This open letter to Elle ‘The Body’ Macpherson is in response to the news she was diagnosed with breast cancer seven years ago which, she claims, in a chapter of her new book excerpted in Australian Women’s Weekly, was cured through alternative treatments.

OPINION: Kia ora Elle,

You don’t know me, obvs, and to be honest I’ve never particularly liked you. No offence, but you were the dullest of the Supers, if we can even agree you were one. 

Sure, you encased my breasts (and butt) for much of the 90s, your Bendon heydey, which is ironic as I lost my right breast to cancer in 2003. Since then I have been increasingly uncomfortable with the way you’ve co-opted wellness culture, weaponising your genetic gifts and immense wealth and privilege to sell supplements through your WelleCo brand. 

I admit you are incredibly genetically #blessed but I’m not sure you’re giving us the full picture of the beauty protocol that has brought you 60 trips around the sun in your earth suit. I suspect there have been any number of interventionist tweaks and fixes. No judgement! Except for the part where you used the concept of ‘natural beauty’ to sell products and effectively made women who don’t look or act like you at 60 (or 40, or 20 for that matter), feel less than.

I am truly sorry to hear of your breast cancer diagnosis, and understand the thought of a mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and hormone treatment can be incredibly scary to get your head around. Turning them down was never an option for me. Even at age 26 I chose to listen to the many experts I consulted who had spent decades at medical school and in practice, researching studies and discussing my case in peer review settings. After my treatment was completed, I did seek many different forms of complementary therapies – there’s nothing I love more than handing my spirit and mind over to someone else to care for. 

I would’ve loved to spend eight months in the desert in Arizona with a “doctor of naturopathy, holistic dentist, osteopath, chiropractor and two therapists” like you did. Sadly, I was juggling full-time work, my relationships and other commitments, all while trying to rebuild my depleted immune system. 

After chemotherapy your immune system does take a huge dive. There are many things I did to improve it, and to regain my periods so I could have children. Things like intravenous vitamin C, acupuncture – even your WelleCo products – were incredibly helpful. When Covid rocked the world I knew I was still immune suppressed, and thankfully eligible for early vaccination when the time came. 

Through your diagnosis until recently you were dating disgraced doctor Andrew Wakefield who was struck off the medical registrar in the UK after faking reports that showed a correlation between the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine and autism.

We had a measles outbreak in Aotearoa in 2019, confined largely to South Auckland and our lowest socioeconomic neighbourhoods. It spread to Samoa where 83 people died. I know you spoke out against the Covid vaccine, the prevalence of which directly affected these at risk communities.

Not everyone had access to a house in the desert in Arizona, Elle. It's like you only care about those who have NZD$100 to spend on your vitamins.

I truly believe in freedom for people to choose what they believe is right for their body. Unquestionably. I have known people who decided against treating cancer with Western medicine and I support their decision.

But the thing is, Elle, people look to you. You have built a business out of people looking to you. Of giving them, for better or worse, advice on how they too can have the immunity, energy and vitality you emBody. It’s unfathomable you would speak publicly on something that can do such life threatening damage to people at an intensely vulnerable point in their lives. 

Besides, you haven’t given us the full picture, have you. As you write in your book, “saying no to standard medical solutions was the hardest thing I’ve done in my life”, but I assume your ‘holistic dentist’ didn’t perform your lumpectomy in Arizona. So you did go into hospital, correct? You claim you’re being “authentic” about the process you followed, but not giving us the full picture of your diagnosis is incredibly misleading. 

While initial opaqueness around your diagnosis led many to suggest you had a “pre-invasive form of breast cancer, also called DCIS” (the earliest form of breast cancer, classified as stage 0 and not necessarily something that will later present as cancer), you have since told 60 Minutes Australia that your tumour, did not, in fact have clear margins, meaning it had spread outside of the milk ducts making it more likely to spread further without treatment. 

And here comes a sentence that makes me want to burn your bras and disown you forever: “The body has the infinite capacity to heal and I am in utter wellness... Fear is something that can really make you ill. So I'm not interested in that”. 

These words, uttered to Tracy Grimshaw, fill me with disgust. Tell this to the families of the many women I have known who have died from breast cancer. The women who relied on Western medicine, the women who – like you – eschewed it – and the women who – like me – used Western medicine to rid their body of cancer and adjacent therapies to put their physical and mental selves back together again. 

Elle, I can’t shout this loudly enough: fear does not kill people, cancer kills people. 

Cancer is a freak occurrence, it is non-discerning. It impacts those, like yourself, who live a privileged life, have clear skin and lithe limbs, children with innocent minds and bodies through to those who live with stress, and those in abject poverty. 

There is nothing more toxic to me than people who think a cancer diagnosis is a lesson, or something that our minds have the ability to heal. Are you blaming those who die from it for not willing themselves into remission? Or, I’m sorry, as you call it, “utter wellness”.

So, while we are, to quote your Instagram above, giving people ‘powerful life tools’, I would like it flagged that there is an extremely high possibility that you are encouraging people to ignore tools that will save their lives.

It’s like The Body is missing The Brain. And I know which I value more.

Noho ora mai rā,

Rebecca

PS You were also on the worst season of Friends.