Image via New Yorker
I am so honored the the essay “The Teen-Girl Tumblr Aesthetic” that I co-authored for Hyperallergic a few years ago with Kate Durbin is in today’s New Yorker! read Haley Mlotek’s review of @SoSadToday’s new book of poetry, which discusses a similar concept that Durbin and I unpacked in our essay:
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-hidden-vulnerabilities-of-sosadtoday
“‘Girls’ sadness is not passive, self-involved, or shallow,’ she told the magazine Dazed. ‘It is a gesture of liberation, it is articulate and informed, it is a way of reclaiming agency over our bodies, identities, and lives.’ The year before, the artists Alicia Eler and Kate Durbin had made a similar argument in identifying the “Teen-Girl Tumblr Aesthetic,” and Lindsay Zoladz, writing for Pitchfork, identified Lana del Rey as a kind of mascot for defiantly sad girls, her extravagantly forlorn music a corrective after years of false empowerment ballads.
I love these quotable sections as well!
“Common to all of these theories of Internet sadness was the idea that displays of vulnerability were no less honest or real for having made the act of displaying them the point. The display was both a symptom and a coping mechanism.”
“One way to fend off isolation is to confess. Works of confessional writing, especially those written by and for women, are as much an attempt to connect as a way to unload; as Adrienne Rich once said, “When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.”
“I don’t want to have needs . . . So I deflect my vulnerability into humor or ‘wise platitudes.’
