Fleabag Feminism: Romanticizing Female Defeat

The era of the girlboss is long gone. Along with it, the popularity of patronizing phrases and over-optimistic, surface-level declarations of feminism has plummeted. On virtually every social media app, users now find countless posts using words from “queen” to “girlboss” ironically, especially in memes.

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A new image has taken its place, especially through the character of a “tortured woman”. Under the hashtag #fleabagera on TikTok alone, over 16.1 million videos show women dismally gazing into their lens while white text describes their nihilistic outlook in as many words as can fit on the tiny screen. Characteristics of some of their videos are an upward glance toward the camera, frustrations with subjects that men just “can’t understand”, and a nod toward aesthetics despite it all.

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Those millions of posts embody the core principles of dissociative feminism, the phrase Emmeline Clein used to describe the romanticization of self-destructive behaviors provoked by the defeat felt in being a woman. While the rise of dissociative feminism is heavily related to the cycle of equal rights legislation failures, it also acts as a response to the patronizing girlboss feminism that rampaged the 2010’s. 

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Girlboss feminism is dissociative feminism’s polar opposite and, as said by We Are Restless, focuses on “empowerment of the individual” and “plays into the notion that any decision a woman makes is inherently feminist because she made it”. Tenets of the ideology include self-sexualization and cheering on women corporate leaders. Girlboss feminism enables the disempowerment of other woman for the advancement of a singular person. Regarding women in pornographic magazines, plastic surgery operating rooms, or high-power positions, girlboss feminism disregards the effect of such on women globally for the fulfillment of an individual– as long as that one woman is happy, it doesn’t matter if whatever she’s apart of hurts other women.

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However, with deepening income inequality, reproductive rights at stake, and rising disillusionment, girlboss feminism has lost its charm, making way for a new ideology. Fleabag feminism, or dissociative feminism, addresses the feeling of defeat that almost seems built-in when being a woman. When the world seems built against collective female progress, disappointment seems inevitable.

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Rather than fighting injustices with optimism, the dissociative feminist numbly accepts her distress over the injustices she feels powerless against. Such is seen in Gone Girl, the Virgin Suicides, and of course, Fleabag, where female characters understand their identity as a woman to be equal to a second-class status, destined to be part of a society that will never inherently respect them. 

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In some regards, the tortured woman has become a brand. The videos under #fleabagera follow a formula of expressing female frustration while also cultivating a genre of person audiences can strive to become. The tortured woman is a character, someone who understands that empowerment must be fought for but is too tired to fight anymore. Clues of her nihilism are scattered around her: cigarettes instead of lunch, two-day-old mascara, a room that refuses to be clean. Yet, while the tortured woman spirals, she maintains a chic air. In fact, her tear-stained cheeks are still pretty, and the shadows plaguing her eyes give her a Manic-Pixie-Dreamgirl air. As much as the tortured woman is an expression of dissociative feminism, it’s an aesthetic.

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While fleabag feminism rejects the happy, self-empowering nature of girlboss feminism, it maintains foundational similarities. Girlboss feminism mobilizes female frustration into self-serving attitudes of beauty, sex, and political and corporate power. It accepts the exploitation and disempowerment of other women for individual gain, and it congratulates women who achieve societal standards of success and appearance rather than seeking to abolish such expectations. The girlboss is a woman who joins a man’s world and sips black coffee out of a mug with a cheesy, surface-level phrase of empowerment. It’s a costume that can be embodied with a discount shirt from Target. Meanwhile, the tortured woman feels for the exploitation and disempowerment of other women, but is simply too disenchanted to do anything. She joins a man’s world by accepting defeat, and her costume is smeared eyeliner. Fleabag feminism commodifies the frustration women face, making a brand out of the way women internalize pain to still be consumable by the public eye.

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Regardless of the appearance or aesthetic, the constrasting types of feminism are not the issue. Instead, legislative bodies, societal expectations, and corporate industries reinforce women’s second-class status and lead them to express themselves through different styles and ideologies. The failure of external forces to empower women as a whole creates a cycle of characters individuals strive to become. Whether in her girlboss or fleabag era, women have to face a world that is built against them.

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Sources

Clein, Emmeline. “The Smartest Women I Know Are All Dissociating.” BuzzFeed News, BuzzFeed News, 7 Oct. 2021, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emmelineclein/dissociation-feminism-women-fleabag-twitter.

Peyser, Sophia, et al. “The ‘Fleabag’ Era of Dissociative Feminism Must End.” Lithium Magazine, 19 Jan. 2022, https://lithiumagazine.com/2022/01/19/the-fleabag-era-of-dissociative-feminism-must-end/.

Walsh·, Amy. “The End of Girlboss Feminism.” We Are Restless, 1 Oct. 2021, https://wearerestless.org/2021/09/30/girlboss-feminism/.