Teenage Girls and The Crucible

[Wandawomble]

I just showed this film to my dd - it’s a stunning example of teenage social contagion - any others?

Heavenly Creatures is another film we’ve watched recently

• and discussion of wider scale things like the pro-ana and the self harm - you see pockets of girls involved and influenced. What are the hallmarks of this kind of behaviour do you think? Her observations were interesting - she said that self harm for instance is being very much glamorised online - pictures of depressed looking girls with long sleeves and statements like “no one knows me” - she said it’s very deliberately designed with an appealing aesthetic.

I love The Crucible! Not sure I have anything to add but I completely agree with your thoughts.

The entire mental health leaning which social media for kids has taken is very concerning. TikTok especially is full of videos of sad, pretty girls who self-harm and I DO think it's being glamorised as are a plethora of other mental health problems.

I don't know what the answer to it is though...I have no doubt that it's a version of the 90s Heroin Chic thing...I clearly remember starving myself to look more unwell and 'glamorously thin' as well as meddling with drugs just to seem cool.

I suspect every generation has a version of this - where girls are controlled by making them feel they belong.

Yes but who's doing the controlling with this TikTok stuff? It's rife...I don't see men encouraging that sort of thing.

I have been googling for a film that I'm reminded of but can remember little of!

It might be set in Australia, possibly at a girls' school, and many of the teenage students were all experiencing seizures or fainting or something. There was an investigation but no cause was found.

The only thing I've googled that seems similar is a book called The Fever by a Megan Abbot. I've not read it.

Does anyone else know what I'm barely remembering?!

Also, just found The Crucible on Disney+ and I've added it to my watch list so thank you!

is it picnic at hanging rock?

i loved the crucible- i'll look up the film?

disneyplus - brilliant

It's newet than Picnic at Hanging Rock - I'd say it was in the last 20 years.

I feel like it was a bit of a Kate Winslet-y film so I'm going to look at IMDB now.

....not a Winslet.

Though she was in Heavenly Creatures (love that film) and also, ironically, Contagion.

@FortunesFave

Yes but who's doing the controlling with this TikTok stuff? It's rife...I don't see men encouraging that sort of thing.

Yes exactly!!!!

The recent mass hysteria film with the Australian girls fainting was The Falling.

As I remember, in my youth, I was considered a bit of a leader...I dressed very 'cool' and girls wanted to be my friend. I was at one point very underweight and one day, I fainted during a rehearsal...for a week, girls fainted during rehearsal.

They were obviously imitating me. I think girls do it themselves.

But in my 'cool' attire and attitude and thinness was a very real desire to please men.

So I suppose it's still media and film and TV that's responsible ultimately.
This is why we need more women in TV and film. More female writers and directors.

The Fits is another excellent 2015 film.
While training at the gym 11-year-old tomboy Toni becomes entranced with a dance troupe. As she struggles to fit in she finds herself caught up in danger as the group begins to suffer from fainting spells and other violent fits.

TikTok especially is full of videos of sad, pretty girls who self-harm and I DO think it's being glamorised as are a plethora of other mental health problems.

I think there is something here about valid ways of displaying distress, as well as what are considered legitimate reasons for emotional distress in teenage girls.

It's said a lot on this board that being a teenage girl is pretty grim - unwanted sexual attention, menstruation, potentially having your life and freedom curtailed hugely compared with teenage boys. On top of that, many girls may be experiencing difficult or traumatic things, like bereavement, parental divorce, abuse or neglect.

All of those things are hard to talk about and to articulate even for adults, let alone teenagers. And in a group of friends teens can feel like they are the only one who has something big going on in their life, while everyone else is obsessed with boys and selfie filters (even if lots of people in the peer group are feeling the same on the inside).

On top of that again, I think there is a big push in parenting to try to shield children from anything negative, with the implicit expectation that children should be happy all the time. I think that can mean that teaching emotional intelligence - recognising and articulating emotions, sitting with sadness and anger without being overwhelmed - can be completely neglected. So when teenagers experience difficult complex feelings and difficult complex situations, they can really struggle to manage.

