Girls Cry Lemons and Boys Make Lemonade

Chloe Yeo

November 24, 2024

People often return to comfort fiction, media, or music so they don’t have to confront their lives. But Gen Z girls who find comfort in a masquerade can be found scouring Pinterest, reminiscing about the Tumblr pages they never set their mouse in. Perhaps they’re choosing whether to watch The Virgin Suicides, directed by Sofia Coppola or listen to Lana Del Rey’s mournful ballads that trap you in second-hand heartbreak and a little second-hand smoke. If you search for “sad girl” on Pinterest – the lowercase is essential – you’ll probably find gorgeous girls with tear-stained faces drowning in Marlboro cigarette smoke and a cool-toned filter. If you look closer, you’ll probably recognize some of the pins from movies most likely directed by Coppola. And if you truly care to immerse yourself in the “Sad Girl” sphere, you may stumble across the coiner, Audrey Wollen, of the “Sad Girl Theory.”

“The proposal that the sadness of girls should be witnessed and re-historicized as an act of resistance, of political protest,” Wollen said during an interview in 2015.  “ Basically, girls being sad has been categorized as this act of passivity, and therefore, discounted from the history of activism… Girls’ sadness isn’t quiet, weak, shameful, or dumb: It is active, autonomous, and articulate. It’s a way of fighting back.”

“Sad Girl-ism” has always been the beauty within the chaos, but how do we define the scope of romantic victimhood? The culture of the “Sad Girl” resides more in current pop music, right person-wrong time tropes, and nostalgic “girlhood” movies. Gracie Abrams recently released her album The Secret of Us, with the song “Let it Happen” which takes sad girl pop to another romantic victimhood level.

The heart of this song lies in its chorus: “Lose to you and hand you my life/Here's to hoping you're worth all my time/I might barely know you, but still/Don't love you yet, but probably will/Turn me into something tragic/Just for you, I let it happen”

Not only does Gracie bet on the fact that this emerging relationship will live a short life, but also prematurely embraces the loss because the person is important enough to her that she wants to bide in the heartbreak.

There is something comforting in letting heartbreak happen to yourself. Turning oneself into “something tragic” evokes that “Sad Girl persona.” To be heartbroken means that you indeed had something to break because the consensus when you’re a teenager is that breakups are meant to be “tragic.” Moreover, the girl must give wistful glances and dread waking up and seeing the person. The end of a teenage relationship is hard, but since when did smudged mascara become the new funeral dress code?

Gracie’s seemingly submissive lyrics do feed into the romantic victimhood narrative, but since the music is directed at teenage girls, the narrative feels treasured and protected from men who will inevitably leave their predictable “men can also be sad” comments.

While the “Sad Girl” persona may seem self-pitying, listening to “Let it Happen” while keeping the movement in mind, reveals Gracie’s own victimhood persona being fueled by a desire to want more than what her relationship and what she might be capable of.

Why is it easier to shame ourselves than confront the source of our sadness, pain, and suffering? I believe sadness is synonymous with emptiness. We can disassociate from our feelings and leave ourselves to be judged by some external moral conscience; perhaps, one that belongs to someone who pays us just the right amount of attention so we can fill our film canisters with rolls of boys wiping away our tears and running to catch us when we collapse. These feelings of temporary affection satiate a lack of attention we pay to ourselves. Being a “Sad Girl” means coddling your desire so that while you bask in your emptiness and fill yourself up with that film roll, you can always return to your eternal flame. After all, sadness, like desire, is reserved for the “Sad Girls” and the “Sad Girls” only because in every woman, is a little bit of a “Sad Girl.”