In Defense of ‘Sad Girl Lit’
“Sad girls” are everywhere. Esther of “The Bell Jar” wants to drown herself, “Boy Parts”’ Irina takes out her woes as some kind of sexual sadist, and of course, Sally Rooney’s female protagonists—Marianne from “Normal People,” Frances from “Conversations With Friends,” Alice and Eileen from “Beautiful World, Where Are You?” — are all crying themselves to sleep over emails never sent. There are quizzes and blogs that decode which literary sad girl you are, compile shopping lists of sad girl books, and even guides to dedicate yourself to this way of life.
The internet defines the literary sad girl as “self-destructive, sloppy, and filled with rage.” She makes poor life decisions and sleeps with her makeup still on (if she sleeps at all). A repackaging of the 2012 Tumblr Sad Girl™. She hates herself and the world around her, and looks good doing it. She lives a life of privilege devoid of real consequences, and things typically work out for her in the end. Sad girl novels exist on a spectrum where “sad” becomes synonymous with hot, and cool. “Boy Parts” by Eliza Clark and Ottessa Moshfegh’s “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” read as pink plastic cellophane satires, bulked with beautiful unlikeable protagonists intent on hurting themselves and others. “The Idiot” by Elif Batuman and “Normal People” by Sally Rooney, of course, facilitate mirrors. Girls are so caught up in themselves that everything about the rest of the world turns into attacks on the self.
In so many ways, the “sad girl lit” label is simply a poorly-guised rebrand of the “chick lit” labels which plagued the earlier 2000s. Melissa Bank, author of “The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing” and “The Wonder Spot,” was hailed the pioneer of the chick lit subgenre for her entire life despite rejecting the label which she considered “a code word for limited audience or limited appeal.” The same thing is happening with alleged Sad Girl pioneer Sally Rooney, who begrudgingly built up as a prodigy of this label despite efforts to distance herself from it. Inescapably, it's not just the books that these labels diminish. It's the women writing them too — whether they fight it or not. Male novelists don't meet this same kind of resistance. In fact, it seems like the young male novelist conceptually has all but disappeared from the literary scene. In however many years, industry has turned a complete and utter 360-degree pivot, in favor of the girls. So are these sad girl novels just making up dilapidated Holden Caulfields for the 21st-century teenage girl?
Despite the fun of “sad girl lit” — a label morbidly aligned with Hot Girl Summer, Girl Dinner, et cetera — it does have its faults. Romanticizing mental illness and advocating for toxic behaviors, these books perpetuate nihilistic tendencies. Encouraging girls to sit with their hurting instead of immediately finding a remedy. But that's the point. These books aren't written for young women to read and pick out idols from the page. Pieces of themselves are reflected in these sorts of characters — in their uncertainties for their future and their careers, in their struggles to form effective relationships, in their putting up walls — but they're not meant to build morals around.
In November 2019, Leslie Jamison wrote one of the most well-circulated takes on the “sad girl” trope in her New York Times essay, “Cult of the Literary Sad Woman.” In turning her back on the conceptual woebegone female heroine who she once wholly identified with — and built her career around — Jamison references one critic’s concern with her turning pain into a quintessentially female thing. About “making pain a ticket to gain entry into the women’s club.”
“Her ire tapped into my deepening anxiety that calling a woman ‘vulnerable’ in relation to her writing was a way of praising her not for her artistry but for her exposure,” wrote Jamison. “For her willingness to make her fragility a public commodity.”
In a lot of ways, pain is a ticket to gain entry into the women’s club. Heartbreak of girlhood, recent assaults on bodily autonomy. That's the culmination of why “sad girl lit” exists at all. A lot of being a woman really hurts. Jamison is approaching the “sad girl” trope in literature as a woman in her late 20s, but Sad Girl Lit resonates with the young women finding themselves as late teenagers and early adults. That is who it is written for — often who it's written by, as well. These are the exact young women taking over literature right now. As writers, as publishers, as consumers. Redirecting the previously idealized and romanticized Manic Pixie Dream Girls of the male gaze. After all, there's nothing scarier than a woman unafraid to feel.
Sources:
https://www.writersdigest.com/romance-by-writing-genre/chick-lit-rebel