the fetishization of depressed girls

on how being a sad girl is marketed as an aesthetic

note: this article isn’t bashing up women struggling with mental health issues. it criticizes the marketing of mental illnesses as an aesthetic to young girls as well as creating a misleading perspective on how women deal with sorrow.

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ah, the sad girl. she’s draped in vintage lingerie, sipping on existential dread while cigarette smoke curls dramatically into a gray sky.

somewhere along the line, mainstream media (bless its tone-deaf little heart) decided to turn women’s mental health into a marketable lifestyle.

she is delicate, tragic, and photogenic in her misery. depression? she’s got it. aesthetic? she is it. sexual drive? full throttle.

the “sad girl" has been transformed into a poster child for glamorized suffering. but let’s not kid ourselves—her despair is only ever taken seriously when she’s white and conveniently sexy.

there’s no wonder that the media’s obsession with it deserves to be shoved off a metaphorical cliff.

part 1: the glow up of sadness 

early 2010s, social media became a digital diary for romanticizing angst and depression. smoking? it wasn’t a health hazard. self-harm? it wasn’t a cry for help; it was cropped, filtered, and captioned into oblivion.

tumblr’s algorithms didn’t help either—they served up content tagged with #depression and #thinspo like they were a secret club, fostering a toxic feedback loop for vulnerable teens.

it was like mental illness but curated to match their vsco filters. this aesthetic wasn’t just about being sad—it was about being beautifully sad. 

fast forward to tiktok and ig, and the sad girl has gotten a gen z glow-up (or, rather, a glow-down). what tumblr romanticized, tiktok monetized. 

depression isn’t just a feeling anymore; it’s a commodity, a performance for likes, follows, and the algorithm’s approval. sad girl makeup, sad girl fit, soft grunge aesthetic, and what not.

and the saddest part? behind every teary-eyed stare is an entire generation grappling with real mental health struggles—reduced to a trend that’s far more photogenic than empathetic.

part 2: problematic cinematography

here’s where it gets dark, literally and figuratively. sad girls in film and tv aren't just sad—they're suffering for sport, and the audience is here for the event. 

the plot claims to explore their mental health or existential crises, but the camera has other priorities: her body. her trauma is inextricably tied to her physicality, and more disturbingly, it's often presented as if her only outlet for that pain is sex.

take euphoria, the reigning queen of glossy misery. cassie howard’s storyline is practically a masterclass in sexualized suffering. her breakdowns are framed as seductive spectacles, her cleavage, and curves foregrounded even when she’s crying or spiraling.

then there’s melancholia, where kirsten dunst’s justine can’t just have a depressive episode in peace. she has to do it naked under the moonlight, her body as much a plot point as the impending apocalypse.

why tackle mental health authentically when you can sell it as high-concept misery porn?

these characters are rarely given depth. instead, their pain is romanticized and sold back to us like the world’s saddest chanel ad. and then there’s the sexy element—because god forbid a depressed girl isn’t also tantalizing.

part 3: sadness ≠ sexy (and why this is gross)

here’s the uncomfortable truth: depression isn’t seductive. anxiety isn’t chic. but thanks to media’s love affair with tortured women, we’ve been spoon-fed the idea that a little bit of suffering makes a girl more mysterious.

this dynamic feeds into a long history of romanticizing female suffering. take ophelia from hamlet, floating beautifully in death. or sylvia plath, whose pain is fetishized just as much as her poetry. these women aren’t remembered for their brilliance or complexity but for how poetic their anguish was. 

and don’t even get me started on the male gaze in this equation. sad girls are written, directed, and idealized by men who seem to think a woman breaking down is somehow hot. she’s crying in the shower? artful. she’s drowning in self-doubt? sexy. she’s a walking red flag? oh, the intrigue! 

what’s worse, this trope erases any real conversation about mental health. the focus isn’t on the cause or context of her pain—it’s about how beautifully she carries it. 

having a panic attack at 2 a.m.? too messy. aestheticizing your sadness with white lingerie and cigarettes? now that’s marketable. 

not cute, just toxic.

sadness is messy, raw, and unfiltered. it’s not something you can curate into a pinterest board or edit into a short film. and it’s certainly not something that should be sexualized for the sake of an aesthetic.

media needs to stop romanticizing pain and start respecting it for what it is—a human experience, not a photoshoot.

and for the love of serotonin, let’s remind ourselves that suffering isn’t chic. depression is not a filter, sadness is not sexy, and mental health deserves better than this aesthetic dumpster fire.

with love,

siddaq.