In 2014, feelings have been verified. We live in an era where people don’t overtly talk about their feelings IRL — as much as they let it out in tweets with hashtags and blog about them to strangers on the world wide web. Lo and behold, the Internet has birthed a new breed: sad girls.
No, sad girls aren’t the girls you see walking around with the teary-eyed gaze of someone who looks like they could break down at any instant if nudged the wrong way. (Nine Day’s “Absolutely (Story Of A Girl)” should not come to mind.) The sad girl is sarcastic, witty and self-deprecating. (And probably speaks in a monotone.) She listens to better music than you and might spend her alone time watching French films from the ‘60s or angsty TV shows from the ‘90s. (This stuff really speaks to her.) The sad girl is a living, breathing Daria, but has more friends because even an independent woman doesn’t want to be lonely all the time. She likes pizza, but it’s not the only thing she orders from the menu. (Eating your feelings requires a range of snacks.) The sad girl has a killer sense of style, but deep down, she’s most comfortable in her sweatpants, hair tie, chillin’ with no make-up on. (She really likes Drake, especially Baby Drake.) She’s funny in a #dark way because she likes her comedy like she likes her coffee: “dark, bitter and too hot for you” (source: some anon on Tumblr).
I remember when I first heard the term “sad girl”– it was part of this joke my friends and I used to throw around called “Sad Girl Saturday” (which would be an awesome girl band name btw and I’m copyrighting it right now). Any time we found ourselves alone with no plans for the weekend, we would dub it “Sad Girl Saturday” and proceed to jest about how unpopular and uncool we were. (We usually wound up at someone’s apartment and had an unscheduled ladies night, though, so fun was had.) Once I left to study in London, the reference really started to resonate with me. After two months passed, I transformed from a spontaneous world explorer to a reclusive hermit crab who yearned for the comforts of my American way of life. I was genuinely sad almost every weekend, growing more homesick and less adventurous– being on your own in a foreign land for four months is quite isolating. My sadness was real and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I admit to being a sensitive girl, but I have never felt comfortable conveying my feelings towards others, especially if it results in a confrontation because I am passive aggressive by nature.
As I recall spending my last night of spring break in Madrid crying into a towel for hours because my travel group ditched me, I remember being more upset over the fact that I was crying. I let someone work me up to a point where I physically cried, but I was disappointed in myself for my initial reaction. (“brb crying” was legit, I actually escaped to the hostel bathroom so I could have a cry session.) When I returned, I briefly disconnected from the “real world” and reconnected to my go-to sanctuary of solitude–Twitter. It was here that I found sources that provided solutions for my internal dilemmas, and that’s when “living every day like it’s Sad Girl Saturday” officially became a part of my reality (and personal identity). Here were these blogs practically sharing the untold stories of my so-called awkward life, and they had been doing it months before I knew they existed. These women got me on a level that no one ever had before, and they weren’t ashamed about anything. The day I received much-needed #realtalk from a friend in East London, she said the most profound thing to me that I have ever heard in my entire life: “Your feelings are valid.” And in that moment, nothing was the same (#NWTS).
Truth be told, everything isn’t always going to be all right and that’s totally OK, but no matter the circumstance, you have a right to feel the way that you do. People are always scared to express their emotions in front of each other. Instead, they suppress and keep them to themselves. The sad girl recognizes that it’s not possible to be happy 24/7, but she finds comfort in her sadness and uses it to channel positive vibes. Instead of dwelling on the past, she learns from her mistakes and slowly, but surely finds a way to move on. (But boys suck, forever and always.) And while she rides on the struggle bus, she has a group of women behind her to keep her company the whole way.
The Internet can be a wonderful thing when it has spaces that provide people with a supportive community to identify with. Furthermore, sad girls are assertive women who respect themselves. Sad girls are in touch with their emotions, and they express them creatively through the written word and a variety of other art forms. Sad girls embrace their feelings and reflect on their experiences because to ignore them would be a disservice to the self. Sad girls don’t let anyone belittle them, their accomplishments or their feelings. Sad girls are feminists and they are proud of the quirky skin they are in. Sad girls know their self-worth and acknowledge their value by having standards. Most importantly, sad girls empower themselves and each other. The sad girl truly, deeply cares; usually a little too much, but it’s whatever.
