.png)
Want to be the subject of a Netflix series? My best advice is to start your own wellness scam – because it seems that TV producers and viewers alike love nothing more than a juicy deep-dive into the story of a beautiful, young guru who defrauded her fans in the name of wellness.
Hulu’s The Dropout, Netflix’s Bad Vegan, Netflix’s latest offering, Apple Cider Vinegar, and Disney Plus's upcoming Scamanda all fit the bill. Each show is based on a real-life influencer and/or entrepreneur whose successful career in the wellness industry is built on an elaborate web of lies.
It’s quite a hyper-specific niche, isn’t it? The TV trend begs the question: why is our taste for a wellness scammer biopic seemingly so insatiable?
Wondering what happens at the end of Netflix’s buzzy new drama? Read on.
The first and most obvious answer is that scams – any scams – are, quite simply, the perfect fodder for collective pop culture fascination.
Just take Netflix’s Inventing Anna, which dramatised the story of sociality scammer Anna Delvey, or the ongoing public fascination with Caroline Calloway, who literally wrote the book on being a scammer. There’s nothing quite as fun as seeing exactly how someone got away with an elaborate lie – and, perhaps even more satisfying, how their lies finally caught up with them.
Not only does it make for a juicy story arc, it also satisfies a number of psychological itches. As mental health therapist Zoë Clews previously told GLAMOUR, “Many people are prone to schadenfreude, where comfort or happiness is gained from seeing misfortune befall others. This makes the voyeuristic nature of scam narratives hugely appealing to a certain section of the global community.” Plus, as pop culture expert Nick Ede added, “Scammer narratives speak to that unconscious part in each of us that’s on guard against betrayal.”
But based on the recent streaming offerings, it’s clear that the wellness guru-gone-wrong is a particularly intriguing brand of scammer.
For one thing, there’s something particularly sadistic about a person who is capable of playing on other people’s illnesses or fears of illness for financial gain.
But there’s also something quite fascinating going on with each of the wellness scammers – they are all prototypical girlbosses. As a reminder (just in case you have somehow forgotten the horrors of girlboss-erie), the girlboss trend saw young women embracing a sort of “I-can-do-it-all-in-heels” mentality. They prioritised corporate ladder climbing – they celebrated working long hours – they always looked flawless – they could, they thought, do it all. Instead of critiquing the toxicity of male workplace culture, they embraced – anything they can, we can do just as well seemed to be the mentality. This trend brought with it an era of girlboss-ified wellness – an era of GOOP and picture-perfect, healthy women on Instagram.
Trying to hustle your way up the corporate ladder is so last decade.
This cultural era reached its peak around 2014, before slowly falling out of favour in the 2020s. Young women began rejecting the unsustainable, toxicity of the trend in favour of healthier, more balanced workplace cultures. As Mia, a Gen Z-er, told GLAMOUR a few years ago, “I don’t want to be a girlboss, I don’t want to hustle.”
Each of the wellness entrepreneurs who serve as subjects for the latest batch of scammer dramas built her business during the height of the girlboss era – and each capitalised on the trend.
Elizabeth Holmes, the subject of The Dropout, was the founder of Theranos, a Silicon Valley-based blood-testing company that claimed to have developed a revolutionary technology that could perform tests using only a few drops of blood. These claims were eventually revealed to be fraudulent leading to the dissolution of the company in 2018. Elizabeth, portrayed by Amanda Seyfried in The Dropout, embodies many girlboss traits. She’s work-obsessed, severe, and unforgiving. Her prodigal backstory becomes fodder for TED talks and inspires a cult-like following.
Belle Gibson, played by Kaitlyn Dever in Apple Cider Vinegar, fits into another branch of the girlboss prototype. She’s beautiful, wholesome, driven, and charming. Her claims that she cured her own terminal brain cancer with holistic, natural treatments led to a book and a hugely successful podcast. Eventually, in 2015, her empire is revealed to be built on a lie – she never had cancer at all.
A few years ago, Netflix also brought us Bad Vegan, a documentary about Sarma Melngailis, a one-time celebrity vegan chef, who joined with (or was potentially scammed by) her husband to defraud her workers. Her restaurant closed in 2015.
She was found guilty in January 2022.
Similarly, Disney Plus’s recently announced Scamanda follows the story of Amanda Riley, a Californian woman who, beginning in 2012, faked cancer for almost a decade and defrauded friends and family of around £80,000 for “treatment”.
One thing all of these women have in common? They all approach the art of the scam like true girlbosses. They all, in various ways, capitalised on their whiteness, their privilege and their beauty to rise to the top of their industries and to convince their followers and supporters of their integrity. Because it was admirable to be a girlboss, these women were able to use their personal wellness-related brands to become successful businesswomen – and, ultimately, to get tons and tons of money out of people who believed in them.
Now that the era of the girlboss is out of fashion, these stories are doubly satisfying – not only do they give us a juicy scammer narrative, they also give us the chance to revel in the downfall of the girlboss, and, more specifically, a girlboss in the wellness space. In a way, they confirm something we all now kind of believe – that all girlbosses, particularly those who claim to be both “so well” and “so successful” are, effectively, peddling snake oil.
These days, we tend to be a little more judgemental of influencers who present a pristine picture of wellness online. We tend to be a little more wary of the bone broth-drinking, pilates-doing, shiny hair-having influencers who never seem to get tired or stressed. We tend to be a little more cautious about claims that eight glasses of water or eight hours of sleep will make you look and feel ten years younger. In short, we tend to be a little more suspicious of the wellness industry as a whole. So, it’s no wonder wellness scammer narratives are on the rise – after all, it’s gratifying to see cold, hard proof that what the wellness industry is trying to sell us is nonsense.
