In 2013, Belle Gibson began documenting her journey with a brain tumor and how she was healing it herself with health and wellness practices. She sold cookbooks and developed apps, inviting her band of followers into the world of holistic healing that saved her from a certain death. It almost seems too good to be true, right? Well, that’s because it was.
Gibson was exposed in 2015 for having completely fabricated ever having a brain tumor — it was all a lie. She never had cancer and never donated a cent of the profits made off her cookbooks and app to charity as she claimed.
“Apple Cider Vinegar,” released on Feb. 6 on Netflix shows a dramatized story based on Gibson’s scandal that completely rearranged the public’s opinion on wellness influencers.
The show pokes a lot of holes in the concept of wellness influencers in general, but the messaging behind it is even more meaningful than just a warning against taking the various supplements random people on your Instagram explore page tell you will change your life. The show also brings to light some disturbingly wide gaps in healthcare.
The show depicts a fictionalized character named Lucy, who is suffering from cancer but does not feel adequately cared for by medical professionals at her hospital, so she decides to stop treatments to adopt Gibson’s wellness philosophies.
The idea that a wellness influencer could completely scam someone who is incredibly sick into thinking their illness could disappear if they do what they say is, of course, extremely jarring on its own, but I think what is even more upsetting is what gets those people to that point.
Nobody should ever go into a doctor’s office, newly diagnosed with a devastating illness, and walk out feeling like their doctors didn’t help or support them in the way they needed.
“Apple Cider Vinegar” exposed just how prevalent that feeling is, and how this has made it so that money-hungry social media personalities like Gibson can prey upon these people at such a vulnerable time.
This isn’t at all to say that what wellness influencers promote is always as conniving as what Gibson did, or that the healthcare industry is always completely unhelpful at times of need, but I do think Gibson’s case has several critical messages to be taken into consideration.
“Apple Cider Vinegar” tells us that it’s important to be very vigilant on social media and not lose yourself to the enticing promises of influencers, and that there is also something to be said about a healthcare system that so often lets down those in need to the point where they find themselves turning to Instagram for their treatment plans.
mkane10@ramapo.edu
Featured photo courtesy of @kaitlyndever, Instagram
