Portrayal of Mental Illness in the Media (Critique of "Pretty Girls Make Graves" by D.W. Anselmo)

Cover of "How Female Suicide Became a Cultural Obsession"

Bitch Media posted an article by D.W. Anselmo yesterday called, "How Female Suicide Became a Cultural Obsession." Anselmo critiques the dangerous narrative of young white female suicide in U.S. culture.

The article is an interesting read, as she frames the story as a feminist issue. Starting with photographs of women falling to their deaths in the 1940s, Anselmo explains that men like Andy Warhol took these crime seen photographs and called them art. Anselmo powerfully writes, "The message is loud and clear: Killing yourself may not be so terrible a fate if a man might later elevate your corpse into art." 

Anselmo implies throughout the article that the emotional labor of femininity sometimes becomes too much for women and drives them to suicide. In the discussion of suicide today, Anselmo merely points out the show 13 Reasons Why as a relevant example of female suicide in the media. She then continues on to a discussion about cyberbullying. 

Anselmo's unresearched reasons as to why females may attempt suicide are simplistic opinions that she has created, probably as a product of how suicide is discussed in the media. She never discusses biological reasons why females might be depressed, like postpartum depression or clinical mental illness such as depression. This is a narrative that media outlets ignore. 

Additionally, Anselmo brushes by the fact that "white cisgender men die by suicide 3.5x more often than women" (they are more likely to have deadlier attempts) and that "40 percent of transgender adults attempt suicide." The media symbolically annihilates suicide and mental illness to the point where even a liberal media outlet seeking to call out how suicide is portrayed in the media cannot even have a well-rounded discussion about it. I am disappointed that Anselmo did not use anybody's lived experience in this entire 1,500-word article. Instead the author does not seek out voices of those affected by suicide or media experts to discuss the issue.