Don’t expect an honest depiction from television and the movies either. The 1986 movie “Betty Blue” turned men on to a concept of women with mental illness as impossibly chic, French and sexually insatiable. More recently the Netflix series “13 Reasons Why,” which has been commissioned for a third season, has explored the reasons a pretty high school teen takes her own life from the point of view of her classmate and colleague Clay, who is in love with her.
Clay “sure has a thing for complicated girls,” one character on the show says. But the conceit falls apart when you replace mental illness with something physical. “You sure have a thing for girls with respiratory problems” doesn’t work. Nor do I forecast Skinnydip achieving the same sales results with accessories that read “I have Lyme disease.”
At the beginning of “13 Reasons Why” Season 2, a popular cheerleader named Jessica, returns to school to face her rapist. Her pal reassures her “you’re pretty and sad, people love that,” as if sadness only added to her magnetism and allure.
At least Lena Dunham’s character Hannah Horvath, suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder on “Girls,” presented mental illness in an unvarnished way (remember the Q-tip scene?). Still, when Hannah calls her boyfriend (Adam Driver) to tell him she’s “unraveling,” he runs the streets of New York to be with her. His topless chiseled torso is slightly dampened and glistens under the beam of streetlights. Upon arriving at her apartment, he boots down the door and scoops her up into his safe muscular arms. Really?
My experience was closer to Miss Havisham’s in “Great Expectations.” Only instead of refusing to take off a wedding gown, it was a worn-out robe I rattled around in, with one of the pockets hanging loose.
The limp fabric which used to form a pocket now dangled free, because my depleted partner ripped it off in a fight. A fight in which he begged and pleaded with me to take it off, only for a day, only so he could wash it, like a spent parent bargaining with a toddler to eat just one spoon of their vegetables. I wanted to be alone, but I was nothing like Greta Garbo.
Seeing or experiencing illness makes any glamorization of it entirely ridiculous. Depression is not an effective way of ensnaring a man. Nor is it a love song to bop along with, a fashionable illness, or a fad for bloggers to wear for a few weeks, post about on Instagram, favorite and then disregard.
Source : Nytimes