I also think we all learn from society about what are culturally acceptable ways and reasons to be unhappy. If there are lots of articles about tragic deaths from anorexia, alongside arty pictures of soulful emaciated girls with perfect makeup; or Instagram / Tiktok videos about self harm are getting loads of supportive messages about how brave and strong they are; what we learn is that these are the ways that distress is recognised. This is particularly important for teenage girls, who may have internalised the message that they need to discount their feelings in favour of others and who may potentially believe that distress is only valid if it is recognised by others.

There's a book called "Crazy like us" by Ethan Waters, which explores this idea of a culturally localised "symptom pool" that changes over time. It feels to me like anorexia, self-harm, maybe binge eating, along with the associated narratives, are available to women and girls in the UK as ways of expressing, explaining and managing complex emotional distress in a culturally accepted and understood manner.

I worked with young people with mental health issues for a while and we were seeing an increase in glamourisation of self-harm. Social media and TikTok particularly were involved.

You can see a difference when the proponents start wandering around with short sleeves and scratches that look like they were done falling into a bramble patch. What could once be viewed as cries for help has become outright attention seeking, and I only hope that resources will still be prioritised for the former group.

It’s not fashionable to say that though: you have to pick your audience.

The Crucible is a great play/film.

What went so wrong in the 90s? Thinness has been glamourised ever since the 'thin is in' and 'heroin chic' fashion campagins. The previous models were very slim but womanly, lots were hourglass shaped.

The ana/mia propaganda always show thin, willowy girls with long, glossy hair. Anyone who has seen an anorexic person or the pictures on Nikki Grahame's GoFundMe page can attest that there is nothing glamorous about EDs. Where does the attraction to this frail aesthetic come from? Its very disturbing.

Great to be having these discussions with your daughter, OP.

Sorry just remembered Heathers is another film along those lines.

That film is ‘the falling’: there’s a few details and some discussion in this piece, below. Women and girls are generally more sensitive and vulnerable to social pressure: non-conformism tends to be pretty savagely repressed by all of society, for all that conformism is often sneered at (thinking for instance of corrective rape, witch trials, Islamic fundamentalism). Can’t win, can we?

www.theguardian.com/film/2015/mar/29/carol-morley-the-falling-mass-hysteria-is-a-powerful-group-activity

The world of teenage girls is an interesting one to explore and it seems to me to be getting a tougher time to grow up with much higher expectations and demands for perfection. The novel: "The Girls" by Emma Cline, which bears more than a passing resemblance to the Manson story, demonstrates a clear connection between lonely misunderstood girls and their susceptibility to cult (or group) thinking.

I thought this thread was going to be about snooker and was intrigued but it isn't so never mind, oh and yes The Crucible is a great film.

I’ve also posted a thread to explore the role of women in cults - as both recruiters and victims. Obviously there are parallels we see in all sorts of things but would be good to have two threads that don’t get taken down but where we can explore the expectations and pressures that lead to girls and women to be captured by dangerous ideologies. I used to self harm when I lived in a children’s home - all the girls did - it was absolutely social contagion and we wore it like a badge of honour - our scars were an emblem of our pain. But it was without a doubt something we all did - all 10 of us - because we saw each other doing it.

Sometimes it was near hysteria - one or two of the girls were particular fanatical about the cutting and would go further and further to show how damaged they were. The screaming and tantrums and hospital visits we all engaged in - we were under a spell.

I used to self harm when I lived in a children’s home - all the girls did - it was absolutely social contagion and we wore it like a badge of honour - our scars were an emblem of our pain. But it was without a doubt something we all did - all 10 of us - because we saw each other doing it.

That sounds absolutely heartbreaking Wandawomble, I'm do sorry that you all went through so much.

This idea of physical symbols of pain is really important. I've worked in a CAMHS ward and I've seen similar social contagion of self-harm behaviours. Some of the patients were also worried that their friends or siblings would pick things up from themselves - partly out of genuine concern, but also because there was almost a sense that their distress was not valid unless they were uniquely more distressed than everyone else.

One of the things that I think we take from girls very young is the idea that their feelings are valid. No-one has to tell you that you are sad for your sadness to be true. Your sadness didn't have too be about the worst thing that ever happened to anyone for you to deserve to experience sadness, grief or loss. And in fact, no-one but you can validate your own feelings - you can't be looking constantly to others to tell you how you think and feel. Of course, what you choose to do in response to your feelings is another matter - but you still need to acknowledge them first!