Jyoung and pretty, soft and fragile, white skin and rosy cheeks, the “sad girl” looks like a flower whose petals open delicately. In twenty years, this character has established itself as one of the major figures of the Web. Thousands of young girls pose above a hashtag #sadgirl, with a specific look and codes.
Of incredible purity, like an immaculate conception, this princess is not living a fairy tale. “Behind this smile hides real suffering”, such is the mantra of this skinned alive. Black and white photos, with quotes that evoke the dark reality of her life, which no one can understand, the sad girl likes to be talked about.
We are at the beginning of the 2000s, before the advent of Facebook, on the Skyblog platform (now Skyrock). At the time, in France, most college and high school students have one – or even several – blogs on this social network launched by Skyrock radio. We could have one devoted to our favorite band (probably Tokio Hotel if you’re around my age), another to our friends…
For young people in the midst of a teenage crisis, or in distress, Skyblog has proven to be a sacred place of self-expression. Both girls and boys recounted the horrors of their daily lives with open hearts. It is here that the sad girl, this resolutely depressed girl, ill at ease and consumed by her dark thoughts, came to externalize all this suffering. Since then, this fictional character has been exported to new social networks. On TikTok, #sadgirl already has over 13 billion views.
Feminine melancholy and pallor
Delicate, dressed in long white dresses, very girly. A bit like the five sisters of the Lisbon family of Virgin Suicides, Sofia Coppola’s first feature film released in 2000. Played by Kirsten Dunst, Lux is 13 years old and wants to commit suicide. She and her sisters are bored in lascivious positions, under a white light that highlights the purity of these mysterious young firsts. In the film, we follow a group of boys who admire them passionately, wondering how to save them from their weariness.
The aestheticization of a certain feminine melancholy and pallor is not new. Endowed with these characteristics, women with tuberculosis were considered attractive in the 19th century.e century. In 1848, The Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas depicts the impossible love of a young bourgeois for a courtesan, Marguerite, suffering from this illness. In short, the sad girl: new uses, old refrains…
You have 0% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.