The 'girly' trends that signal burnout

2023's trends had women laughing, but also point to the fact that women are exhausted by the pressure to hustle 

- Devika Oberai

This Spotify Wrapped season, my most streamed genre has been pop, with a total of 17,000 minutes of pop music. Within this, a recurrent theme emerges across various albums and artists: the mental health of women. Grammy-nominated artist Olivia Rodrigo delves into the complexities of girlhood, young adult angst, heartbreak and body image issues in her sophomore album, GUTS. Billie Eilish, sings “I used to float, now I just fall down” in her song, What Was I Made For, expressing a similar sentiment, questioning her identity and purpose. In Cobra, Meghan Thee Stallion cuts to the heart of her feelings of vulnerability and her mental health struggles.

From cinema, “Depression Barbie” (from Greta Gerwig’s Barbie) became popular, crossing over to the female internet audience. Described as donning sweatpants, incessantly scrolling on Instagram, and re-watching the same movie (BBC’s Pride And Prejudice) until falling asleep every night, Depression Barbie resonated with many millennial women to the extent that many felt “called out”. In the Amazon Prime Video series Made In Heaven, Tara transcends her role as wedding planner, often engaging in personal conversations that are almost like counselling sessions with brides, and refrains from advocating a fairytale ending for any of them.

These feelings or the “angsty girl archetype” are not entirely new, but this canvas now appears to feature shades of indifference and exhaustion as well. Mellisa Brown, assistant professor at the department of communication at Santa Clara University in California, US, and a scholar of black feminist thought, digital sociology and sexual politics, explains that the themes seen in popular culture in 2023 reflect the burnout of women.