Throughout our lives, we have all been exposed to ideas of what girlhood is supposed to look like. At a young age, I would wear dresses every day and play with my mom’s makeup, imitating the idealized feminine standard shown on my TV at home. Today, I often find myself trying to uphold a similar standard, but with an added perspective.
Modern notions of girlhood have been shaped by social media trends that commodify mental health struggles, turning them into aesthetic brands that harm genuine efforts at self-care and undermine the true severity of struggling with mental illness.
Those on TikTok or Instagram may have encountered the trend of self-proclaimed “sad girls” on the apps. Now more than ever, these “sad girls” have been releasing carefully curated videos listing the products they use and the media they consume to abide by current trend cycles. These videos serve to signal their mental illnesses to the public.
In her essay “Standing on the shoulders of complex female characters,” Rayne Fisher-Quann, an essayist on Substack writes, “One girl on your TikTok feed might be a self-described Joan Didion/Eve Babitz/Marlboro Reds/straight-cut levis/fleabag [sic] girl (this means she has depression). Another will call herself a babydoll dress/Sylvia Plath/red scare/miu miu/Lana Del Rey girl (eating disorder).”
Often, these TikTok videos are appealing to teenage girls. A girl may see a video that links an author or brand she likes with a certain mental illness she has, and her mental illness may seem less serious than before. Though it may feel easier to avoid hard truths about your mental illness, romanticizing your illness promotes a toxic culture where to young girls, buying things to feel better is deemed cool, and getting genuine help is uncool.
While these TikTok videos send a message that is meant to be seen as ironic but relatable in some way, in an era where there is constant spewing of satirical rhetoric and humor online, the line between sincerity and irony becomes blurred. It becomes hard to detect whether someone is sincere. Are they genuinely grappling with mental health struggles and not getting help or simply using material items to remedy their illness? I understand making humor out of an illness may serve as a coping mechanism; however, they are unhealthy and dilute the severity of mental illness.
With the rise of an online culture of girlhood that promotes masking mental illness with consumerism, being sad has become more of a brand than a real struggle. As we buy the items promoted by “sad girls” to fit certain aesthetics, we enable large corporations to capitalize on our struggles. By lending our identities to these corporations, we stunt our ability to gain autonomy over our mental health. Rather than exhausting ourselves by trying to replicate content that entraps us in our struggles, we should direct that energy towards healthier, more attainable lifestyle changes.
Through Mental Health Teach-In Days or emails about testing tips before finals, GDS counselors are making an effort to help students manage their mental health struggles. However, they do not necessarily know all the content teenagers consume on social media. They cannot control the endless stream of posts by women on our social media feeds, perpetuating the only way to cope with mental health struggles is by identifying with an aestheticized mental illness online.
Today, as I navigate girlhood on social media, I attempt to unlearn the unhealthy habits I built by engaging in online trends. Pleasures such as managing my screen time and moderating the kind of content I watch are simple ways to avoid getting lost in material possessions advertised to me online. I implore you all to act similarly. Instead of getting lost in the plethora of trends online to explain your mental health struggles, pursue healthier coping mechanisms that center and ground you beyond the internet.