness and begin understanding what’s actually shaping your health…
Join us inside 100 Healthy Women.
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Membership is by application. We’re intentional about curating a community of women who truly want to know each other and are serious enough to do the work.
Bring your sister. Bring your daughter. Bring the friend you’ve been worrying about.
We are done playing small.
in love, sovereignty + health,
100 Healthy Women
Sources: Office of the Texas Attorney General (April 13, 2026); CNBC; CBC News; Bloomberg via Claims Journal; The Good Trade (March 2026 sustainable activewear review).