Stop Romanticizing Mental Illness in Television

Ever since Euphoria was announced, I was hooked. I mean, let's be honest, ever since I found out that Zendaya was going to be in it, I knew I would have to watch. Personally, I really like Euphoria. I think it is a really good show that showcases dark subject matter in a careful light. I could talk about this show for hours. Some of my closest friends even watched it, and having someone else to talk about it with made me revisit the show AGAIN and now has me thinking about how this show has affected pop culture. This has become more evident with a past TikTok trend of people having Euphoria-themed parties. This usually entails people wearing neon colored things under fishnets, crop tops, and bold eyeshadow. Although the makeup and wardrobe showcased on Euphoria is stunning, and should be given a lot of credit, that is not the only takeaway viewers should have after watching Euphoria. Euphoria is a complex show that handles a lot of heavy issues. It has become very impressionable on its viewers (clearly), and I feel as though people should consider being more cautious when they consume media that covers mental illness. There are several shows similar to Euphoria that have fallen victim to using characters with mental illness more as plot points and storylines rather than raising awareness and showing the struggles people have while dealing with these certain struggles. I am not saying that Euphoria is doing this, but I am saying that as audience members, we should be cautious about the characters we look up to in shows like these.

Back in the early 2000s, there was a show called Skins. It was very similar to Euphoria, except it took place in Bristol, England. This obviously means I, at the young age of 13, just out of my intense Harry Potter phase and was deep into an obsession with anything British, was very intrigued by this show. It could be considered similar to Euphoria based on the content they cover in their shows. One is not based on the other, but they both cover teens and how they handle heavy issues at such a young age like mental illness, addiction, and serious family problems. The shows cover such dark and daring subject matter that, unknowingly, can really affect its viewers, especially younger ones. I think that is what we are seeing with Euphoria, because after watching Skins at such a young age, I can now look back and see that it actually really affected me. I think I didn’t fully understand the characters' struggles on Skins, which made it easier to take in their habits. Shows like this are not meant for molding minds. They are meant to tell stories and experiences that are not always pretty. In that way, these shows are very important and should be aired. However, I feel like these shows are on a slippery slope of viewing mental illness in a romantic, or aesthetically pleasing, light as their viewers are more impressionable than they appear.

This is similar to Skins. They put together a cast of good looking people in, for the time, edgy and fun fashion which instantly hooked teens. I think that this is why the show got a lot of traction. However, I feel like a problem with TV shows like Euphoria and Skins is that the characters and what they go through tend to become glorified; the concept of dressing like these characters and taking on their mannerisms and praising them can lead to glorifying their mental illnesses. This Halloween, I noticed that several people dressed up as Maddy from Euphoria. As iconic as the fit is, the scene when Maddy wears this she is on narcotics and confronts her abusive boyfriend. I know that this could be considered a leap from just copying a characters wardrobe and makeup to glorifying their mental illnesses, but I say that with first-hand experience because when I was younger watching Skins, that is exactly what I did.

Skins two most iconic female characters are Effy and Cassie. Effy was the epitome of every Tumblr girl’s icon in 2012. She was mysterious, wore all black and dark makeup, smoked… SHE WAS THE BLUEPRINT FOR 2012 TUMBLR! However, her character is severely depressed and suicidal. The show and the characters in it were so focused on how pretty she was and how calm and collected she was that her depression and darker side seemed to just make her more mysterious rather than showing the audience how a teenager handles depression while going through what Effy went through. Then there was Cassie from Skins. She was mainly seen as the light of the show. She was always so smiley and sweet. She really gave off edgy Luna Loveood vibes the more I think about it. Cassie also had just recovered from an eating disorder at the beginning of Skins, and throughout the show she struggles with falling back into her eating disorder. Both of these characters are icons in this series, they were superficially the embodiment of cool kids that everyone looked up to, but their storylines didn’t help with the way that their mental illnesses were glorified. Whether it was love interests that thought they could “save” these girls from their mental illness or just painting these characters as misunderstood, at the time, I never realized that they were romanticizing their mental illnesses and disorders. This is something that I see happening with Euphoria, and as someone who fell victim to romanticizing Skins characters I feel like we need to take this seriously.

When I first watched Skins, I was in middle school. That is a weird time to watch a show about teenagers acting way older than they are when I was just getting my period. These kids were going to clubs and doing drugs and smoking, and the craziest thing I did at that time was go to movies with my friends at the mall. I was honestly too young to be watching that show, and was really insecure so watching a show about pretty people who were cool and mysterious. One of the main things I’ve always been really conscious of is my weight. So when I was watching Skins and saw Cassie, who was really pretty, likable, and skinny, I saw her as someone that I would want to be rather than someone who was recovering from a very serious eating disorder. In fact, there was one scene in Cassie's episode where someone asks her how she got away with her eating disorder for so long. She then goes on a whole monologue with a demonstration of how she would handle her food and distract those around her from noticing that she wasn’t eating. This particular scene was really dark and overall sad to see how little people pay attention. At the time though, I never really noticed, but I started to subconsciously do what Cassie did when I ate.

