This open access book examines the conversations around gendered mental health in contemporary Western media culture. While early 21st century-media was marked by a distinct focus on happiness, productivity and success, during the 2010s negative feelings and discussions around mental health have become increasingly common in that same media landscape. This book traces this turn to sadness in women’s media culture and shows that it emerged indirectly as a result of a culture overtly focused on happiness. By tracing the coverage of mental health issues in magazines, among female celebrities, and on social media this book shows how an increasingly intimate media environment has made way for a profitable vulnerability, that takes the shape of marketable and brand-friendly mental illness awareness that strengthens the authenticity of those who embrace it. But at the same time sad girl cultures are proliferating on social media platforms, creating radically honest spaces where those who suffer get support, and more capacious ways of feeling bad are formed.
Using discourse analysis and digital ethnography to study contemporary representations of mental illness and sadness in Western popular media and social media, this book takes a feminist media studies approach to popular discourse, understanding the conversations happening around mental health in these sites to function as scripts for how to think about and experience mental illness and sadness
Author(s): Fredrika Thelandersson
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 231
City: Cham
Acknowledgments
Contents
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction
Framework
The Sites of Study
Guiding Questions
Notes on Methodology
The Emergence of Twenty-First-Century Sadness
On Terminology, Contextual Specifications, and Intersectionality
Neoliberalism, Governmentality, and Biopolitics
Postfeminism and Popular Feminism
Feminist Approaches to Affect
Chapter Outline
References
Chapter 2: A Historical Lineage of Sad and Mad Women
The Victorian Madwoman
Ophelia, Crazy Jane, and Lucia
The French Hysteric at the Salpêtrière
Hysteria: A Female Ailment
The Role of Photography
Feminism and Hysteria
The Birth of Psychoanalysis
From Hysteric to Schizophrenic
Feminism and Psychoanalysis
Antipsychiatry and the Radical Schizophrenic
The Rise of Psychopharmaceuticals
Anorexia and Eating Disorders
Feminist Approaches to Psychopharmaceuticals
References
Chapter 3: Mental Health in Magazines: Relatability and Critique in Cosmopolitan and Teen Vogue
Cosmopolitan
A Lighthearted and Distanced Tone
Common but Exceptional
The Relatable Self
Firsthand Narratives of Suffering, Diagnosis, and Redemption
Definitions and Diagnoses
Teen Vogue
Providing Critical Context
Seriousness in Favor of Distanced Relatability
Definitions and Diagnoses
Providing Support
Different Approaches to Celebrity Reporting
A Critical and a Not-So-Critical Stance Toward the Pharmaceutical Industry
Conclusion
References
Chapter 4: Celebrity Mental Health: Intimacy, Ordinariness, and Repeated Self-Transformation
Changes over Time: From Speculations to Confessions
A Changing Celebrity Media Landscape
Defining Celebrity
Spotlight on Pop Stars
Demi Lovato: Troubled Star and Expert of Re-invention
From Crash-and-Burn to Can-Do
Simply Complicated
The Public Acknowledgment of a Relapse
Selena Gomez: Can-Do Girl Turned Mental Health Advocate
Postfeminist Sadness
Conclusion
References
Chapter 5: Social Media Sadness: Sad Girl Culture and Radical Ways of Feeling Bad
Affective Resonance
Tumblr Sad Girls
Suffering as Ordinary
Coping Through Humor
Impasse: Acedia and Melancholia
A Supportive Community?
Audrey Wollen: Sad Girl Theory
Sad Girls Y Qué: The (Presumed) Whiteness of the Sad Girl
Instagram Sad Girls
Possibilities of Sadness and Political Potential
Sad Girls Club
My Therapist Says: The Acritical and Commercialized Sad Girl Aesthetic
A Precarity-Focused Consciousness Raising
Conclusion
References
Chapter 6: Conclusion
Anchoring the Present in History
Relatability’s Political Dimension as a Source of Support and Solidarity
Final Thoughts
References
Index
