Let Olivia Newton-John's 'Body Talk'

Released in September 1981, Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical” was a chart-topping hit because its sexy lyrics and Grammy Award-winning video embodied the aerobic revolution of the 1980s—an era that took short-shorts and leotards out of the disco and into the gym or living room where the people wearing them exercised with fitness icons such as Jane Fonda and Richard Simmons. But there is a less sexy side to Newton-John’s physical life. She has battled breast cancer twice. Sixteen years after her first battle, she began to create the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness and Research Centre in Melbourne, Australia in 2008, the same year she married “Amazon John Easterling,” the founder and president of the Amazon Herb Company, a multi-level marketing company that manufactures and distributes nutrition and organic skin care products. With hundreds of companies flooding the supplement market with untested products—and with Easterling’s background in searching for South American treasure rather than healing herbs—it is easy to dismiss Easterling a modern day peddler of snake oil. Though the Amazon Herb Company merged with TriVita in 2012, shortly after the ONJ Cancer Wellness and Research Centre opened, TriVita used Easterling and Newton-John in their international advertising campaign, and Newton-John frequently cites healing herbs as part of her cancer treatment, which she also states on the Cancer Wellness and Research Centre website. Whether or not the merger and advertising are a matter of corporate synergy or cross-media marketing, it is hard to argue Newton-John hasn’t physically benefitted from the cancer treatment, herbs, and revenue. Though she discovered her the cancer had metastasized in her lower back in 2017, she is back on stage. At The Golden Nugget Casino in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Newton-John—now 69-years-old—said her cancer is again in remission and that she is perfectly healthy, which appeared to be the case as she danced and jumped on stage, letting her body talk as she sang her hit song.