I would just like to clarify that I do not have an eating disorder. I feel like that could be very easily alluded to with the subject matter and goes with what I’m trying to say, but I’m not trying to claim I ever had an eating disorder. I just developed really unhealthy disordered eating habits and a really unhealthy mindset that still sticks with me today. Throughout middle school and high school, I would either just eat chips for lunch or either end up throwing away half of my lunch. Even sometimes when people would question why I didn’t finish my meal I would mess up my meal so it looked like I had eaten more than I actually did. Now, there were days that I actually would eat all of my food, but there were definitely days on days where I gave into my disordered eating habits and would have my first actual meal at 7 p.m. In no way am I saying that Skins is at fault for my unhealthy eating habits and mindset, but I did develop a lot of the characters' habits while watching the show. It wasn’t until later in life that I had even realized that I had taken on some of Cassie's tactics. I was talking to someone about how easy it is to cover up how much you actually eat by messing up your food just to seem like you touched more than you actually did. I still subconsciously will catch myself getting caught up in a conversation and in return barely touching my food. I never meant for it to be something I picked up from the show, but I guess middle school me noticed how nobody pays attention to how much food you actually eat and I’ve been doing it ever since.

I do believe that the show gave a voice to those who struggle with addiction and mental illness in an age where talking about certain subjects felt so wrong to even think about bringing up. I commend the show for starting conversations about very serious matters. However, looking back, I think there were a lot of times that the show used their mental illnesses as a way to add more depth to the characters. I think that this is very evident in the character Effy. Throughout the show I loved her and her silent coolness. I do remember thinking that she was involved in several plot lines that just used her mental illness as a way to make her seem more mysterious and hard to get. She was in a love triangle where neither boy really understood her mental illness. Her therapist even falls in love with her and never really treats her for her depression. She is the one of the key examples for using mental illness as a character trait and not as a real struggle that affects so many people. This is the main reason why I think it is so easy for people who watch these shows to easily get caught up in the drama and aesthetic of it all that they confuse it with the seriousness that these problems bring with them. It is even harder for a younger audience to grasp.

Euphoria, although very similar to Skins, has attempted to try and take out the romanticization that comes with making a TV show about teenagers' struggles. I believe that they have done a lot to try and show the grimmer parts and the longer lasting effects that these problems can have on people when they are indulged. They’ve depicted times where Rue was depressed or struggling with addiction, and there was nothing aesthetically pleasing about it. It was heart wrenching, real, and there was no rose colored lens to it. As much as I am a big fan of the show and their depiction of these heavy topics, I don’t think that it always does this perfectly, and I think that is why there are trends based on the show today and themed Euphoria parties. I know that the cast, the wardrobe, and the makeup is completely iconic, but I just feel like people mistake the characters' looks on the show with the very real struggles these characters are going through. I know that this is a hard line to walk between raising awareness and glorifying, and I think that overall Euphoria does an excellent job of trying to show the ugly along with the vulnerability and hope that comes with being a teenager. I feel like this problem is huge with the main character Rue. Rue is played by Zendaya, so besides Rue's character being overall witty, loving, and caring, being played by Zendaya makes this character even more loved by the audience. Rue is very complex and throughout the first season (which is all we’ve seen so far) is battling addiction and trying to handle her mental health. Euphoria does an excellent job of showing the hard and challenging parts of this journey while also showing the glimmers of hope Rue feels when she believes she is getting better. I’ve seen a lot of people compare Rue to Effy in their aesthetics and it worries me that audience members are going to try and start doing the same things that Skins did.

There are a bunch of shows, movies, and books that I have read and watched throughout the years that are very clear examples of romanticizing mental illness (I’m looking at you Thirteen Reasons Why and John Green just as an author in general!). When consuming these types of media you have to make sure that you are emotionally mature enough to take in what is being presented. It is so easy to get caught up in the look of something, and what entertainment can have us perceive of certain things. The biggest problem with Skins was that the way that it portrayed mental illness was very vague and generic. If you look at the two characters I mentioned, Effy and Cassie, you will see that this is just one way of describing mental illness. These characters have storylines that just dramatize mental illness and the show itself has male characters going about these women’s storylines acting like they can “fix” them. This is just a terrible example of portraying mental illness and could portray to the audience that having these disorders and mental illness could make someone more desirable to people. By having these storylines and characters, the show easily manipulated the way the audience depicts mental illness. When in reality, mental illness and eating disorders are not pretty things that only one kind of person can go through. That is why I worry about the way that people depict Euphoria and look up to the characters. Again, I believe that Euphoria has done a better job at diversifying (even though we can all agree that the show could be more diverse) and showing different struggles teenagers can go through, but I worry for the audience who watches Euphoria.

I’ve seen the thousands of TikToks of people having Euphoria themed parties, and even the ones recreating makeup looks to the song “Still Don’t Know My Name” by Labrinth. As someone who watched Skins and literally subconsciously learned how to get away with my disordered eating habits, I believe that we as audience members need to be more aware of what shows are trying to teach us with the storylines and characters they bring into existence instead of turning them into trends. Shows today have now tried to put out more warnings before shows and after the shows put hotlines and resources to help those who may experience anything depicted in the show. This is a good step to showing audience members that these topics are no joke. However, it is ultimately up to us, as the audience, to be more cautious when watching shows like Skins and Euphoria. Mental illness and addiction are very serious topics and we should treat them as such, and when they are used in shows, movies, and books, they should be treated just as seriously, not as quirks that make people mysterious or plot points.