Are you a sad girl? Join the movement over at sadgirlsguide.com.
Tags: but it’s whatever, feelings, sydney gore, the internet, what is this condition you call sorrow, writing
So…every remotely shared human experience is officially a marketing demographic now? Is that what I’m getting from this?
As one of the less-Tumblr-friendly “sad girls” who finds herself spiraling into panic attacks and/or dripping with tears like an exaggerated anime character for no discernible reason…I can’t say I really “get” the sudden glamorizing of the “sad girl.”
Is it that sudden? I remember Public Documentation of Feels being 80% of the point of LiveJournal (or DeadJournal, if you were Too Goth For Life Itself).
Oh god, you’re totally right. If I had a dime for every acquantaince who owned a ~*SO SAD*~ Myspace page filled with Linkin Park lyrics and sparkly anarchy logos…
I am not a sad girl since I am in touch with my emotions, but I do not express them creatively through the written word and a variety of other art forms. In fact, I would rather gnaw off my arm than express my emotions to anyone but my beloved, in any form, creative or no.
I think, however, that I might qualify for an Angry Girl, if there is such a group/classification/hashtag for us. I have never retreated to a bathroom to cry, but I have retreated to a bathroom so I didn’t wind up punching someone (or wind up getting punched myself). I am All For Empowering Other Girls, though, so perhaps we can form some sort of alliance.
“In fact, I would rather gnaw off my arm than express my emotions to anyone but my beloved, in any form, creative or no.”
I think you are me.
Agreed. The first time my roommate of four years saw me cry, it was rage crying because I was pissed off that I was crying over something stupid. So I was crying. And really angry. It was basically a lot of damp swearing.
I like this piece, and I want to repeat: your feelings are valid. I 100% support you in feeling them and sharing them. Please keep doing so.
But I have to ask – is anyone else uncomfortable with putting “Being A Sad Girl” on a pedestal? I’m not sure how being sad, specifically, is helping you do anything in the last paragraph and would really like to hear more about that. Being in touch with your feelings, obviously, is great and important. But I have been deeply, painfully sad for protracted periods of time, and I found that I was so trapped in Being Sad that I DID let people belittle me, I DIDN’T have standards, I COULDN’T express myself creatively through my chosen art medium. I was just too busy Being Sad.
#JoanDidion
All kidding aside, and this might just be me, but I feel like “Sad Girl” and “Girl Who Can Name and Own All Her Feelings, Including Sadness” are pretty close? Like, I realized that life can get a whole lot lonelier/sadder than just staying home in my sweatpants, and that an appropriate response to loneliness was to feel sad, and to even recognize loneliness sadness as the feelings I was having was a pretty major step towards adulthood, but it’s not a particularly special one. I think most people will have that.
(…or they continue living the lie that feeling the whole range of human is somehow a betrayal, and that only the happy ones can be expressed. Let’s all get over that idea right quick, yes?)
Can I start a movement for people who keep their feelings resolutely bottled up? I’m like a wounded animal when I’m sad – leave me alone, I’ll live, or I’ll die in this cave, without ever showing my weakness to a predator/other human being.
Yes. I’ll join. (But then it’s always so bad when the bottling up reaches its limits. I burst and just let out a waterfall of tears – because whatever emotion I’ve been bottling can at that point only be released as a cryfest – and never learn and never try to express things.) Keep on bottlin’!
leave me alone, I’ll live, or I’ll die in this cave, without ever showing my weakness to a predator/other human being.
This. So much this.
I will also join your movement. But you may never know whether I’m sad or happy about it.
yassssss.
After an hour plus, I still can’t figure out whether this article is sincere or mocking. I’m leaning towards mocking. Poe’s Law?
same boat.
i believe we are not alone, considering this stood without comments for a surprisingly long time, at least for the toast at this hour.
After looking at the website, I’m not convinced it’s some sort of weird marketing-type “You too can be a Cool Sad Girl” thing.
gross.
i thought this was initially a humor piece lampooning the ongoing categorization of women into “types,” but the further i went, the less i was convinced that it was satire. so i just…closed the tab and felt a little unsettled.
