Impressions // Illness, Wellness & The Woman Who Fooled the World
It’s been another long, long break since writing anything for this space, and when I eventually decided I wanted to talk about Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano’s The Woman Who Fooled the World, I wasn’t wholly convinced that it’d be the most appropriate piece for the beginning of a new year. After all, the story of Belle Gibson’s cancer con is not exactly awash with the kind of positivity people are often grappling for as one year ends and another begins. But then I thought some more, particularly about the kind of resolutions people make around this time – to be healthier, fitter, stronger, kinder, more confident, more ‘at peace’ – and I realised that, really, there’s hardly a more appropriate time to discuss Gibson’s story since at one point all these ‘goals’ together formed the very backbone of her constructed persona. What’s more, Gibson’s apparent ability to both preach and practice each of them so flawlessly (and so photogenically) was the very reason she was, for that short time, considered so extraordinary.
