Belle Gibson and the pernicious cult of ‘wellness’

Belle Gibson was a publicist’s dream: a ‘wellness guru’ and young mother with a wholesome blonde beauty, a wide white smile, and just enough tattoos to look modern. She had already encountered appalling adversity for one barely into her twenties: in 2009, she revealed, doctors had diagnosed her with malignant brain cancer and told her bluntly: ‘You’re dying. You have six weeks. Four months tops.’

Sickened by two months of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, Gibson said, she had abandoned conventional treatment in favour of a range of holistic treatments, including Ayurvedic medicine and oxygen therapies. She embarked, too, on a gluten-free, refined sugar-free diet which she detailed on her 2013 Instagram blog @healing_belle. There, she announced her intention to continue healing herself from cancer ‘naturally’: it seemed that she had already defied quite astounding medical odds.

The blog became a successful iPhone and iPad food and lifestyle app called The Whole Pantry, which achieved over 300,000 downloads. Publishers excitedly took note, and last December The Whole Pantry book was published in Australia, illustrated with photographs of wholefoods — buckwheat pizza, overflowing bowls of chia seeds — casually but gorgeously displayed in rustic kitchen settings. The publicity described Belle as ‘an inspirational young mother’ who ‘after being diagnosed with terminal brain cancer found herself unsupported by conventional medicine. She began a journey of self-education to treat herself through nutrition.’

Belle’s own introduction to the book contained some dramatic claims. She described growing up ‘in a very dysfunctional home’ with a mother who had multiple sclerosis and an autistic brother. At 12, she said, she moved out and discovered her first vegetable garden. Aged 20, ‘I had a stroke at work’, which led to a ‘diagnosis of malignant brain cancer’. She began to read up on nutrition — ‘one thing that really stayed with me was reading about the detoxification properties of lemons’ — and then ‘pulled myself out of chemo and radiotherapy — my doctors freaked out, but they couldn’t stop me.’