Broken Dolls
I hear this a lot, less so since I stopped having to listen to Chris Moyles in the morning, but among the FHM-reading set, this appears to be a popular opinion. Women- always changing their minds on a whim, justifying buying expensive clothing, going to the toilet in groups and deliberately and maliciously failing to understand the off-side rule. And then they get PMS and basically turn in to the Witch from Left 4 Dead. Women! They are different and therefore insane.
Which makes it rather tricky when it comes to mental illness and emotional disorders. While we are more likely to go to the doctor when our moods are messed up (since it is socially accepted that we are more "in touch with our emotions", thus sidelining the emotional needs of males) there is a rather dodgy corollary that women who deviate from social norms are emotionally disordered. Hence a trend for diagnosing BPD among females exhibiting "self destructive" behaviour that might be explained away with a "boys will be boys" hand-wave among men...or the rather more well-defined and to-be-taken-seriously bi-polar disorder. For the interested, I recommend http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2010/06/borderline_pers.
But what's been niggling away at me is the fact that the idea of mental instability and women has become so ingrained that it has become fetishised. If you are a woman with a mental problem, you are supposed to look like this-
(Girl Interrupted)
or this
(My Sassy Girl)
or, of course, this
(Amanda Palmer)
Plus any number of skinny naked girls with running eyeliner crawling around in videos on "Kerrang".
There's a few possible reasons why this fetish for the mentally unhinged woman has come about in the last, what, 10, 20 years. I'm neither a psychologist nor an anthropologist, so my speculation is liable to be completely off, but my thoughts would be-
- Need. The mentally unstable female is lost in a world that doesn't understand her, doomed to loneliness at best and death at worst. But you understand her, Nice Guy who just can't seem to get a girlfriend! You will save her and fix her and she will need you forever, because you are the only one who knows how beautiful she truly is (this is also true of the Manic Pixie Dreamgirl. See "Garden State" for details.) Case in point- the protagonist in "My Sassy Girl" actually pulls her back from falling under a train. Note the infantalisation of the above- Girl Interrupted, My Sassy Girl, and the Girl Anachronism herself. These females need love and attention in much the same way children do- constantly and unreservedly.
- Otherness. For a very long time, a woman had no inner life. She had emotions, true, but no control over her own narrative. Her identity was fixed by her social context. Not so the mentally unstable female. Not only does she buck society by not fitting in to the role chosen for her, but she has no control over her personality at all! You don't know what she will do next, but neither does she! In bucking social norms, she is often highly sexually self-aware (Jean Grey/ Phoenix style in "X3"). She is also dangerous and exciting and that makes her sexy.
But hang on. Doesn't the MUF* conform to society by having no free will to choose her identity? Is she not in fact re-enforcing social norms by defining them with her Otherness? Welcome to the dichotomy, my friends.
So, that aside, where does it leave us MUFs and our fans? Well, speaking personally, I have had a fair few admirers (all guys) who have been completely infatuated with unmedicated me. For about a week. They have loved my mood-swings and my introspection, my obvious neediness. They have listened to me dispose of dinner in the bathroom and waited with a glass of water. They have written me poems about my "stormy grey eyes". Then they realise that I am hard work and forget all about me. This is confusing.
In addition, it's going to give the MUF some odd ideas about what her disorder is supposed to look like, adding extra layers of guilt and insecurity to an already troubled mind. If I'm mentally ill, how come I'm not a cutter? How come I'm not skinny? How come I'm not on drugs? All these things have been sexualised in one form or another in the media, especially film. With fetishised images of what an MUF should be, it's a concern that an MUF might have concerns about her illness being taken seriously, even by herself. This makes her less likely to seek the help she might need.
What gets my back-up about the Amanda Palmer-type girl is the way she will play up, or even invent, quirks and idiosyncrasies for the sake of appearing free-spirited and individualistic. Naturally, it is nothing of the sort. Being yourself within highly-defined parameters and a ritualised aesthetic is not being yourself at all. Worse, it is selling a lie. Although it is admirable to say loud that the MUF is as deserving of love as anyone else, this glamorisation of mental illness re-packages the often gloomy reality of mental instability for both the MUF and those who try to love her. When the plate throwing is over and you have to console the grey sobbing figure on the sofa, is everyone going to want to stick by their girl anachronism? Or will they just find someone else to write a poem for.
Let's end this on an upnote. Spoilers abound. 1993's "Benny and Joon" featured a mentally unstable woman, largely in the care of her older brother. Much of the behaviour she exhibits is "kooky" or "quirky", so we're not terribly surprised when kookie, quirky Johnny Depp falls for her, telling her brother that "she doens't seem that crazy." When she exhibits mental behaviour that wanders in to danger-to-herself-and-to-others territory, he's afraid, he doesn't know what to do to help. But he still loves her and clearly wants to learn how to support her. But here's the thing- although Joon's identity as a person with a mental disorder is not in doubt, it is far from the only thing about her. Joon falls in love, and knows she's in love. When she allows herself to be led, negative consequences occur. The happy ending is not in her having found a partner on whom to depend, but rather on gaining independence. Joon is not defined solely by her illness. None of us can be reduced to a set of symptoms. Our personalities are in our hands, and no-one gets to tell us who we are.
*Whoops