The Art of Shopping for Your Identity

In my early teens, I had a lot of exposure to how teenage girls were portrayed in the media. It seemed that on every platform I went on, the struggle of being a girl was romanticized, but it was not until I grew up that I started realizing how unknowingly influential these tropes and depictions can really be. While some teenage girls were entranced by “sad girl” artists like Lana del Rey and depressed characters like Rue in Euphoria and Cecelia in The Virgin Suicides, other teens on tumblr were posting inspo with glamorized pictures of these figures. The first season of Euphoria, by Sam Levinson, was released in 2019 on HBO Max, and quickly became one of the most watched shows amongst young people. The show follows teens as they go through their last two years of high school, often hitting bumps in the road on their journeys. Euphoria exhibits high school juniors and seniors acting like adults, as they abuse drugs, sustain inappropriate relationships with people twice their age, and live in the absence of supportive parental figures. Another teenage classic is 1999’s The Virgin Suicides, which is based on a novel of the same name by Jeffrey Eugenides, and was directed by Sofia Coppola, marking her directorial debut. The story follows five teenage sisters aged from 13-17 years old and is told through their male friends’ perspective as they try to cope with the fact and solve the mystery of why the girls committed suicide all within the same year. Other influences on teenagers come from music, as teenagers tend to not only idolize the music that artists make but also the artist themselves. Lana del Rey is one such artist, as she is a 21st century hit singer who gained popularity through her army of sad teenage girls. Her first hit album Born to Die was released in early 2012, and she has continued to see commercial success since. Media, whether it’s visual, audio, or social, greatly influences the lives of teenagers, and can encourage them to adopt certain personalities and traits that mimic their favorite characters, artists, and influencers. When the media glamorizes and romanticizes the lives of struggling teens, it can be hard for teenagers to decipher between what is a normal teenage experience and what is concerningly adult. Media that glorifies the struggles of teenage life, such as drug-abuse, eating disorders, and self harm, becomes dangerous once revealed to an impressionable audience. Teenage girls fall victim to various architypes and trends that are presented to them as they are fed exaggerated ideas of what their teenage years should look like, causing them to subconsciously shop for their identity and shape their lives around the troubled characters in their favorite shows or influencers on their favorite platforms.

While T.V. shows about young people that are intended for a same-aged audience might highlight certain struggles of being a teenager, it can still be dangerous to display these troubles in an aestheticized way. By masking concerning experiences like drug use or inappropriate relationships with beautiful cinematography, the message becomes muffled, potentially being mistaken as glamorizing them by a younger audience. Excessive narcotic use is at the core of Euphoria’s identity, as it seems as if every other character is on some form of hard drugs. In season 1, episode 2, Stuntin’ Like my Daddy, Rue and her love interest, Jules, decide to take a drug that is unknown to the viewer, as well as the characters themselves, in an attempt to feel something. This decision is followed by an alluring scene painted with hues of purple as Rue and Jules are covered in glitter.

