Mental Illness, Media, and the “Beautifully Broken” Woman

Trigger warning for self-harm, anorexia, suicide.

Recently, as you can probably tell, I’ve been thinking about mental illness and it’s representation in the media. While it’s certainly gotten better in the last few years, there’s still a certain subset of representation on TV and in movies that seems to have left a particularly indelible impression on society. And one of those little snapshots of mental illness in the media is that of the “beautifully broken” girl- the sexy young chick whose mental illness is directly connected to her desirability.

 

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