A deep dive into Femcels and Mental Illness on the Internet

Mental illness and the Internet have always gone hand in hand. Anyone on Tumblr during its golden age will remember the romanticisation of depression, anxiety and eating disorders rampant on the website. Black and white photos of emaciated girls and fuzzy, lo-fi pictures of Bart Simpson with edgy quotes overlayed. While this openness about mental suffering helped jumpstart the conversation surrounding mental health, it’s safe to say being depressed was all the rage. Tumblr was also the place many of us first learned about feminism, allowing a generation to become the face of social justice. Today, with TikTok as the trendy new teen social media platform, there has been a resurgence in memes and culture surrounding mental illness as we see evidence once again that history is doomed to repeat itself.

‘Incels’, short for involuntary celibates, are an online community of men who struggle to attract women sexually, leading them to foster an atmosphere of hatred and misogyny. While originally being a small subculture primarily found on Reddit and 4chan, incels drew mainstream media attention following the extremist mass murder by Elliot Rodger in 2014.

In the wake of mass attention on incels a new, mostly satirical, subculture has risen: femcels. On the surface, femcels are female incels. However, the word has been used recently to describe an aesthetic mainly found on TikTok complete with media and style associated with femcel or ‘female manipulator’ culture. Here is a handy checklist of things that make you a femcel:

• Listening to Fiona Apple, Mitski, Phoebe Bridgers, Lana del Rey and a whole host of other women musicians who predominantly make woeful music. This seems to be a counter to ‘male manipulator’ music, such as Radiohead, The Smiths, Weezer and Neutral Milk Hotel. Even Taylor Swift has been described as femcel music, despite pop rarely making the list.

• Reading books with themes of mental illness, despair and complicated relationships, for example The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, My Year of Rest & Relaxation by Odessa Moshfegh and Normal People by Sally Rooney. The modern femcel is well-read and intelligent, believing that men are too emotionally stunted to understand.

• Basing your personality around characters from media like Fleabag, Girl, Interrupted, Black Swan, Gone Girl and Promising Young Woman. Being in your ‘Fleabag era’ is a self-imposed downfall, self-sabotage, being the problem. An overarching theme of the femcel subculture is knowing you are the sole reason for your despondency and owning it.

• Being mentally ill. This is where we see a repeat of the culture surrounding mental illness on Tumblr, rehashed with new mental illnesses being desirable. Femcels have depression, anxiety, borderline personality disorder. They are emotionally unstable, exhibit impulsive behaviour and have intense but unstable relationships with others. This is romanticised into feelings of melancholy, longing and wistfulness, which can lead to self-diagnosing and an unwillingness to seek help for fear of not being unique or interesting.

The femcel subculture is perhaps a response to ‘girlboss’ feminism, a brand of female empowerment encouraging women to be the ‘She-EO’ and do everything a man can do, in a pair of high heels. This sickly sweet, often infantilising movement is mostly dismissed by Generation Z, leading to this new wave of feminism. To quote Fleabag, “women are born with pain built in” and instead of trying to rise above this inequality, femcels have resigned themselves to nihilism and wallowing in despair. Despite the core idea of femcels being that they cannot attract men, the aesthetic is still one of melancholic beauty and still appeals to the male gaze. It is harmful because it perpetuates the idea to young, impressionable teenage girls that they need a white knight to save them from their depression instead of healing and saving themselves. Mitchell, creator of the TikTok account @femcelfreedomfighter, makes satirical videos from the point of view of a femcel’s boyfriend, with popular videos including “Baby don’t worry, we can take as long as you need, I know what Lexapro be doin to y’all” and “Damn baby you’re so much funnier since you’ve become incredibly depressed”. Mitchell has stated he does not intend to come across as anti-women, however this glamorisation of depression symptoms further encourages young women to exhibit these behaviours to seem unique and even desirable.

In short, femcels and the Internet’s fascination with mental illness have their pros and cons. It can normalise feelings and symptoms, allowing people to not feel alone when it comes to mental health and can even lead to individuals seeking help. However, glamorising depression and borderline personality disorder is not healthy, it promotes wallowing in self-pity and even encourages self-destructive behaviours. While satire can make light of otherwise harrowing subjects, we must remember not to do a disservice to the increasingly younger audience on social media.