The Future Is…Femcel?: The Regressive Punchline of “Sad Girl” TikTok
Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or somewhere without an internet connection), you’ll know we find ourselves in the age of the “sad girl” – and with good reason, too. After the last few years of living through a pandemic, the steady removal of rights for underrepresented communities and global warming destroying the planet, it’s no wonder Millenials and Gen Z feel less than hopeful about the malaise lying ahead. Hence, media has done what it’s always done: comforted us, challenged us and shifted our perspective, bringing light to otherwise bleak times.
That’s not to say there’s been a rise in how much emotional media is produced, but it makes sense that people’s engagement with work that challenges the heart rather than the head seems omnipresent. Certainly, the rise of Tumblr about a decade ago marked a turning point in how we discussed music, movies and television on social media. While early users posted pictures of their real lives on Instagram or tweeted literally what they were up to at any given moment, Tumblr allowed fans to build a content-rich world of their own obsession, bringing standom to a global scale while cementing the “sad girl” trope in our social media consciousness for the first time. Most importantly, no matter how niche your interest was, you could always find someone who shared your intense love for it – as well as your sense of humor about it.
one of the worst things tiktok has done was make all female artists synonymous to each other in that they make “sad” music. phoebe bridgers music is nothing like mitski music is nothing like fiona apple music is nothing like lucy dacus music etc and shame on you for thinking that
— jules (@girIfaiI) August 5, 2022
There’s debate over what “sad girl” media consists of, but frequently, it returns to music; where content solely involving visual media often involves hours of watchtime, connection through music only involves the ability to press play and three or four minutes of time to feel. Music by singer/songwriters like Mitski, Phoebe Bridgers, Fiona Apple and Lana Del Rey, as well as major pop stars like Taylor Swift, often get roped into the conversation, as they write emotionally complex material that often speaks to the plight of young women like so few things in pop culture do, which can almost feel like a lifeline when we’re so physically isolated from each other.
___STEADY_PAYWALL___
Recently, debates about the “sad girl” offshoot labels like “femcel” and “female manipulator” arose following the publication of an i-D article outlining the growth of “femcel communities” on TikTok, comprised mainly of young women in their teens or early 20s. Unlike male “incel” groups, whose members have been linked to actual hate crimes and are more focused on the “involuntary celibacy” from which the name is derived, femcels’ online identity seems to revolve around books, movies, TV shows, and music that explore the emotional inner lives of women, often dealing with subjects like abuse, misogyny, and mental illness. Yet, what started as self-deprecating jokes about reclaiming sexist criticism has quickly devolved into what seems like a one-dimensional stream of internalized misogyny. Have these girls been made to think their genuine emotions are inherently manipulative, or, if it’s a joke, is there worth in comparing themselves to incels because they see themselves in the art they love?
The glaring irony is that in the quest to joke within a community of fellow fans, these TikTok users dehumanize the musicians they love, reducing them to caricatures instead of multifaceted artists. Constant “sad girl” target Mitski (who was recently scared off social media for good when she reasonably requested that fans not film her whole show and people absolutely flipped out, which also speaks to seeing artists as a commodity rather than another human being) perhaps summed it up best in a recent Crack Magazine interview. After seeing a tweet which read, “new mitski it’s a big day for sad bitches,” she could only let out a deep sigh in front of the camera. “The sad girl thing was reductive and tired 5, 10 years ago and it still is today,” she said before scrolling onto the next post, “I get this person means really well, and I appreciate them…but let’s retire the sad girl schtick.”
lana del rey coquette core downtown girl unhinged women delusional love daydreaming stargirl interlude fiona apple tori amos crystals manifesting law of attraction jobless mitski pinterest journal letterboxd
— gf who wears socks (@punkyoka) August 2, 2022
Again, this type of standom short-hand is hardly new, but it’s also easy to see how a platform like TikTok perpetuates the worst elements of it. Despite the way TikTok has helped users discover new music, the obsession with visuals and “aesthetics” that fit within Tumblr’s sprawling multimedia format is reduced to everything being “something-core” (cottagecore, sadcore, etc.) as a catch-all label, leaving little room for nuance now that brevity is king. In simplicity, the original intention can be lost, and these simplistic labels are accepted as the truth. It’s easy to crop a bunch of album covers into an image and type “POV: you’re the problem” over it, but who benefits from the joke? Misogynists who are going to take it as further permission to dunk on female artists anyway?
“It quite literally has begun to feel like SEO-friendly buzzwords strung together: art as part of an algorithm rather than the personal expression of an artist who the fan loved so much in the first place.”
Even a huge corporation like Spotify has bought into the femcel phenomenon with one of its most popular playlists, titled “sad girl starter pack,” which refers to “sapphic yearning” in its description despite most of the songs not referencing sapphic relationships at all. It quite literally has begun to feel like SEO-friendly buzzwords strung together: art as part of an algorithm rather than the personal expression of an artist who the fan loved so much in the first place. To a certain degree, it limits the work in the same way listeners who dismissed it as “girl music” in the first place did.
— ev (@hatsune0_0) August 7, 2022
Meme culture is a given in our current social landscape, and that’s unquestionably a positive thing. We’re lucky to have those online communities as a place of safety and connection. At the core of the humor, there is a deep respect for the emotional complexity of women living through this harrowing time in our history. The sooner fans realize the worth in earnestly celebrating that complexity, rather than attempting to ironically tear it down, the better off we’ll be.
Words: Elise Soutar
