The Female Rage of 'Apple Cider Vinegar' and Predatory Wellness

Netflix’s newest bingeable series, Apple Cider Vinegar, goes down like green juice ready to be expelled by a coffee enema. The story, which is “totally true” (as explained by an intro reminiscent of a similar gag we saw in another show about a petite blonde influencer with a lying problem) is based on Belle Gibson, a wellness influencer who told the world she was healing her cancer with a healthy lifestyle. It, of course, turned out to be a ruse, one that perhaps encouraged people to forgo traditional cancer treatment. But this isn’t just a story about a con-woman’s rise and fall; it’s one of female rage that comes from a life of feeling secondary, one that can push women to the fringes and leave us as prime targets for bad actors.

While I can’t say exactly the gender spread of Gibson’s real-life followers, I will say that the issue of predatory wellness is undoubtedly gendered. It’s something the series tackles well by constantly pitting pragmatic men against hopeful women. Belle Gibson (Kaitlyn Dever) isn’t the only series focus. There’s also Milla Blake (Alycia Debnam-Carey), who’s a composite of wellness influencers but seems mostly based on Jessica Ainscough. Milla begins her story here by choosing to push back at her doctors’ recommendation that she amputate her arm to prevent the spread of her cancer, something that troubles her father but tempts her mother. Then there’s Lucy (Tilda Cobham-Hervey), a woman living with breast cancer who follows Gibson for her recipes and hope, something her journalist boyfriend is appalled by. While composites, hybrids, and stand-ins, these women characters exemplify how easy it is for us to want to find something outside of traditional medical care. It’s what makes us vulnerable to predatory wellness.

In the first episode, when Milla — having declined recommended treatment — is at a wellness retreat, she narrates, “…it’s how we’re conditioned. So, I didn’t know the words to describe the rage I felt when the doctors looked at my body and only saw a disease.” Milla, forced to be polite to an intrusive meditation coach after brushing off her sharp male oncologist and disappointing her raging father, eventually lets her guard down to the coach when he hands her a stone. Her fire momentarily cools as she is whisked away into a wellness journey outside of the medicine she finds so oppressive.

Lucy is often up against eyerolls and snide remarks from her boyfriend when she suggests anything outside of her traditional chemotherapy regimen. She is sitting in this chair while poison is pressed through her, causing arteries to burst, necessitating more surgeries. She just wants to consider the possibility of supplementing with healthy recipes and an ayahuasca retreat, but he can’t help making her feel small about it. Both he and Milla’s father want the same thing — for their loved ones to be healthy — but these men can’t help but shrink those very women.

How confusing is it to hear about a healthy diet and exercise but then have to put that aside to guzzle medication or undergo procedures? How can we trust recommendations around food while we’re bombarded with articles about microplastics and the dangers of red dye number 5? How can we trust pharma when we are still recovering from the opioid epidemic? How can we trust medical professionals when they’ve been so unkind to and not knowledgeable about women’s bodies (specifically WOC)? We’re prodded by icy speculums and are given IUDs with no anesthetic, told it’s probably stress, or prescribed medications to treat symptoms and not the cause. So naturally, we want to turn to naturopaths, wellness retreats, health influencers, and the people who will tell us what’s really wrong with us and the things we’re putting in our bodies (something a white male dominated social media field is helping to thrive, as the show points out).

A lot of us, plant-based Instagrammers and wellness lovers had a real reckoning in the time of COVID-19. Suddenly, the accounts that told us how to best get nutrients from our greens were suddenly telling us the hazards of vaccines. Speaking anecdotally, I watched the accounts that talked me through stomach troubles suddenly showing images from the trucker convoy. Women I felt connected to because they told me I could solve my problems naturally (after waiting to see specialists who never had any answers) were telling me to avoid lifesaving healthcare. It was a paradigm shift to see who was so able to capitalize off the distrust women have in the “system,” and I say this as a woman who still won’t wear antiperspirant despite now knowing the hazards are a myth.

Milla is set up as a foil to Belle, but she often feels like a villain (like when she is shouting at a restaurant about how she is being “poisoned” by non-organic foods or smugly talking over her mother’s doctors with wellness-bologna), but she is not the same as Gibson and it’s not just because Milla isn’t lying about having cancer. The difference is that Milla is a woman who experienced so much rage that it pushed her to a fringe whereas Gibson was a predator who exploited wellness to make a dollar. Milla feels like a cult member: she looks scary as she picks up her enema kit and nervously tries to take her mother away from her father because she views him as unsafe, where Belle is a cult leader. But the outcome is the same: people were led to believe that a gluten-free diet could cure their cancer.

Open social media on your phone, and you’ll stumble across lots of women-run accounts using the same audio with some version of “at the specialist appointment you waited eight months for” plastered across the top. Usually, a woman is sitting in a DIY hospital gown costume while the audio, in a man’s voice, says, “Drink more water. If you’re mentally ill, fix that…”. It’s prominent because it’s a shared experience. Another overshare: It’s like the time I waited months to see a gyno who told me to try eating more dairy to manage symptoms, and I remembered all the posts I saw about dairy causing “hormonal” issues and why dairy is bad for you and almost spat them out at her. “You don’t seem enthused by that idea,” she said to my grimace. Was I like Milla in that moment? About to bark internet “facts” at a specialist? One who seemed to have no idea how to address my issues outside of “try more of the product big-dairy is cruelly selling you?”! I left fuming and cried on my walk home while googling natural supplements.

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Lucy then stands as the most relatable representation of the women craving balance. In the end, her and her boyfriend, who had represented the practical black-and-white man up against her begging to be joined in the grey, enjoy yoga and healthy eating alongside her medical care. The thing is, health and wellness can and should coexist. There’s nothing wrong, in my humble opinion, with wanting more holistic healthcare that posits mixing lifestyle and alternative remedies into traditional medicine. Feminism is advocating for ourselves and other marginalized groups in healthcare; it’s not selling women vagina steams and jade eggs. By showing off the female experience of feeling maligned and talked over in our medical care and daily lives as women in a man’s world, Apple Cider Vinegar warns us of how feminine rage can be exploited by capitalists to sell us “wellness.”

Apple Cider Vinegar is available to watch on Netflix