A young woman, dressed in a medical gown and with twin smears of tear-smudged mascara under each eye, is gasping and sobbing, trying to describe the pain that is radiating inside her head. It feels like “stabbing,” like “fire ants”; it feels “structural, not neurological.” It feels, she says, like “there’s something in there.”
You can’t see who she’s speaking to, but her desperation implies that no one believes her.
This is the first scene of Apple Cider Vinegar, the brand-new Netflix drama marketed as “a true-ish story based on a lie.” The sobbing woman is Belle Gibson, a former wellness influencer from Australia, played by Kaitlyn Dever.
But in this moment, she could be anyone, and this scene could be taking place anywhere—because Belle is in a kind of pain that many women will recognize. Not the fire ants in your head kind, but the kind where you’re desperately sick, and desperate for help, only to be treated with skepticism by doctors who refuse to believe that what you’re feeling is real.