The End of My Fleabag Era

For most of my life, I have been guilty of Girl, Interrupted syndrome, this idea that sickness is all a woman can amount to. The idea that women are innately born with the tools to be sick, to be morbid, to be broken, has made me grow weary. When you are told growing up that all you can be is sick— how are you supposed to believe anything else? I have been spoon-fed this idea for as long as I can remember, and have been a sad little product of pro-ana Tumblr and now TikTok. I was never a #girlboss and instead felt myself rotting in my room, likening myself to Gregor Samsa post-metamorphoses. And the truth was, in all my self-loathing and sickness, I loved it. I loved being hateful and bitter, loved to hate myself and my body. It was addicting, and now that I am finally better, I can’t help but wonder why?

In 2019, Emmeline Clein wrote an article coining the term “dissociative feminism,” which is defined as the type of woman who views the world nihilistically, giving up on fighting against oppression and just drifting through life not really there, bitter, and angry at the world but not caring enough to do anything about it. Second and third-wave feminism showed us women fighting head-on against oppressive systems. There were marches, protests, and whole movements dedicated to fighting back. #MeToo shook the world in 2017, and there seemed to be a positive change coming around. And yet now, women are becoming numb to the pain they experience. Rather than believing their pain is a product of the patriarchy, of the men who use them and throw them away, their pain is pushed back inside of them, back into the spaces between their ribs. So why is this happening? Why are most women becoming nihilistic and hateful?

Perhaps, because, that is what we see romanticized on the screen. Sally Rooney’s Frances has a harmful and destructive affair and hates herself for it. Fleabag makes a mess of her life and is the victim of terrible men and blames herself. Effy Stonem is beautiful and broken, and she is beloved for it. Rue Bennet’s addiction causes her to hate life and walk all over the people around her, and it’s juxtaposed against beautiful images of glitter and parties. We love to see our pain and sadness romanticized because it makes it beautiful, but that’s exactly why it’s so harmful. To see our pain as something that is beautiful and aesthetic makes us not want to let it go, and makes us not want to get better.

It’s important to note that dissociative feminism came in response to the #girlboss mindset that gained traction from 2016 to 2020. Just like heroin chic rose in the 90s in response to the “healthy” girl look of the 80s, dissociative feminism comes in response to the girl boss. Heroin chic and dissociative feminism go hand in hand: a 1996 article in the Los Angeles Times wrote that heroin chic was "a nihilistic vision of beauty.” Trends exist in cycles, and in a way, the aesthetic of the dissociative feminist is heroin chic recycled. Heroin chic romanticized the emaciated and white body and romanticized the use of drugs. Gia Carangi has been noted as the mother of the heroin chic style. She suffered a debilitating heroin addiction that caused her to contract AIDS, which ultimately led to her death.

Dissociative feminism is also, undeniably so, white feminism at its core. Dasha Nekrasova, Fleabag, Sylvia Plath, and the Irish waifs of Sally Rooney novels are all white. There is a privilege in being able to give up on things getting better, an almost aesthetic to it. This aesthetic is alarmingly white and skinny. Women of color have constantly been called too loud, too disruptive, and altogether too much. In contrast, the white, dissociative feminist is the cool girl. She doesn’t bitch and moan about the way society has made it difficult to be a woman. She blames herself for everything and hates herself in a cool way that makes us love her. She smokes a cigarette and skips lunch, while the rest of us are far too human and flawed to do it.

The rise of this aesthetic of this dissociative feminist has a lasting impact on the minds of young girls especially. According to the American Society for Nutrition, eating disorders are on the rise. In an article published in April 2019, Marie Galmiche et al., write that the commonality of eating disorders “increased over the study period from 3.5% for the 2000–2006 period to 7.8% for the 2013–2018 period.” These behaviors got worse during the pandemic. In a study done by the CDC, it was found that eating disorders, specifically among teenage girls, increased two-fold during the pandemic. When we glorify hating our bodies and hating ourselves, young and impressionable minds will latch onto it. The pandemic saw an increase in the use of social media, and it’s only simply to see that there is possibly a link between increased social media use and eating disorders.

Ultimately, you don’t have to be the bitchy cool girl. It’s okay to be kind. Self-punishment is exhausting and if the world is going to punish us regardless, there’s no need to punish yourself alongside it. The masochistic flaunting of female self-hatred does not benefit any of us. As women, we’re so used to thinking we’re all in on this huge trend about being an insane woman, or a sick woman, but isn’t that exhausting? We don’t all have to be the main character from My Year of Rest and Relaxation, nor do we need to be the next Fleabag, nor the next Effy Stonem. Rather than that, I find myself looking towards characters and women who love the world with their whole hearts. I want to be like Mary Oliver, who loved the world and everything within it. I want to be like Anne Shirley, who is so grateful, so loving, and so kind. I want to be like Sophie Hatter, who learns to love the world and herself. I will no longer be in my Fleabag era, and I refuse to be a woman deranged. I will love this world. I implore you to do the same.