Hey ‘You’: My Chronic Illness Is Not A Plot Device

By: Brynna Arens

I’m not ashamed to admit that the Netflix series You is one of my favorite TV shows. I’ve devoured each season as soon as it drops and have rewatched the show many times since the first season premiered in 2018 because I can’t get enough of Joe Goldberg’s disaster stalker vibes (maybe I should talk to my therapist about this??). However, it wasn’t until recently that I discovered a personal connection to the show - the season one character Peach Salinger (Shay Mitchell) has the same chronic illness that I do...and I hate it.

In May 2020 I was diagnosed with a chronic pelvic floor condition called Interstitial Cystitis (IC). This condition mostly affects the bladder, but pain can be felt in various areas of the pelvic floor and lower abdomen. For me, pain can be triggered by stress, sex, and certain food and drinks like coffee, alcohol, and spicy food, but it varies by person. There is no cure for this condition. Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy is the only treatment given an ‘A’ rating by the American Urological Association. The only medication approved by the FDA to specifically treat IC, Elmiron, has been found to cause vision loss and is only around 38% effective. Sounds fun, right?

I was rewatching the series for comfort in the middle of a pain flare last year when I realized that Peach and I have this condition in common. I was surprised - both that she has IC and that I had forgotten this important aspect of her character since the last time I watched the episode. Discovering that a character in a TV show has the same chronic illness as me should have been a moment of connection - finally feeling seen, understood, and represented. But at that moment, the surprise gave way to both sadness and anger that this was how the series decided to portray someone with IC. 

If you haven’t seen You, the basic plot of season one is that New York City bookstore manager Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) becomes obsessed with MFA student Guinivere Beck (Elizabeth Lail). He thinks she’s the love of his life and does many sketchy things to get close to her. Eventually they start dating, which doesn’t thrill Peach, Beck’s best friend, because she’s secretly in love with her too. Peach is “old money wealthy'' so she isn’t able to tell Beck how she really feels without being cut off from her more traditional family. This should elicit sympathy for Peach, but because the show is narrated from and focused on Joe’s warped perspective, almost everything she does comes across as manipulative and needy. 

Peach’s IC is introduced into the plot as a way to interrupt a moment of connection between Joe and Beck. She shows up at Beck’s apartment insisting that she is in so much pain she has to go to the emergency room immediately. In my experience, if you show up to the ER crying in pain and tell them you have IC, or really pelvic pain in general, they won’t really do much. They may test for a UTI because the symptoms are so similar or they might do an ultrasound if you’re lucky, but they’ll probably just give you a prescription for slightly stronger than over the counter pain medication and send you home. Everyone experiences and copes with IC differently, but in a more realistic scenario, considering Peach’s wealth, she would probably have an on-call specialist that could come straight to her. I know that if I was in her shoes, I’d much rather call someone to my obscenely large apartment whenever I was having a flare that bad than go to an ER for nothing. For context, when I’m in that much pain, I can barely get out of bed without feeling like I’m going to puke, let alone walk all the way to my friend’s apartment and then the emergency room. Peach’s desire for constant care and attention from Beck comes across as needy, conflating her behavior with the reality of chronic illness in the process. By creating a plot point that relies on a chronic illness to convey the neediness of Peach to the viewer, the writers are making a conscious decision in how IC is portrayed.

But despite being a conscious decision, this characterization of Peach feels like someone drew a chronic illness out of a hat, picked up a few things from WebMD and decided that was good enough. There are plenty of ways to make a character appear needy, overbearing, and codependent without implying that someone suffering from chronic pain is exaggerating their symptoms for attention. You don’t need to include an unchangeable, incurable health condition to get your point across. Yes, Peach has IC in the novel this season is based on, but characters change all the time in novel adaptations. The creators could have reworked the character as a genuine venue to explore the complexities of chronic illness, but instead they decided to continue to use IC as a plot point whose sole purpose is to emphasize Peach’s neediness.

Living with a chronic illness can be incredibly lonely and isolating. I’m constantly worried about how people will react when they find out I live with IC and Endometriosis. Will they understand when I repeatedly have to cancel plans because my pain shoots from a 2 to an 8 unexpectedly? Will they understand when I don’t respond to texts because I barely have the energy to get out of bed? My greatest fear living with these conditions is that I will become a burden to the people I care about. That all of this will eventually become too much for them and I’ll have to go through it alone. This is why I hate how Peach’s IC is portrayed in You. They took my greatest fear and made it the one representation of this condition in mainstream media. It’s so hard to feel like chronic illnesses are taken seriously and treated with care and respect when you have to combat ableist stigma like this.

Does all of this mean that I hate You and think people should boycott it? Absolutely not. Truthfully, I will watch every single episode of this messy show that Netflix gives me. I just wish my condition was treated as more than a plot device. I don’t want people to take this representation of Interstitial Cystitis at face value. It’s harmful, inaccurate, and incredibly disappointing to see in a show I love to watch. People with IC and other chronic illnesses deserve better representation than You.