British music festivals are under attack. No, not from poor ticket sales or frothing petitions about the line up. It’s worse than that: our three days in a soiled English field are being turned into something more weekend at Champneys than dry-mouthed primal experience. If you thought the rise of “glamping” was problematic (what’s wrong with the baby-wipe bath?), this year’s music festivals are really taking creature comforts to the extreme. Anarchy is out; sobriety, smoothies and seaweed wraps are in.

Billed as a festival within a festival, Bestival recently announced a new area called Slow Motion. Those who might have once dropped an ill-advised second pill during the Chemical Brothers’ set can now go here and indulge in a detoxing beauty treatment, or take a spin class. To confirm: that’s a spin class. At a music festival.

Further proof that the grand tradition of the festival mash-up is in mortal danger can be found at Latitude in July, which is launching its Solas area this year. It offers art installations and a specially designed holistic area, with massages, workshops and yoga for the festivalgoer who’d rather work on their crow pose than their tolerance to five-quid cans of Tuborg.

It’s a festival, Jim, but not as we know it… Wilderness Festival 2014. Photograph: Andrew Whitton

Elsewhere, in August, Wilderness will be Wilderness and offer every single yuppie treat under the sun, whether that’s long-table banquets hosted by Angela Hartnett, something called a “philosophy walk”, or its own bewilderingly large array of yoga options (according to the website there are over 20. We thought there were just the two, the normal one and “the hot one”). All of which points to the very real possibility that we are moving towards a dangerous age, where the role of the music festival is changing quicker than you can say “aromatherapy massage”.

It’s important not to lose sight of what festivals stand for. For one, they have long facilitated doing all number of gross things for the first time. There are no greater societal levellers than a British field, a 24-pack of Strongbow, and three-day-unwashed genitals that you would sell your Xbox to use with another human being. Festivals should always be Heras-fenced worlds of honest sin, where your minds are nurtured not by a Descartes-assisted amble through a sun-dappled glade, but by spending 10 hours under a stranger’s gazebo talking to a man who may or may not be wearing a sombrero. Come on, that’s far more enriching than an hour of meditation.

The idea of the festival as an extension of your home is deeply flawed. They are and should remain strange new worlds, a chance to forget about real life (hair straighteners! Dragging your ass to the gym!) for a weekend and experience the joy that can only come from waking up and going straight to the bar wearing last night’s tutu. No mindfulness workshop is a substitute for that.