The "Women in Pain" Aesthetic

Don’t you just love a woman having a breakdown? A beautiful, messed up, hot, gorgeous woman who is in her depressed, sleazy, or tired, “era”?

You see, this is the girl who doesn’t have it all. She’s imperfect. She’s maybe even a bit “insane.” This girl’s got problems, but my god, it’s the problems you want to sink yourself into. You want to be her so bad. You see her “aesthetic” and think “she’s literally me.”

But why? Well, because even though she’s going through some serious shit, she’s extremely desirable. She’s usually thin and conventionally attractive. Her outfits are pretty stylish. She cries softly in a bathtub with a pint of ice cream in her hands that she’s only taken a few bites of. And her mascara somehow still stays intact besides that one little black tear that rolls down her cheek. Her hair isn’t knotty from not brushing it in two weeks, but rather it’s smooth, besides maybe the one piece that’s out of place so that a man with a savior complex for vulnerable women can come to save the day and tuck the piece behind her ear and tell her everything’s gonna be okay. He can be there to kiss the pain away.

In the past few years, there has been a rise in the “women in pain” aesthetic and the trope of the beautiful, tortured girl. From the “hot girls with depression” themes we’ve seen or the “spiraling montages” in shows and movies galore, there’s something desirable and special about a “fucked up” woman.

One of my favorite shows is The Queen’s Gambit, which focuses on a female chess player and her struggles with alcohol and drug addiction. I can’t help but think about this montage of her spiraling. Yes, she’s throwing up, drinking too much, and overall struggling. But she’s also dancing to a fun song, and it’s filmed almost like a music video. And she’s still looking beautiful with her semi-polished hair and short nightgown.

In recent social media trends, mental illness is being commodified. It’s been a common occurrence for women as this is how their pain is shown, especially in media controlled by men. Girls look pretty and cry. They dance and do drugs and still look oh so hot.

I mean, why do you think there are sad girl aesthetic social media pages or TikToks or posts dedicated to girls who listen to Phoebe Bridgers, Mitski, and Lana Del Rey, and who watch Fleabag, who define themselves and their pain with these songs and characters and media. And maybe I’m calling myself out here since I adore Fleabag, but I digress.

In one of my favorite essays written by Rayne Fisher-Quann entitled “standing on the shoulders of complex female characters,” she writes,

“ i wonder what romantic love would feel like if i’d never seen a romantic comedy, if i’d been allowed to figure it out before a commodified version was fed to me. i wonder what my own illness would feel like. now, as i put on mascara before crying so i’ll look the right kind of sad when i see myself in the mirror, i think about how nothing feels real at all if it doesn’t look like the movies.”

We all understandably contribute to this and I don’t blame anyone for it. Because we all want things to be wrapped in some cute bow, especially influenced by the media we consume. We want to find a way to cope with our issues. If we’re going to struggle, it might as well be hot, entertaining and cool, right?

But remember, mental illness or addiction is not cute, and not something one should desire. It’s a serious issue, and it's debilitating for many. And it has become unfair to many women. We are feeling forced to become this trope in full, because then how else can we be seen or loved if we’re not “perfectly imperfect?”

This trope is not realistic of mental illness and addiction, nor is it fair. Why do we need to sexualize or fetishize this pain that we experience, or put it into an aesthetic that will entertain or please someone, especially when a lot of the time it’s appealing to what we call “the male gaze,” which is a way in which women are filmed and depicted in media to appeal to male audiences.

We are constantly wanting to be desired and loved, but we need to know that when we are struggling, we don’t need to be hot, we don’t need to be aesthetically pleasing, we just need to focus on helping ourselves and doing what makes us comfortable. We need to free ourselves from this curse of this aesthetic, because it’s rooted in patriarchy, and it doesn’t help us, it won’t ever will.