The Obligation for Women to be Vulnerable Online
The topic of video essayist Lindsay Ellis quitting YouTube and content creation as a whole because of online harassment has already been covered to death, and, as one Redditor noted, Ellis very likely doesn’t want to be a subject of discourse anymore. So I don’t want to go into that subject specifically, but I do want to touch on one thing she said in her goodbye letter on Patreon: “I regret every time I showed any vulnerability — just more ammunition to be used against me later.”
I wanted to explore this subject back in April when all the shit had hit the fan regarding Ellis and the stupid Twitter fiasco, and she had to make that Mask Off video to explain and defend herself. In the video, she is essentially forced to regurgitate her trauma and discuss horrible experiences she had gone through, just to be forgiven by the general public. Just to be humanized in their eyes. She had to expose some of the most vulnerable parts of herself just to get people to recognize her humanity.
And it’s a bit of a trend. That isn’t to say that Ellis herself was deliberately playing into that trend, but rather that it’s become more standard for public female figures to have to discuss extremely personal manners with the world to garner any sympathy. A June 2021 article from The Conversation prompted me to think deeper about this issue. In the article, Kristen Lieb calls this tendency “emotional stripping,” the habit of famous women oversharing their personal trauma, ranging from sexual abuse to drug addiction, to mental health struggles. These types of stories get attention because, as Lieb puts it, “audiences devour trauma narratives.”
Model Pauline Shafir is an example of this on a smaller scale. In her first independent YouTube video where she introduces herself, she does a Q and A, and a couple of the questions asked if she’s ever struggled with mental health issues and if there was any part of her body she disliked. Shafir didn’t go too deeply into any details and the video didn’t get too personal, but it’s notable that these questions were asked of her, especially considering it was her introductory video and most people didn’t really know her. That the subject was brought up so casually is perhaps an indicator of what our culture’s expectations are of people, and specifically women, entering the public eye.
Lieb notes that with the introduction of social media, audiences had come to demand greater authenticity from the stars they followed. Ellis herself addresses this in her video, “YouTube: Manufacturing Authenticity (For Fun and Profit!)” In this, she discusses the need for creators to present a demeanor of being accessible to form a connection with the audience. Because it is generally understood that finding success as a creator is about more than the content you produce, it’s about how likable and relatable you are as a person.
We see this with our culture’s recent reevaluation of Britney Spears and Megan Fox. In the early 2000s, both women were often dismissed as untalented and remarkable only for their status as sex symbols. In 2018, there was a cultural shift in these attitudes following the #MeToo movement. Diablo Cody’s Jennifer’s Body became recognized as a powerful feminist film whose themes resonated with real-life issues women face. Part of the conversation around our modern analysis of the movie is how Megan Fox herself, the star of the film, was treated by Hollywood and the media. In a 2018 interview with Diablo Cody, Fox revealed the personal struggles she endured as a result of such treatment, admitting to having a mental breakdown and feeling like she was disposable in the eyes of Hollywood.
The rise in attention towards the #FreeBritney movement likewise led the media and society as a whole to reconsider their former treatment of Britney Spears, especially in response to the deeper understanding of her mental health struggles and the abuse she has suffered over the years. And we’ve seen similar changes in attitude towards the likes of Paris Hilton with her documentary This is Paris and Taylor Swift with Miss Americana, wherein the women these films focus on revealing their own history of trauma and abuse.
While these displays of honesty do a good job in earning sympathy for women who have been mistreated by our culture, they also, as Lieb points out, deprive them of what “should be the protective layer between herself and her audience.” And this expectation for public figures to discuss their personal trauma can pressure these people to put themselves through a process that may in fact be triggering, as it can force them to relive that trauma by discussing it.
The point being made isn’t to cast shame on these women for revealing the hardships they have been through, or even those who are receptive to such revelations in a sympathetic and supportive way. Rather, it’s to interrogate why it is women have to be traumatized and have to expose their suffering to be worthy of sympathy, to have their humanity acknowledged. These discussions should be had, openly and honestly, and public figures talking about these issues is indeed a good way to bring them into the window of discourse. But, as Princess Weekes commented on the Mask Off video, “no one should have to vivisect their soul” for the public’s satisfaction.