As said by Dani Di Placido, who writes for Forbes, “It wouldn’t be the first time that the moral of a story is drowned out by a glamorous aesthetic; Euphoria’s seductive cinematography, a delirious haze of lurid light and sparkling skin, beautifully depicts the highs and lows of drug addiction.” The alluring visuals paired with the characters’ actions lead viewers to perceive the risky choices made as valid options that appear to be not nearly as damaging as they can be in reality. Additionally, as their voices blend with the background music and the viewer feels like they are being taken on the trip with them, Jules says, “What's wrong?” (Euphoria 11:26) and Rue replies, “Just so happy” (Euphoria 11:32), amplifying the nirvana they are feeling in the moment. The scene ends with a montage of the characters in this euphoric state with background music that has lyrics saying “I'm on top of the world” as Rue continues, “I know you're not allowed to say it, but drugs are kinda cool.” (Euphoria 12:23). These visuals and dialogue might influence impressionable teens to try drugs, even though it is followed with a flashback of Rue overdosing a few months earlier as she narrates; “I mean they’re cool before they wreck your skin” (Euphoria 12:40), also acknowledging the struggles that coincide with being an addict. Sam Levinson’s approach provides the audience with very explicit information and scenes of drug use, but when faced with an influx of straightforward information, audiences will choose to take the message at face value, rather than interpreting the deeper meaning behind such scenes. According to Jean Baudrillard, a French sociologist and philosopher, “information dissolves meaning and dissolves the social, in a sort of nebulous state dedicated not to a surplus of innovation, but, on the contrary, to total entropy” (Baudrillard 46). As people are given more information, there becomes less space to extract meaning from it, reducing the emotional impact of stories within the media. With this lack of meaning, society no longer improves or searches for new meaning, but rather begins to devolve into a state of disorder. In media like Euphoria, certain scenes are written in a way for the viewers to receive information that appears so straightforward that they no longer attempt to derive significance from it. This lack of critical thought and understanding leads people to lives of simplicity in which they see situations expressed in media and base their decisions on the face value, rather than the implied consequences. While Euphoria tries to address the dangers of being addicted through Rue’s experiences, they tend to gloss over the casual drug use of the “cool” characters. In Season 1 Episode 4, Shook Ones Pt. 2, Cassie and Maddy, who are on the more popular side of the highschool spectrum, are seen getting molly from a local drug dealer, Fezco. The process of getting it takes many steps, making it exclusive to only those in the know. First, the girls go to Fezco and ask him where molly is, as if were is a person. He says in code, “She over there workin at the pretzel stand” (Euphoria 19:56) and points them in the direction of where Ashtray, Frezco’s 12 year old apprentice and younger brother, is “working.” Cassie and Maddy then give a ticket they got from Fezco to Ashtray when they arrive at the Pretzel Stand, letting him know what they really want. Ashtray finally tucks the molly in the pretzel wrapping and charges them $20 for each pretzel. The portal of this system and Maddy and Cassie’s impromptu drug-taking adds to the fact that Euphoria normalizes these actions, potentially making young viewers believe that this is what their teenage years should look like. Between the drug-induced visuals and the casualty of acquiring drugs, those watching the show may find it acceptable to participate in these behaviors in their own lives and potentially adopt the identities presented to them through their screen.

Even the characters in Euphoria are on the hunt for a new identity inspired by their own experiences and exposure to their friend’s social media posts and personas. In Season 2, Cassie starts to focus more on her looks after she first sleeps with Maddy’s ex-boyfriend, Nate. There are multiple occasions where she wakes up at 4 in the morning to present the best version of herself to Nate, but soon realizes that her own style is not enough to get acknowledged by him. As Cassie craves continuous attention from Nate, she begins to morph into her own best friend, Nate's old girlfriend, to get in his field of vision. By Episode 3, she and Maddy run into each other at school, both wearing the same outfit and hairstyle, which also happens to be the first day that Nate chooses to notice her (Euphoria 33:46).

Cassie immediately runs away in embarrassment once Maddy notices that she is copying her.

Cassie registers that she has gone to extremes to get Nate's attention, but can’t help herself because of the overbearing pressure to stand out, much like Euphoria’s possible audience. What the teenage viewers of the show might not acknowledge or realize, however, is that Sydney Sweeney, who plays Cassie, is not an accurate representation of a 16 year old girl as she herself was 24 when season 2 was filmed. When teenage characters are played by fully developed adults, comparison between the teenage viewer and the “teenage” character becomes unrealistic, as a 15 year old will never look like the adult women that they see on the screen. Viewers begin to change their own perception of what teenagers might look and act like due to the media they consume, which then causes false conceptions of how they should be spending their own teenage years.

Comparatively, the actresses in The Virgin Suicides were much closer in age to their own characters, lending a more authentic feel to the movie. Teenagers might feel more reflected in the Lisbon sisters, encouraging them to embrace the portrayal of the sisters as an accurate teenage experience. Additionally, Sophia Coppola made a conscious decision to portray a story written by a male author and told from the perspective of a group of boys, as a female producer in a male-dominated Hollywood. Her directorial style for the film could be perceived as social commentary on the skewed nature of such a story of girlhood being written and narrated by men. Nonetheless, The Virgin Suicides could potentially teach young girls a wrong message that if they are damaged or in emotional distress, boys and society in general will pay more attention to them. This is evidenced by Cecelia killing herself at her own party, with the boys becoming obsessed with understanding her suicide, paying attention to her as they never did when she was alive. Soon after Cecelia’s death, the five boys sneak into her room and begin reading her diary, passing it around as they read. Overlaid on top of the scene the boys narrate, “We knew that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and our job was to merely create the noise that seemed to fascinate them” (The Virgin Suicides 26:55), making Cecelia and her sisters seem more compelling and mysterious than they actually were. When teenage girls watch this scene and listen to the narration, they might be inspired by the fact that the boys perceived Cecilia as a mature and intellectual woman when she was really only a depressed 13 year old girl. When looking back on the events of their childhood, the boys “speak of the girls—who died in the full throes of adolescence—with jealousy, as though they were guests who left a party at its peak. Dead girls don’t suffer the unfairness of growing older, don’t see their youth corrode and their memories dim” (Cline 2018). The boys choose to relive the past in an attempt to escape the mundanity of their adult lives, remembering the Lisbon sisters for their tragic endings. They treat Cecelia’s suicide like a murder mystery for them to solve, rather than a tragedy for them to acknowledge. Teenagers experiencing the intimidation of reaching adulthood might see the death of the girls as something to strive for or emulate, rather than a misfortune to avoid. While the boys describe their relationship with the girls in a poetic nature, blurred sequences of the girls frolicking in a field flash back and forth between shots of the boys reading Cecelia’s diary. Most notably, one of the sisters, Lux, is often depicted in romantic close-ups of her body and face, which show only her most feminine attributes down to her curled eyelashes.

