Skip to main content
A collage of images featuring two crying eyes, a pile of books and a wilting flower.

Why So Sad, Girl

with Madeleine Gray, Neha Kale and Jessie Tu, moderated by Bridie Jabour

10 March 2024

In the Studio

Sydney Opera House Presents

Talks and Ideas

The new ‘Sad Girl Novel’ has officially hit market saturation. Why has the last six years of contemporary fiction been so gripped by this trope - and can the sad girl ever get happy?

Co-curated by Bri Lee

The superlative embodiment of an alluring silhouette: a woman contoured and whittled by her suffering.

Leslie Jamison, The Cult of the Literary Sad Woman, The New York Times 

What’s really behind the doom and gloom?

It’s the literary phenomenon that has no end. Every month, a new ‘Sad Girl Novel’ hits the shelves. Privileged young female protagonists are unfulfilled by sex and their careers; they are deep in their thoughts and feelings, complicated, full of self-loathing, and self-absorbed. It’s as if they have landed on some great insight that the rest of us don’t see. (Except perhaps the millions of us who buy these books.) What’s driving this seemingly insatiable appetite? Is it simply that life actually does suck and we know it and, finally, we feel seen? And why does the sad girl attract so much eye-rolling critique? Is this just another way sideline art made by and for women? 

Join this panel of practitioners and critics of the trope, who will dig even deeper than the sad girl herself to come to some possibly surprising takes. 

Presented by Sydney Opera House

 

Other information

You may also like

Influencers are the New Public Intellectuals

10 Mar 2024

These days on Instagram you’re just as likely to get a lesson in medieval architecture as you are a teeth-whitening strip. But what does it mean for education and public discourse to be wrapped up with online personas and monetisation?

  • Talks and Ideas
  • all about women
A graphic collage featuring a young, black women taking a selfie with a text bubble saying 'breaking news'.

Slowing Down Fast Fashion

10 Mar 2024

When we get dressed every morning, it's hard to think about the political reality of jeggings and cotton t-shirts. Activist Aja Barber demystifies the structural inequality embedded in the global fashion industry, and shows us how we can make it better.

  • Talks and Ideas
  • all about women
A collage of a pile of discarded clothes surrounded by Instagram likes.

Yellowface

10 Mar 2024

On the heels of her satirical sensation Yellowface crushing the bestseller lists, join Rebecca F. Kuang as she takes on the complexities of diversity, racism and cultural appropriation today.

  • Talks and Ideas
  • all about women
Two sets of cartoon eyes look in different directions. One sits at the top of a ladder, one is at the bottom.

Checking availability