This article was written by The Zillennial Zine’s senior fall editorial intern Arianna Nahim. Find her on Instagram at @ariannanahim. If you would like to share an article with The Zillennial, send us an email at thezillennialzine@gmail.com.
The “Sad Girl,” is a versatile trope in media. She can be reclusive and jaded, preferring to wallow in her grief over life. Or she can be messy, but observant. Whichever route an author chooses to take their beloved sad girl, there is a formulaic core to the character that must remain intact if the author hopes to churn out the next Tik-Tok literature hit. in there is at the core the character needs to remain intact. She for one has to be a she, usually if not always Caucasian, and preferably financially well off (this gives her more room to be unexplainably sad). This makes her sadness something to find beauty in, making it even more tempting for her and readers to wallow in its familiar warmth.
A Toxic Cycle
The popularity of this trope in literature isn’t at all surprising, especially with the ever-rising popularity of social media platform Tik-Tok. Tik-Tok is the endless pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in terms of social media. It’s a stream of content that never dries and is perfectly geared towards its unique user. What this looks like in relation to the sad girl trend in literature is post that glamorizes depression under the guise of following the “sad girl,” or “thought daughter” aesthetic/trend, through slideshows of poetry set to soul crushing music. Once users have interacted with these videos in any way that is the content that Tik-Tok will regurgitate back to them. This creates an unhealthy cycle for many users that impacts their mental health in a negative way.
To really understand the sad girl in literature, it’s important to dissect the books that have helped propelled this phenomenon. Let’s start with what I think is the most popular sad girl book today.
The unintended consequences of My Year of Rest and Relaxation
“My Year of Rest and Relaxation,” published in 2018 and written by Ottessa Moshfegh, is a sad girl book in all its glory. The main character is a rich white girl, abandoned by her parents through their deaths but emotionally long before that, she is apathetic and jaded towards friends, lovers, and anything of the likes. Although she reaches a point of appreciation towards life and is revitalized in the wake of a tragedy that strikes the closest thing she had to a best friend. But this realization only hits her in ¼ of the book. The rest of time she is a classic case of white, pretty, and class privilege. In the context of this specific piece though I think that’s fine. It’s a critique of how these qualities are what allow her to sleep her life away with little to no consequences. But I think where the problem lies is other authors’ interpretation of this novel and audiences who enjoyed it.
What I think many aspiring authors gathered from the success of this book is that there should be more Caucasian, pretty, and class privileged young women who serves as their books main characters. It’s pushing a narrative that these traits we commonly see in these protagonists are reserved for Caucasian women and Caucasian women only. But that doesn’t make sense. Can WOC not relate to this feeling of meaninglessness that makes them want to hibernate as well? It seems authors forget this or maybe even feel that centering their sad girl story on a WOC would further complicate her character arc or even disrupt the manufactured aesthetic of the sad girl. Rather than work though to incorporate this trait into new works of literature. What authors and publishing houses are more interested in doing though is being another voice to the pack criticizing the shallowness of corporate life, capitalism all that affects it. As a WOC it feels like what is being implied is that WOC who live under this same economic structure and face the same challenges couldn’t possibly relate. It also feels like our unique stories aren’t enough to be marketable or “aesthetic” enough, and that is because in this current society, WOC don’t have the privilege to dwell in their existentialism produced sadness, while they thoughtfully contemplate their life in their size 2 jeans.
You Exist Too Much
However, there is one book that proves to have done what many publishers and authors feel is impossible. “You Exist Too Much,” by Zaina Arafat centers around not just a Palestinian American woman, but a queer one at that. But this doesn’t stop her from being messy or pondering. The book explores her life from her experience studying abroad, love affairs, and the complicated relationship with her immigrant mother. Yes, she may not fit into the typical sad girl’s makeup, but she still exists and interacts with the world before her in similar ways with a layered nuance. It is in this story and outside of that she proves that she and other women like her do not exist too much, but rather the world just needs to catch up.
From its famed origins of Sylvia Plath’s, “The Bell Jar,” the sad girl has been boxed into a certain software that is long over for an update. Literature should be a place we continue to go for a diverse set of stories. There shouldn’t be a genre that becomes so redundant even the characters reflect that. Sadness is a condition of humanity and therefore shouldn’t be reserved for a certain group of people.
What are your favorite sad girl books? Let us know below!
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