The Restrictive Nature of Aesthetics

Brigid Doherty

           Why is it so feminine to be sad? Why is it feminine to journal? Why do people desire to be sad? As a woman we desire to be vulnerable. desiring sadness for the sake of being sad. Mental illness is only valued when it’s beautiful and nice to look at. Why does everyone love the sad girl? Why do we love the vulnerable. we want to be loved and cared for, and we want to give the same for others. From Friedrich Nietzche’s “Beyond Good and Evil,” he says “it almost determines the order of rain how profoundly human beings can suffer… profound suffering makes noble, It separates.” People believe that the more they suffer, the more artistic and poetic and beautiful they believe they will be. Nowadays people say women have so much more freedom, but we are still in a box. Just a ton of boxes within the box of “girl” like, the clean girl, the it girl, the female manipulator, etc. It’s a never ending cycle of not like other girls. The labels of being a Lana Del Rey girl, an Emma Chamberlain girl, a Sylvia Plath girl, a claw-clip/yoga girl has nothing to do with what you really like, but how you want to be perceived. We feel this need to be “not like other girls” due to how the idea of being a woman in its entirety and embracing femininity has been tainted and stereotyped as weak and less than. Girls who love this type of aesthetic self-destruction will see people with genuine mental health issues and call them “insane” and “crazy.” If you aren’t pretty enough, you get villainized. Nothing can be seen as painful in a woman’s tragedy. 

          All things we do healthwise have aesthetic motivations. We revolve around looking thin, but not looking healthy. It’s always “how to lose weight” and not “why or if you should lose weight.” The obsession with dead, beautiful women is that aging stops with death meaning eternal beauty. Even with body decay, their image is eternally beautiful. They are ideal, never their own person, but silent and submissive. A beautiful and ageless figure to project your feelings onto. It adds into the obsession of youth, not just the patriarchy‘s love for young women. Edgar Allan Poe wrote that the “death of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetic topic in the world.” Lord Henry in the “Picture of Dorian Gray” said that Dorian, about Sybil’s suicide, should be lucky that Sybil loved him enough to kill herself. The CPR doll was even created with a female face because the creator believed men would be reluctant to give CPR to a male dummy. 

          Is there some in between? Yes, while there is freedom within death. A freedom no present in the living society as a girl who is hyperfocused on not being a girl and leaning into self-destruction. Society’s roots on holding people to hate women has planted itself in the long term conscience of not just men, but women. Women are taught to have a deep hatred for themselves and to punish themselves for being a woman, hence the rise of the “toxic girl.” The girl that smokes to die and not for fun, or the girl that drinks wine from her parents cabinet alone in her room. She is coping. She is coping with the generational grief put on her from just being a girl.

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Brigid Doherty is from Chicago, Illinois. She has a cat named Sylvie, named after her favorite author Sylvia Plath, that she found in the cemetery on a stroll. Her instagram is brigidoherty.