Female Suffering is beautiful?
I have not posted on tumblr in a while because I was not doing well mentally. I've honestly been struggling a lot with depression, anxiety, and my bpd. One thing I've noticed in particular over the past few months, when you're not feeling well and you like some posts online that fit your depressed mood, it happens quickly that the algorithm keeps suggesting more and more to you on that particular topic/mood causing you to fall down a rabbit hole.
Regardless of this, it is also not unheard of that in the "coquette community" one often encounters stories that romanticize the pain, suffering and oppression of women. Some good examples of this in music are Lana del Rey's "Ultraviolence," in which the singer talks about, among other things, not being able to leave a violent relationship because every punch from her counterpart feels as good as a kiss. Another example in film is "The Lover (1992)", where a young girl, despite abuse, stays with her way too-old husband and it is presented as a beautiful love story.
But why do we romanticise and downplay suffering especially when it comes to the female gender? Why does depression suddenly become this poetic, desirable, fascinating thing?
In order to answer this question properly we have to talk about gender roles and how women came to be "the weaker sex". Nowadays, it is assumed that thousands of years ago, when the human species came into being and men and women had no understanding of each other they still shared a strong bond called ‘The Naked Ape’, despite their physical and behavioral differences. Males and females stayed together thereby creating family like arrangements. Starting from birth their human babies required care and supervision, regardless of gender. But when they approached the age of puberty, significant differences were experienced by them due to biological differences.
Girls started menstruating and had no control over it. Because humans were hunters and had seen blood only in life-ending situations, they started associating menstrual blood with physical disability. This belief was strengthened due to the pains and cramps experienced by menstruating women. Further, women kept on bearing children as there was no understanding of control on child birth. Both these facts, added to the then prevalent short life expectancy, led to a situation where women were either in the stage of pregnancy or post partum care during most of their adult life.
As a result, women in general were never in a state of physical or emotional fitness which would enable them to leave their abode and participate in typically male activities such as hunting and collecting food. During all these stages, they required complete care and support from men, both physically and emotionally. Thus, women became dependent upon men. This strong feeling of weak physical health in their minds made them literally a ‘weaker’sex.
As said, the labor to which women are condemned, like the process of childbirth, generates sensitivity and empathy in us. From this comes a moral knowledge for women, not because they are in a female body, but because of what female bodies are made to do. Giving birth is not only a psychological task, but also a physically demanding one. Because we are able to endure such pain and bounce back shortly after to care for our children, studies show that hospitals often overestimate women's ability to endure pain. This pattern is also evident in the commonly used saying, "If you hit a woman, you hit a rock." This sounds tremendously empowering and encouraging, but I believe that such rhetoric does more harm than good. I believe that women should not be rocks because being hit is inevitable. When we romanticize the idea that women are made to endure suffering and that their strength lies in their resilience, we create more room for abuse of power against them.
Now that we have clarified the historical background of why women are considered more fragile, why is their suffering ultimately beautiful?
Susan Sontag has described the nineteenth-century flowering of a "nihilistic and sentimental" logic that found appeal in female suffering: "Sadness made one 'interesting.' It was a sign of sophistication, of sensitivity, to be sad. It meant being powerless." This attraction largely carried over to the disease: "Sadness and tuberculosis became synonyms," she writes, and both were coveted. Sadness was interesting, and the disease was its servant, providing not only cause but symptoms and metaphors: an agonizing cough, a pallid pallor, an emaciated body. "The melancholic character was a superior character: sensitive, creative, an independent being," she writes. Illness was "a burgeoning weakness … symbolized an attractive vulnerability, a superior sensitivity, [and] became more and more the ideal look for women."
Women's pain turns them into kittens and rabbits and sunsets and dirty goddesses of red satin; it makes them pale and bloody and starves them, delivers them to death camps and sends their strands of hair to the stars. Men put them on trains and under trains. Violence makes them heavenly. Age makes them old. We cannot look away. We can't stop thinking up new ways to hurt them!
I cannot lie and say that I have not become a victim of this romanticization of grief. Why would I see my depression as an illness that makes it difficult for me to take care of my physical health, hygiene and goals, when I can ignore the harsh reality and present it as a fascinating melancholic experience? It's just easier to deal with when mental illness is portrayed desirably.
Thank you guys for reading!! If there's anything you need to talk about you can write me a dm on Instagram @purelypoisonousapple
-Lia ♡