Satire: I’m Embracing My Quarantine Sad Girl™

By Luna Lark

We’ve all got the Quarantine Blues. But this is really the time to indulge in your sadness. Embrace your Sad Girl™ aesthetic. Cry but make it cute. Look pensively out the window, you know, in a cute way. Drink strawberry wine and other twee alcoholic beverages with an eye toward that downward spiral. Yeah, you’re going down hard, lady. Misery is your mojo. I for one am becoming the Sad Girl™ I’ve always wanted to be. Sylvia Plath and Frida Kahlo ain’t got nothin’ on me. I’m downright midnight blue. I’ve got the cloak to prove it. No, cloaks aren’t Emo; they’re Sad Girl™. Don’t get it twisted; this has a Free People tag on it. Not Hot Topic. Know your brands. Intimately. Sadly. Fashion is a large component of this. Drawing tears on your face and then decorating them with glitter is totally a thing. That’s another essay—one I promise to write after I finish weeping over this one.

​The COVID-19 quarantine has reminded me that the bathtub is not such a bad place to cry after all. Your tears just roll straight into the bathwater instead of all over your clothes. And your makeup's probably already off so no smearing. No tissues wasted. Yay. It’s kind of more environmentally friendly this way, tbh. Does that make you feel good? It makes me feel good. Just not too good. Gotta keep my edge. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be a Sad Girl™. Luckily, there’s always some environmental disaster to fret about. We’re living in one now. There. You’re sad again, right? ​

When quarantine first started, I took SO MANY baths and thought about the environment all the time. It got a ton of views on Instagram Live. If the tears weren’t flowing as much as my fans wanted, I thought about Free Willy. Free Willy is guaranteed to make me cry. If you’re not crying as much as the Sad Girl™ of your dreams, take my advice: Think about Free Willy. Watch the movie. Or should I say re-watch it. Chances are good you’re not a real Sad Girl™ if you haven’t already watched Free Willy. Or at least you’ve yet to reach your Sad Girl™ potential. 

Free Willy is a fantastic quarantine film because it’s about a trapped whale. Who can’t relate to that character right now? Oh, you can’t because you’re not in quarantine? You’re either an essential worker or you voted for Trump. Being an essential worker earns you mega Sad Girl™ cred. Who’s sadder than a grocery store employee making minimum wage during a pandemic? 

But if you voted for Trump, you’re not a Sad Girl™. You’re just sad. Go cry about it. You’re not allowed to stream your crying on IG, though. That’s for us Sad Girls™ only. Your membership has been denied, Trumper. That’s really unfortunate, too, because we have the best eyeliner. It’s so black and smeary. Even raccoons envy us. We order it on Amazon and get it delivered directly to our apartments.

Sad Girls™ also have the best candles. You can’t have those, either.