A few random thoughts: it reminds me of the line from american beauty where mena suvari says "I don't think that there's anything worse than being ordinary." Women would rather be crazy which makes them interesting, than boring/ordinary.
There are less avenues for women to be interesting than men so maybe they over index on this avenue. For example more men play sports which even if you don't think is interesting, they think it makes them interesting.
Women seem to identify as "artists" more than men, and great art has a storied connection to pain/insanity.
What a fantastic movie. I forgot about that line, but it’s so applicable to the phenomenon I’m describing in this post. Interestingly though, as more and more women try to differentiate themselves by adopting these personas, “ordinary” will slowly become the new coveted differentiator and things will swing back. At least that’s my prediction!
I strongly agree and believe almost everything plays out in cycles. The question is, how much juice is left in this trend before crazy becomes normal and normie becomes interesting. I think we have quite a long ways to go.
Wow. There’s so much I could say about this, but I’ll start by saying to any of your younger readers that it didn’t actually used to be like this. At least not the way I remember it.
We were all listening to emo and wearing black and angsting pretty performatively, but my friends who were self-harming and starving themselves in 2005 were hiding it from everyone. We had genuine shame about it, even though it was definitely starting to become trendy in certain circles.
A decade later, middle schoolers were talking about their involuntary stays in the psych ward like they were quirky little anecdotes, pieces of lore they collected for TikTok.
I’m not sure when this happened, or why, but we definitely need to stop encouraging young women to believe that mental illness automatically gives them depth.
Is it too cynical (or much too reductive) to reduce it to competitive performative attention seeking? Drawing a throughline via "femcel" is great inasmuch as this sort of romanticization of mental illness is a mirror to the nice guys of yesterdecades; when one can't compete in the "normal" arena the generically obvious next step is to try to stigmatize normal and distinguish oneself therefrom. I'm not like those dumb, brutish jocks, I'm nice and gentle. I'm not like those vapid, airheaded barbies, I'm edgy and crazy. Sides of the same coin, perhaps?
I don't think it's too cynical! "Competitive performative attention seeking" definitely plays a role in the romanticization that we're seeing online. Thanks for articulating it so well and for providing an example of what this might look like for men, which I purposely left out of my post. (Of course, I want to be very clear again that not everyone with a mental illness is being performative; in fact, romanticization and performance hurts those with severe mental illnesses that are less palatable to the masses.)
It's interesting to consider that as this romanticization becomes more mainstream, we'll inevitably go back to pedestalizing normality in order to differentiate ourselves. Endless cycle!
One wonders if mental illness is romanticized because it is typically the mentally unstable who have the most heightened romantic tendencies! I don't think we should romanticize it, but the alternative to mental illness seems to be framed as undesirable (the "vsco girls with madewell drip" description personally strikes me as an insult to authenticity).
The question I would ask is, what is a proper model of "healthy" that preserves the things we hold most dear (authenticity, interest in life, community)?
Yes, that's a good point! I do acknowledge that romanticization of mental illness serves a number of purposes, primarily to give meaning to our struggles and help us create an identity we can accept for ourselves. Of course, it can go too far and trap us. There must be an alternative form of storytelling (not romanticization) that helps us make sense of mental illness while preserving what we hold most dear -- perhaps something to explore in a later post :)
A few random thoughts: it reminds me of the line from american beauty where mena suvari says "I don't think that there's anything worse than being ordinary." Women would rather be crazy which makes them interesting, than boring/ordinary.
There are less avenues for women to be interesting than men so maybe they over index on this avenue. For example more men play sports which even if you don't think is interesting, they think it makes them interesting.
Women seem to identify as "artists" more than men, and great art has a storied connection to pain/insanity.
Manic pixie dream girl also comes to mind.
What a fantastic movie. I forgot about that line, but it’s so applicable to the phenomenon I’m describing in this post. Interestingly though, as more and more women try to differentiate themselves by adopting these personas, “ordinary” will slowly become the new coveted differentiator and things will swing back. At least that’s my prediction!
I strongly agree and believe almost everything plays out in cycles. The question is, how much juice is left in this trend before crazy becomes normal and normie becomes interesting. I think we have quite a long ways to go.
Wow. There’s so much I could say about this, but I’ll start by saying to any of your younger readers that it didn’t actually used to be like this. At least not the way I remember it.
We were all listening to emo and wearing black and angsting pretty performatively, but my friends who were self-harming and starving themselves in 2005 were hiding it from everyone. We had genuine shame about it, even though it was definitely starting to become trendy in certain circles.
A decade later, middle schoolers were talking about their involuntary stays in the psych ward like they were quirky little anecdotes, pieces of lore they collected for TikTok.
I’m not sure when this happened, or why, but we definitely need to stop encouraging young women to believe that mental illness automatically gives them depth.
Is it too cynical (or much too reductive) to reduce it to competitive performative attention seeking? Drawing a throughline via "femcel" is great inasmuch as this sort of romanticization of mental illness is a mirror to the nice guys of yesterdecades; when one can't compete in the "normal" arena the generically obvious next step is to try to stigmatize normal and distinguish oneself therefrom. I'm not like those dumb, brutish jocks, I'm nice and gentle. I'm not like those vapid, airheaded barbies, I'm edgy and crazy. Sides of the same coin, perhaps?
I don't think it's too cynical! "Competitive performative attention seeking" definitely plays a role in the romanticization that we're seeing online. Thanks for articulating it so well and for providing an example of what this might look like for men, which I purposely left out of my post. (Of course, I want to be very clear again that not everyone with a mental illness is being performative; in fact, romanticization and performance hurts those with severe mental illnesses that are less palatable to the masses.)
It's interesting to consider that as this romanticization becomes more mainstream, we'll inevitably go back to pedestalizing normality in order to differentiate ourselves. Endless cycle!
Absolutely, 's almost certainly why "trad" is a growing aesthetic now.
One wonders if mental illness is romanticized because it is typically the mentally unstable who have the most heightened romantic tendencies! I don't think we should romanticize it, but the alternative to mental illness seems to be framed as undesirable (the "vsco girls with madewell drip" description personally strikes me as an insult to authenticity).
The question I would ask is, what is a proper model of "healthy" that preserves the things we hold most dear (authenticity, interest in life, community)?
Yes, that's a good point! I do acknowledge that romanticization of mental illness serves a number of purposes, primarily to give meaning to our struggles and help us create an identity we can accept for ourselves. Of course, it can go too far and trap us. There must be an alternative form of storytelling (not romanticization) that helps us make sense of mental illness while preserving what we hold most dear -- perhaps something to explore in a later post :)
I love that, I would be really interested to read what alternative you come up with!