Or a humor piece targeting the excruciatingly sad way that people of all sexes enthusiastically enjoy blurring the distinction between women and children (I am not a sad girl because I reached the age of majority in my country more than a decade ago.) but no, that’s not it.
and although I think I am at the far top end of the Toast demographic, I think there are very few girls reading. I promise to chew my own arm off at the elbow before I complain about ladyness and lady rhetoric again if we can, in exchange, all agree to burn ‘girl’ -for-woman to the ground like I thought we had done twenty years ago. I feel ok about making that bargain because I know the world will never call my bluff, so my arm will stay attached.
I was born in the 1970s so I am probably also way older than other toasties, and my main thought reading this was that I am just not the right demographic for this piece.
It’s got to be generation and not age because ten years ago (when I was 24, which I would guess is pretty average Toastage) I would have been, if anything, more frothily enraged than I am now at being expected to answer to ‘girl.’
(But I mean, I don’t think today’s younger women are more-sad-less-mad these days or anything, I just think they’re more polite. Which is..good…I guess.)
I am 21. I will call myself a girl, but I am damned if I will let anyone else.
Part of the delay might be because it’s hard to focus on reading while “Story of a Girl” is stuck in your head.
plus, that girl drowned the whole world. like, if you weren’t sad BEFORE…
Is this a satire of Thought Catolog articles? If so, it’s subtle and brilliant.
If not, I must point out Daria would not embrace being privileged enough to waste a semester abroad moping about the lack of “the comforts of my American way of life” and describing an amazing, tourist friendly, English speaking city as an isolating experience in a foreign land.
She would also snark at a forced trend piece which tackles having emotions with branding / marketing aspirations and uses “Your Feelings Are Valid” as a slogan of empowerment meant to excuse the privileged behavior described above.
I know it’s well intentioned, but this piece has the voice of Daria’s sister Quinn helping Lawndale High’s Fashion Club find a way to appropriate Daria’s style for popular kids.
You’re such a good friend, Jane.
“privileged enough to waste a semester abroad moping about the lack of ‘the comforts of my American way of life'”
I understand that a semester abroad can be devastatingly isolating and lonely for some people, but I have more sympathy for those who never got to study abroad and who wonder sadly if they will ever scrape together enough money to travel overseas.
Holy moly – I clicked on the link at the end and it’s not just “branding / marketing aspirations” it’s a full on lifestyle brand blog run by one of those Bay Area PR types and clearly aiming for that “Sad Girls Guide” book deal. Shouldn’t this thing have an “Advertorial” tag on it?
“It is about embracing your feelings and learning from your mistakes, while inspiring young girls (and guys!) to make the most out of life despite whatever teeny thing you might be bummed about.”
Right.
This just feels sting-y and mean to me. Seconding the calls for an advertorial tag.
Thirding. I’m not entire sure of the point of this piece, or where it’s intended to be driving, but it just comes across as encouraging traffic to that website? Which is not very Toast-y? (The website or the hidden “read our blog” type thing.)
My first thought upon finishing this piece: “This doesn’t seem like it belongs on The Toast.” Glad to hear others felt the same!
We’re also gonna need a “written by someone who will react to criticism with at least eight tweets about not caring what lame h8r commenters think” tag.
God, no kidding. Dear writer and friends: it isn’t personal, we aren’t trolling, we just don’t feel like this article is a good fit for the Toast and would prefer it to have been marked Advertorial.
It’s not advertorial if we didn’t solicit nor pay for it.
Good God. I literally have nothing else to say except I’m amazed the Toast ran with this…
I wonder if the Toast paid for it, or if the sad women paid the Toast. Because there’s some editorial judgment gone awry here, somewhere.
wow, the website this article links to might as well have the subhead, “manic pixie dream girls are so yesterday. it’s time for the depressive pixie dream girl to take up her mantle.”
My favourite part is that the most recent two Sad Girls Guides are to “The Hamptons” and “Being Pale”.
Seriously, I couldn’t make that up if I tried. It’s like some kind of self-parodying website. The guide to the Hamptons makes an attempt to be self-aware, but it fails pretty miserably by the third paragraph.
Whaaaaaaaa? *headdesk*
BEING PALE
Here’s a sad Girl Guide. She also has a movement I can join.
