Social Media Sad Girls and the Normalization of Sad States of Being

Thelandersson, Fredrika

doi:10.22387/cap2017.9

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…In re-signifying the meaning of pleasurable foods that are typically read as unhealthy, or in troubling interpretations of weight gain, they were not subverting health as an ideal but redefining what was understood as healthy. And unlike the “social media sad girls” analyzed by Thelandersson ( 2018 ), who refused biomedical strategies to restore them to “healthy” subjects, participants in this community aspired to recovery (i.e. true “health”) as an end goal, partially reinscribing the logics of healthism.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Diagnosis as Subculture: Subversions of Health and Medical Knowledges in the Orthorexia Recovery Community on Instagram

Arguedas

2022

Qual Sociol

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Diagnoses are powerful tools that fulfill various practical and symbolic functions. In this paper, I examine how a contested diagnosis called orthorexia nervosa has been taken up by users on Instagram, where tens of thousands of posts engage with the topic, many of them from individuals who identify with the condition. I put scholarship on medicalization and diagnosis in conversation with literature on subcultures to foreground the subversive work that is enabled through this diagnosis. Drawing on more than 350 hours of online ethnographic fieldwork and 34 in-depth interviews, I examine how participants construct a shared identity, draw on common language and norms, and undertake collective practices, as they negotiate dominant understandings of health. I show how they draw on the legitimacy endowed by the diagnostic label to validate and make sense of experiences of suffering but also to counter dominant health-seeking discourses, practices, and aesthetics in an online space where these are highly visible and valued. I also discuss some ways Instagram as a digital platform shapes its uptake by this community in meaningful ways. On the one hand, participants draw heavily on the language and framing of medicine to make sense of their fraught experiences with food and their bodies, effectively advocating for the medicalization of their own suffering while also creating a sense of community and shared identity. However, on the other hand, they actively use the diagnosis and the recovery process enabled through it to effectively resignify dominant beliefs, values, and practices that are experienced as injurious, including some that are particularly prevalent on Instagram.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Diagnosis as Subculture: Subversions of Health and Medical Knowledges in the Orthorexia Recovery Community on Instagram

Arguedas

2022

Qual Sociol

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“…Or, as I refer to them, the networks of graphic care. It is important to note that graphic care networks offer a unique communicative opportunity for individuals from various socioeconomic locations and identities: these networks offer users a platform for legitimizing their experiences (Thelandersson 2018), and perhaps more importantly, they are representative of both collective and individual mental health realities. Put differently, the cartoonists of Instagram are able to normalize their shared experiences of mental illness by employing their unique artistic styles as a means of demonstrating their personal realities.…”

Section: Instagram Comics and Networked Publicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Graphic Communities: Comics as Visual and Virtual Resources for Self and Collective Care

Mazowita¹

2022

The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship

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Note: this commentary is intended for the special issue, "Comics in and of The Moment." Abstract: This essay discusses the ways in which print and web comics are used to represent the lived experiences of mental illness. Beginning with a brief overview of mental health-focused comic strips and graphic memoirs and turning to a discussion of the mental illness comics of Instagram, the article outlines how comics are being used as platforms for self- and collective care. Instead of prioritizing a visual/discourse analysis of each web comic, this piece focuses on the comment threads of each Instagram post and examines the conversations which develop amongst users. By doing so, this essay begins a critical discussion of the ways in which comics may be used as mental health resources. While grounded in a discussion of Covid-19-related increases to mental illness symptoms, this piece is also interested in how comics may be used as therapeutic supports in a post-pandemic world.

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“…10. On the political potential of 'resting in sadness', see Thelandersson (2018). She writes (p. 17), 'But the mere act of resting in sadness … might function as an impasse, where the refusal to move forward becomes a protest of the neoliberal demands of becoming a labouring and 'happy' subject.'…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enduring COVID-19, nevertheless

Adelman¹

2021

Cultural Studies

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This pandemic is a season of nevertheless; we are exhausted from all kinds of labour, but keep labouring nevertheless. This labouring, I suggest, takes three forms: doing (the productive and reproductive labour required to sustain life through a pandemic), undoing (the tedious processes of postponing and cancelling plans, or abandoning the process of planning altogether), and notdoing (passing the time left over between doing and undoing). Of course, the particularities of our doing, undoing, and not-doing will vary by our circumstances even as we operate within these general patterns of behaviour. I want to think through these neverthelesses as a way of mapping orientations toward the future fractured by the pandemic, and our collective persistence despite those fractures. Under normal circumstances, doing is an expression of optimism about the future, but the pandemic has quickened the tempo and increased the frequency of disappointment and continually forecloses possibility. Undoing is tiresome and painful, the necessary labour that amounts to less than nothing, begetting a collection of losses that often remain private and invisible. Not-doing is an intensified experience of boredom, with no obvious end or relief. Against the calls, which abound in the public culture of the pandemic, to treat COVID-19 as an opportunity to cultivate resilience, I posit endurance as an alternative framework. Resilience implies a better future if only we would learn how to suffer more productively. By contrast, endurance makes no such promises but fully acknowledges all the ways we might hurt, even as it functions as the nameless capacity that carries us through our doing, undoing, and not-doingnevertheless.

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Social Media Sad Girls and the Normalization of Sad States of Being

Cited by 9 publications

References 2 publications

Diagnosis as Subculture: Subversions of Health and Medical Knowledges in the Orthorexia Recovery Community on Instagram

Diagnosis as Subculture: Subversions of Health and Medical Knowledges in the Orthorexia Recovery Community on Instagram

Graphic Communities: Comics as Visual and Virtual Resources for Self and Collective Care

Enduring COVID-19, nevertheless

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