I hadn't heard of "lobotomy-chic," but I knew the history of lobotomies, so this article wasn't written for me, but it did tip me off to a trend I'm interested to read about:
It’s become a common social media discourse: the memeification of lobotomies; the romanticization of sanitariums. The hashtag #lobotomychic has 9.3 million views on TikTok; a tweet that reads “I wish it was 1952 so my husband could just take me to get a lobotomy” earned more than 26,000 likes. “Back in the day your husband used to pay for your lobotomy, now thanks to *feminism* I have to pay for my own,” says another user to a chorus of more than 11,000 views. Then there’s this love letter to the trend from i-D magazine, which calls it the “duckface of a nihilistic era” and heralds the “dissociative pout” as the new it-girl go-to for selfies. The article unpacks the aesthetics of sullen eyes and swollen lips — all without once mentioning why women who were lobotomized actually had that vacant look in their eyes; why dissociation for them was a constant state of being. Then there are the viral TikTok makeup tutorials on how to get the lobotomy chic look. If you’re an ASMR girlie, maybe you’ll enjoy this “drive-through lobotomy” simulation where a creator in cherry earrings and bright purple eye shadow and a stethoscope around her neck pretends to lobotomize the viewer all while delivering a dreamlike, coddling narration.
The author of the piece, Caroline Reilly, seems to infer that people fooling around in this manner, having their fun, don't understand the background or that people shouldn't play around with an idea that was once about something serious.
Isn't that like taking issue with people who dress up as witches at Halloween?
It's not as if Reilly is trying to stir up alarm about damaging surgery desired by young people today.
But she does say:
I understand that it’s easy to argue these content creators and meme makers aren’t actually talking about the atrocities committed in sanitariums or forcibly having our brains carved out of our skulls. I understand that sometimes, to survive pain, we have to turn to humor. But I don’t think that’s what is happening here.
What does she think is happening? She thinks "lobotomy chic" is an expression of exhaustion with the pressures of "Girlboss feminism," which "preach[ed] liberation through capitalism — beating men at their own game by playing according to their rules." She makes much of a tweet that reads, “i don’t want to be a girlboss anymore, i want to take pictures of the cows while my husband drives me to my lobotomy.”
ADDED: I created the tag "lobotomy" for this post and went back and applied it to many old posts in the archive. Check it out.
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29 comments:
What if the treatment for gender dysphoria is a lobotomy?
Just a brief reminder: nothing has done more to improve the standard of living of humanity than the capitalist system. You eouldn’t get to drive around and take pictures of cows without it.
I’m starting to believe nothing has bone more to reduce the standard of living of humanity than the Obamas when they told
everyone to reject capitalism.
Not surprising. Just a variation of this trans business. For some reason, people want to harm themselves. Like Vivek says, they have a hole in their hearts so they fill it with this or climate change or transgenderism.
The Left has created a destructive mess.
Feminists and the WaPo are being trolled.
This is a thinly veiled insult at women who choose to live a traditional life of taking care of the home and children while her husband provides for the family.
It is a testament to how far removed from actual experience with anyone with a real lobotomy we are. I had a few lobotomised patients in the late 70s and early 80s, but even then, they were older, at least in their 50s. Sad, sad cases, but when you read their histories you saw how it came to happen, in an age before medications that relieved at least some symptoms.
Just one more example of not realising how good we have it now - how impoverished, short-lived, isolated, and dangerous life was not so very long ago. In 1949, 46% of Americans lived below the poverty line. Medical insurance and medical care was cheap because it basically couldn't do anything for you.
"people shouldn't play around with an idea that was once about something serious"
You mean like Joe Kennedy who lobotomized his daughter (Rosemary, b. 1918) because she didn't measure up. Yep, another wonderful story about America's Camelot Family,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy
We are living in the end times.
Fashion is almost always stupid. It wasn't that long ago that "heroin chic" was all the rage.
Lobotomies were the best practice of medicine and science. Trust the scientists!!! Always!!!
“What if the treatment for gender dysphoria is a lobotomy?”