Here's a sad Girl Guide. She also has a movement I can join.
What if I’m a grown-ass woman ?
I identify with some big chunks of this (including debilitating loneliness while studying abroad!!! wooo that was a fun chance to lengthen my list of “places I have cried”). (It was still a great semester and I am lucky and happy to have had the chance.) Getting to a point where I could recognize and accept my bad feelings was huuuuge for me. Having friends who validated my feelings – also so important. I just don’t know about glamorizing sadness in this way. It might be a semantics/language thing that I’m not getting, but I think that if you get to a point where you say “sadness is just part of who I am now” you are making it hard for yourself to not be sad anymore? When I have been depressed, I have had to fight off that thought process of, “this is just my identity and personality now – sad.” It’s not my personality! It’s the messed up part of my brain, and I have to work hard to tell that part to screw off. Yes I am experiencing sadness or depression, but that’s what I feel. Not who I am.
I am so happy that almost everyone here had the same reaction to this as me, which was “so is this piece going to ignore the glamourizing of depression and the fetishization of the sad manic pixie dream girl…?”
It feels like it’s been a good long while since we’ve had a mass commenter revolt (I still believe in u, Scarlet).
All things being equal, I’m just glad this wasn’t about Lana Del Ray and her Significance
#sadblasting
Greetings from the writer! I read all of your comments throughout the day and wanted to take the time to clear up a few things that I picked up on from your feedback. Thanks again for reading, v. interesting discussion! http://sydeegee.wordpress.com/2014/07/14/in-defen…
Hello, author! I am genuinely curious as to what “semi depressive” means. Does it mean you feel sad, but not in the “if I don’t get me to a GP for anti-sad pills that may make me gain 15 lbs. but at least I won’t feel like crying every time I see the color blue” way? Is it depression that only works a Monday – Friday, 9 – 5 schedule?
Having been clinically sad for two years, there’s really nothing that chic about having sadness try and invade your personality.
Also, “sad girls aren’t the girls who you see walking around looking like they might break down at any moment”. Er, how would you define them, then? They don’t get to be sad girls because they aren’t sad in the right, cool way? Frankly, I’d rather have an article from them- my sadness doesn’t manifest itself as a killer sense of style and an obsession with French films. It manifests itself as me, walking round, looking like I might break down at any moment. It’s a throwaway line, I know, but it manages to make me feel like you’ve seen me on the street and decided that my sadness isn’t cool enough to be in your gang.
Quite. When I’m sad, I’m not edgy and glamorous; I’m trying not to cry at work, and making a GP appointment to ask to please go back on antidepressants.
Like many other commenters, I initially read this as sarcasm and was really taken aback when I realised it wasn’t. I’m sad a lot. I am not cool enough to be this kind of Sad Girl.
This is basically “I realised that I’m allowed to be sad and I can function despite being sad”. Good for you; also: story of my life. What happened here, Toast? Consider me amongst the ranks of the unimpressed commentariat.
U keep saying that word… I do not think it means what u think it means :-///
That response was the opposite of helping. I was just slightly annoyed until she outright said "I merely wanted to give [Sad Girl's Guide] some credit because they were the first to brand the sad girls identity, and I respect them for it" and "Believe it or not, people are capitalizing on the simplest of things these days, emotions included. I know I’m not the only person out there who went through a scene phase."
Just — stop — WHAT? Fucking stop branding and capitalizing on your actual fucking life! Finding a way to leverage your feelings to multiple platforms is the LITERAL FUCKING OPPOSITE of learning how to be with them.
There is no scene. There is only the world: just fucking live in it.
I merely wanted to give [Sad Girl's Guide] some credit because they were the first to brand the sad girls identity, and I respect them for it
<img src="http://www.cavemancircus.com/wp-content/uploads/images/2012/februrary/i_dont_want_to_live_on_this_planet_anymore/i_dont_want_to_live_on_this_planet_anymore_20.jpg">
What the everloving fuck.
Oh G-d, thank you, I thought that was just me! Also I hate that song, so.
Wait, what's wrong with anger?
Wow. I feel like this article was written so perfectly its almost scary to me how much i fully relate and understand it. thank you so much for the clarity behind this phrase!