"#sadgirltheory (and more)" with your contributors
Have you heard of Audrey Wollen?
Her artwork revolves around a concept she calls the Sad Girl Theory, in which she situates female suffering as an act of resistance. Realised across several media, notably Instagram, Wollen reinserts herself into a masculine narrative, giving her vulnerabilities power, one in which the internalised suffering of women is an act of protest.
"I think it's really important to recognise and foster an alternative to the hyper-positive demands of contemporary feminism right now. We've really fixated on loving ourselves - there's this ethos of excess and approval, making it cool and fun to be a girl. The problem is: it isn't really cool and fun to be a girl. It is an experience of brutal alienation and constant fear of violence. All the amazing parts of girlhood (of which there are many) are survival tactics that girls have created in the face of this reality. I want to stand with the girls who are miserable, who don't love their body, who cry on the bus on the way to work. I believe those girls have the power to cause real upheaval, to really change things."
In this series of crying selfies, some of your contributors share moments of anger, sadness, bliss, gratitude, fear, isolation, love, and more. By sharing and promoting the image of women's tears and emotion as powerful force, we gain strength and self-love, even. There's something about capturing the image of oneself in the midst of overwhelming emotion that is an act of pure agency. It is a moment of one's self-perception and enacted choice to take an event of crying, of tears, and make it one's own.
--yr crying contributors <3
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