These close-ups and sequences act as a memory in the boy’s imagination as they recall the story of the Lisbon sisters many years later. “They are what he defined Lux by, what his primary perception deemed relevant and what stuck in his secondary memory” (Hirsch 2020). The lasting memories that the narrator has held onto throughout the years are those of Lux’s physical features, as that was all the value they saw in her. As the movie is told through the perspective of the boys years after the suicides of the Lisbon girls occurred, young viewers are led to believe that these beautifully shot memories imply that it is only when you kill yourself that you can be acknowledged in such a way as Lux was and potentially gain attention from people who didn’t notice you at first. However, it was not their intention to get recognition from the boys, but rather their parents, who were holding them in captivity. Their immediate suicides read as cries for help, resiting mental abuse and strict regulations, expressing the autonomy they never had while they were alive. The New Yorker’s Cline also recalls her life as a teenage girl, which was significantly influenced by characters such as the Lisbon sisters. She mentions that “the world of ‘The Virgin Suicides’ was gothic and mundane, just like the world of teenagers, with our desire to catalogue and make meaning out of any sign or symbol, even the mildest of occurrences taking on great portent.” (Cline 2018). When young people have yet to experience true hardship and strife, they tend to over exaggerate the importance of different scenarios, as they have no baseline to compare them to. Every small instance of frustration or sadness gets blown out of proportion, simply because they don’t know any better. Inspired by the story of The Virgin Suicides, teenagers might feel the need to define every negative emotion they experience as depression, potentially reading too deeply into their teenage struggles and searching for meaning when their experiences are simply a result of growing up.

Another source of inspiration for teenage girls comes from the music they consume, and the artists who produce it. Lana del Rey unknowingly influences young girls to live life on the wild side and potentially damage their lives for the “aesthetic”. “She sings about female weakness and dependence in a way that makes it seem like she is enjoying it.” (Thelandersson 16). Many of Lana del Rey’s music videos are a combination of aestheticized clips of drug use paired with hazy images of young girls happily living on the troubled side of life. When Lana del Rey presents her music videos in such a way that looks like a compilation of aesthetic internet clips, young audiences can mistake them as something to strive towards and in turn try to model their lives after the lifestyles they see on their screens. In her music video “Florida Kilos”, clips of girls snorting coke are smoothly integrated into a sea of iconic movie scenes and saturated snapshots of life in Florida.