It would certainly reduce the suicide rate in that demographic as the main effect.
Lobotomy?
Lobotomyou!
Lobotomus.
When I first learned about the current rage of surgical interventions to relieve young people of their gender dysphoria, I immediately thought of the lobotomy era.
The physician who "perfected" lobotomy, Dr. Antonio Moniz, received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1949 for his contribution of medical science.
It's now rightfully viewed as barbaric, but at the time was considered to be an appropriate surgical intervention to help manage a mental disorder.
The difference now is that we have some history to learn from.
What isn't different is that we have not learned anything.
I don't think this is a jibe directed toward traditional womanhood. This is just a case of people creatively venting through absurdity and picking a topic that is disturbing enough to get attention. Everybody has moments when they just want the life of a simple creature, with someone else taking care of their needs.
What AVI says about our under-appreciation of life and living standards is so true. We need to remind ourselves to be grateful and give thanks every day. Doing this helps to keep this mess in perspective.
I've never heard of lobotomy chic, but I get it. Sometimes you want to step off the merry-go-round. In real life you can't, but in meme life you can joke about it.
It's macabre and black humor, but the one about taking cow pictures is really funny.
Assistant Village Idiot @ 7:01: Very useful perspective, that. That past recedes constantly as we age, forget, die off; and as it dwindles so does its moral effect and our ability to appreciate the technological miracles that surround us (and which seem to multiply logarithmically, thus conditioning us to expect even more of them). Our situation is literally incommensurable with the earlier ones. And so the past becomes the pasts --a series of scrambled individual reminiscences, a succession of histories flattened and simplified and constantly rewritten to serve today's agendas.
How many of us remember Polio Season? Those summers when kids flocking to swimming pools were reminded of the Boy In The Iron Lung? All that foreboding and outright terror seemed to vanish overnight -- like the special sugar cubes dispensed by our school nurses.
Darryl Revok nodded in agreement.
Joe the bootlegger was just ahead of his time.
Catching up here. So they're not really loboted? It's just a trendy "look"?. Damn. Fooled me. Low bar these days but still.
"So they're not really loboted?"
It is a thinkable thought, isn't it? That people living today, in America, might decide they want a lobotomy, demand it, and get it from licensed doctors, with insurance reimbursement.
Is this like romanticizing pirates, when the last thing you wanted to see on the horizon is a ship flying the Jolly Roger?
Blogger Ann Althouse said...
"It is a thinkable thought, isn't it? That people living today, in America, might decide they want a lobotomy, demand it, and get it from licensed doctors, with insurance reimbursement."
This is a great comment! I hesitate to admit that there are days when I feel like a lobotomy mightn't be the worst thing... .
Althouse,
It is a thinkable thought, isn't it? That people living today, in America, might decide they want a lobotomy, demand it, and get it from licensed doctors, with insurance reimbursement.
It's not only "thinkable"; I'm surprised no one has done it yet. Doctors seem to be lopping off healthy body parts left and right these days. And not just breasts and testes. There are people who want to be amputees -- literally losing an arm and/or a leg -- and IIRC a surgeon or two has obliged.
Insurance? Well, that might be dicey. But it isn't the indigent that generally come up with these boutique ailments.
OK, I'll do the obvious thing and contrast a frontal lobotomy with a bottle in front of me.
Just a formality, of course.
I don’t see it, so…
I’d rather have a bottle in front of me
than have to have a frontal lobotomy!
Lobotomies are totally unnecessary. We just need to go back to antebellum days and get all the women prescriptions for laudanum.
Currently we have the beginnings of assisted suicide being accepted in some countries. If I had severe pain or depression to the degree I would want to die, I would rather have a lobotomy or have the affected nerves cut than be dead, even if paralyzed or blinded.
But assuming that living with a lobotomy is better than being dead, that helps you and adds cost to the health care system. Being dead only helps the health care accountants, so it may not be allowed.
What do people who look like that do for a living?
I don't think Starbux would even put them behind the counter. Maybe "sex workers ", i.e. prostitutes.
I'd rather have a bottle in front me of than a frontal lobotomy.
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