Sad girl literature is often written by and about white women with no material obstacles in their lives. The protagonists often don’t have many intersecting identities; their (cis)gender is usually the only way they are oppressed.

I get why there is a backlash against these kinds of stories. As the climate changes and wars escalate, do we really need any more stories written by white women about white women’s problems? Sad girl literature has already been around for centuries anyway, arguably spearheaded by women like the 1960s’ poet Sylvia Plath and Charlotte Perkins Gilman who was writing autofiction about being gaslit in 1892.

Three of the people nominated for the Ockham prize for fiction last night were white women, and as Rebecca K Reilly noted on The Spinoff, 'The median Ockham winner is currently a white woman over 50 who lives in Wellington'. What more is there for sad girls to say?

The novel I wrote as a thesis for my MA in creative writing fits squarely into sad girl lit. A woman abandoned by a man loses the will to live and sets fire to her life et cetera and ad nauseam. As reality becomes increasingly dystopian, this kind of subject matter could be seen as trivial. But I like novels like these. I think they’re important, and I never tire of reading them. Their focus on failed romantic relationships and the downward social trajectory many of their protagonists inhabit could constitute a resistance to the patriarchal-capitalist ideal that has been imposed on much of the world − men, women, the LGBTQIA+ community and everyone in between.

Protagonists in sad girl literature protest the current culture by opting out, dropping out and sometimes taking drugs to silence the parts of themselves that want more but aren’t sure what more looks like. Arguably these novels are about the impossibility of unearthing feminine desire within the patriarchy. What happens when you have it all, but none of it was what you really wanted?

Ottessa Moshfegh has described her novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation − where a woman endeavours to heal herself by sleeping for an entire year − as satire and not a proposed course of action. But satire speaks to social and cultural norms and allows us to see the ideology we unconsciously live in and often unquestioningly accept. With the rise of trad wives, Ozempic and plastic surgery being casually marketed as if it’s an everyday decision, it’s easy to see why dropping out feels so seductive.

Although not necessarily sad girl literature, Emily Perkins’ new novel Lioness −which just won the 2024 Jann Medlicott Acorn prize for fiction at the Ockham Awards − meets some of the criteria. It’s written by a white woman about a white woman, Therese Thorne, whose curated life is beginning to unravel.

When her rich, white husband’s business ethics are questioned, Therese starts to examine her privilege and complicity in the patriarchy. Her disintegration is exacerbated by her relationship with Claire, a woman who lives in her building. Claire appears to be reimagining herself, moving away from social expectations of how women should be. She’s gone off her antidepressants, stopped wearing makeup and is experimenting with subverting gendered labour roles in her marriage. Claire critiques modern-day feminism as being in thrall to consumerism and the patriarchy when she rails against the idea of ‘radical self-care’ and the almost meaningless ubiquity of the term in our current paradigm of wellness.

Sad girl literature arguably posits an attitude of anti-wellness as self-care. When things start falling apart, Perkins's protagonist buys cigarettes and eats petrol station pies. Moshfegh’s takes prescription drugs and sleeps for days at a time. In Claire Vaye Watkins’s 2021 novel I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness, self-care is reimagined as a disappearing act where the protagonist doesn’t see her husband and young child for a year while she travels across the Mojave Desert with a new lover. Not necessarily what you’d post on Instagram.

There is something deeply problematic about all of this. Even having the means of dropping out exposes these characters’ privilege and complicated relationship to the dominant culture. And these kinds of modes of resistance can be seen as passive and potentially self-destructive at best. But that’s why sad girl literature is important. There’s a lot to feel sad about.

Sad girls let folks imagine what it could be like to drop out of the grind. They let us reimagine self-care and wonder how it would feel to do nothing but rest for a year and stop buying makeup and clothes and the endless array of stuff we’re told we’re supposed to want. They float the idea that romantic relationships don’t have to be the endgame. They expose the failings of feminism through their complicity. They traverse the no-woman's-land of social transgression and feel for what might still be possible.

There’s so much more that sad girls need to say.

Creativity, evocative visual storytelling and good journalism come at a price. Support our work and join the Ensemble membership program