The word “kilos” in the title is a play on words of the Floria Keys, which is a popular tropical tourist destination, and the kilos of cocaine being consumed both in real life and in her realized fantasy world. Comparatively, in her music video “Shades of Cool”, the relationship between an older man and a significantly younger woman might persuade young people that it is impressive and desirable to be in a relationship with someone older than themselves. Many young women find themselves flattered when older men approach them, as it validates their feelings of maturity and longing to be admired. Lana has built her brand around these topics and thrived off of the allure she’s created, but her path didn’t start out this way. Much of Lana Del Rey’s appeal comes from the persona she has curated for herself. She began her career using her real name, Elizabeth Grant, but did not receive much attention from Hollywood because she was just another girl from Manhattan trying to make a name for herself. It was not until she switched her aesthetic from basic to grunge and became Lana Del Rey that she started to see more publicity in her career as a recording artist. In possible attempts to relate to a wider audience, she created a persona for herself that is centered around mental illness and being a “sad girl”. However, she is quick to deny accusations such as these as she once tweeted, “‘Never needed a persona. Never have. Never will’” (Kornhaber 2019). Many fans support the concept of her musical personality being “fake”, as they argue that many other stars also do the same, but when she claims that she does not have a persona, it potentially leaves fans confused about who she really is. This attitude and defense from her fans addresses a bigger problem: is it okay to completely change your identity and deny it afterwards or should we strive to embrace who we are to the fullest extent? Her younger followers might consider mimicking her tactics in order to become more popular in school or on social media, which in itself, is a toxic spiral to go down. While denying her use of a persona, del Rey also fails to discuss the topics that she takes advantage of for her own gain. Although she writes about it in her lyrics and acts it out in her music videos, she is “not a celebrity that has spoken out about actual struggles with mental illness, rather she has adopted a persona of being sad” (Thelandersson, 16). For teenage fans that know her story and have witnessed the success that she has obtained from completely changing her identity, they can be led to believe that reinventing themselves is the only way to receive recognition. Her stylized references to mental illness, drugs, and emotional abuse can encourage her young viewers to partake in similar lifestyle choices, without realizing the real effects of doing so. Her constant mention of these issues is not a message against those things, but rather a portrayal of what her personified life looks like. Young followers of hers might hear these things and want to embody their favorite artist, leading them to make unsafe decisions that could put them at risk of being taken advantage of and falling into bad habits.

TV and movie characters, musicians, and influencers have become inspiration for teenagers globally due to social media sites like Tumblr, where teenage girls can express their desires to be like the people or characters they see in the media through threads and collages. These shared photos provide inspiration to teeagers and give their influences an image. Another common form of inspiration for Tumblr users is thinspo, otherwise known as “thin inspiration”, where girls post threads of disordered eating and bodies, feeding into ED content and convincing their peers that “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”. Tumblr is a network of communities that cater to any niche that one can think of, with some of the most popular being thinspo, as mentioned, “sad girl” aesthetics, and druggie lifestyles. Members of these factions often get sucked into a toxic spiral in an attempt to relate to other users they see on the app. And so the cycle begins: impressionable teen girls are feeding off of the thinspo on their screen rather than the food on their plates. “Consuming graphic images like those that populate pro-ED communities can have a detrimental effect on young and impressionable users who seek to understand their personhood and body” (Shaikh 2024). In a time of change and growth, girls can often reminisce on their younger selves, and younger bodies. Since consumers of this content are often vulnerable, they seek communities that are comprised of people that relate to them, but end up suffering more than they already are due to constant reminders of their goal physiques. In an attempt to understand their development alongside others their age, teenage girls could potentially adopt a skewed perspective of what their changing teenage bodies should look like. Some ED content also focuses on sexuality, encouraging girls to seek validation from the opposite sex. “Viewing sexually objectifying images may demonstrate to consumers that they are objects valued for their appearance, encouraging actions that will lead to thinness but not necessarily true contentment” (Wick and Harringer 2017). When “thinspo” is presented in the form of aestheticized slide shows of top models and anorexic influencers with glitter-y borders overlaid on top of the images, naive teens who have unknowingly become part of this community might be inclined to turn into one of the thinspo girls that themselves and their online friends idolize. When displayed in a sexualized and idealized way, teenagers could also want to become what they think is the epiphany of true feminine beauty and sexuality. Between the highly sexualized imagery and thinspo being presented, teenage girls might feel obligated to change themselves and adopt a new persona inspired by the images they consume.

As the media has oversaturated the struggles of being a teenage girl, it has turned them into something to be romanticized and appreciated as art, leaving teenage consumers to interpret this branch of media as something to take after and inspire their own teenage experiences, rather than something to learn from and avoid. While the media portrays these struggles but doesn’t actually acknowledge the dangers of them, the teenage experience becomes exploited and confused by the viewer. It can be difficult for teenagers to know whether what is being presented to them in the media is simply aesthetic or a real representation of what teenage life should look like. Euphoria and The Virgin Suicides embody how characters can take on a life of their own and greatly influence how teenagers view their own lives. Artists like Lana del Rey and their romanticization on social media sites like Tumblr can also add to the idealized version of life that young people feel inclined to create for themselves. Teenage girls are especially vulnerable to these manipulations, as they are exposed to more pressure to perform or present themselves in specific ways. These influences encourage young girls to change themselves to fit the fantasized identity that they see in the media they consume, and in turn shop for a new one.