Self-destructive, fragile, beautiful, female characters have become a staple fixture in teen dramas, and obsession with these characters has turned The Tragic Beauty archetype into a popular personal brand design for teen girls on the internet. With the nature of the mediums of cinema and television being visual, comes the heavily aestheticized depiction of female sadness, perpetually portrayed by beautiful actresses. This paradigm has resulted in real girls choosing to document and glamorize their own sadness, often using blogging sites such as Tumblr as their medium, turning The Tragic Beauty archetype into something of a cultural phenomenon.
To examine the popularity of this archetype as a kind of semi-conscious life style brand for teen girls, it is necessary to examine the cultural influences which suggest the allure of this self identification. Our culture is rife with sexual objectification, an experience which is defined by an acknowledgement of the body in place of that personhood which is contained within it— creating an uncanny sensation reminiscent of a hollow vessel. If women are consistently subjected to this kind of psychic exchange, repeatedly forced to confront an awareness of this kind of hollowness, perhaps it is no surprise that some have opted to bask in such a state, and even curate their aesthetic around this feeling of emptiness.
“Sorrowful, fading women have long been glamorized to make wilting an alluring option for girls in a social reality designed to drain us of all vitality, will, self-efficacy, self-love, selfhood[...]there is a reason why girls are fascinated by Marilyn Monroe and that is because we are granted women like her as objects of fascination, because we are raised only to decompose into nothingness, human voids, so men can fill us and use our bodies for their own purposes[...]We can accept the education and the pantheon of self-destructive role models men have provided us as roadmaps to our own dissipation or we could spurn masochistic fantasy in memory of our lost sisters”
- A. Linnea, The “Feminist Resistance” of Taking it Lying Down, 2016, www.exquisitemisogyny.com
To examine the popularity of this archetype as a kind of semi-conscious life style brand for teen girls, it is necessary to examine the cultural influences which suggest the allure of this self identification. Our culture is rife with sexual objectification, an experience which is defined by an acknowledgement of the body in place of that personhood which is contained within it— creating an uncanny sensation reminiscent of a hollow vessel. If women are consistently subjected to this kind of psychic exchange, repeatedly forced to confront an awareness of this kind of hollowness, perhaps it is no surprise that some have opted to bask in such a state, and even curate their aesthetic around this feeling of emptiness.
“Sorrowful, fading women have long been glamorized to make wilting an alluring option for girls in a social reality designed to drain us of all vitality, will, self-efficacy, self-love, selfhood[...]there is a reason why girls are fascinated by Marilyn Monroe and that is because we are granted women like her as objects of fascination, because we are raised only to decompose into nothingness, human voids, so men can fill us and use our bodies for their own purposes[...]We can accept the education and the pantheon of self-destructive role models men have provided us as roadmaps to our own dissipation or we could spurn masochistic fantasy in memory of our lost sisters”
- A. Linnea, The “Feminist Resistance” of Taking it Lying Down, 2016, www.exquisitemisogyny.com