She is young. But, she is far from free. Think of cult classics “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” by Ottessa Moshfegh or “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath. Or, the cinema adaptation of Susanna Kaysen’s memoir, “Girl, Interrupted” starring Winona Ryder and a heroin-chic blond Angelina Jolie. Since their publications, all three works have assumed a prominent place in a feminine, playfully downtrodden digital culture coined as “lobotomy chic” — an aesthetic that champions a “disassociative, nihilistic” perception of the world adopted by young women, often as a shield from sexist societal pressures and their toxic health byproducts. The semi-romanticized yet relatable mental deteriorations of characters in the aforementioned books are casually referenced across Pinterest moodboards, Instagram memepages, and TikToks with thousands of likes by social media users. Their popularity makes sense in a young generation where mental health disorder diagnoses have skyrocketed, with a rate twice as high for Generation Z’s young women.
In all referenced books, the protagonists are conventionally attractive, upper-class White women navigating extreme manifestations of mental illness. Absent from all books are people of color as central agents in the story, rather than background characters or projected-upon public figures. However, it is worth noting that Iranian-American Moshfegh does so in “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” as a critique of the protagonist’s toxic White, socioeconomically affluent femininity. But concurrently, female authors of color beyond Moshfegh have carved out their own space in regard to what writer Ana Hernandez coins as the “madwoman” archetype central to lobotomy chic literature. That is where “Post-Traumatic” by Chantal V. Johnson enters the scene.
“Post-Traumatic” follows the story of Vivian, an Afro-Latina public interest attorney working in the confines of New York City’s institutionalized mental healthcare system. Early in the book, readers witness Vivian shift between the detached, professionalized persona she assumes in the workplace and what Johnson describes as a “survivalist” mindset in her non-professional life. Vivian’s survivalism manifests as a bloodlust for control in the name of self-defense.
To cater to the gaze of the beauty standard exemplified by the lobotomy chic aesthetic — a wisp thinness, usually the result of anorexia nervosa — Vivian embarks on a spiral of disordered eating, restricting caloric intake at extremes and exercising off every perceived ounce of fat. To lose it all is an achievement of proven worthiness. Ahead of and during every date, each hair flip and remark is acutely formulated. To Vivian, for a man to flirt back “is everything,” as in her mind, flirting is nothing less than an affirmation of love, even if the initiating man views it as “nothing.” When confronted with this reality face-to-face with a married romantic interest, she curtly weaponizes the parallel struggles of another woman’s mental health struggles to cope. The fallout leaves Vivian navigating a fractured interpersonal image, isolation, and subsequent reformation. The end result is a more introspective, healed, and less male-dependent iteration of Vivian’s personhood.
Every calculated, and at times self-destructive, step is an attempt by Vivian to escape traumas of sexual and emotional violence in past relationships. Her behaviors are manifestations of prolonged post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from the death of her brother — a convicted child sex offender — and her own rape as a child. Here, sexual violence is a central theme similar to the work of Sylvia Plath, whom Johnson cites as a core inspiration and a pioneer of “gendered anger” in feminist literature. Vivian’s PTSD compounds with verbal, financial, and physical abuse experienced at the hands of her close relatives, resulting in her estrangement from them by the novel’s conclusion.
Fundamentally, “Post-Traumatic” and madwoman literature writ large wrestles with the way women are conditioned to chase the male gaze — typically of an older, predatory male figure — and the process of its breakdown, allowing women to genuinely break free from internalized patriarchal standards and release the lingering harm of it, too. Here, a space for Black women in the madwoman genre can be a relatable comfort and form of representation by Black women. The perceived, often-lauded “strength” of Black women is an armor of necessity, and Vivian is no exception to the flipside of strength’s wounds. In a culture where any aspect of our self-expression — our laugh, our evidenced truth, our hair, and our skin — is hyper-scrutinized as an inherent disqualification of our personhood, survival emerges at the cost of our wellbeing. Books like “Post-Traumatic” play a central role in normalizing such conversations and discuss the relationship between mental health and racial marginalization in a readily accessible format: that of a relatable and witty novel.
We, too, can experience Plath-esque literary comfort by us, for us.
