The Tumblr Girl: Intersectionality of the 2010’s and a cultural phenomena’s effects of mental health

Tumblr was a social media platform heavily used by tweens and teens in the early 2010’s. There are subcultures of this platform that glamorized mental illness, disordered eating, & self- harm. There were many things that were above board on Tumblr at the time, but for many of its young users there was a dark underbelly that was easily accessed. “It wasn’t all Zooey Deschanel & mustaches... It was racism, fatphobia, SH (self-harm) posts & ED forums” said Refinery 29 writer, Maggie Zhou. Tumblr subcultures fostered the perfect environment for deteriorating the mental health of its young demographic through the intersectionality of race, gender, and disability. Is history bound to repeat itself?

Tumblr is known for its lack of connection to the person behind the screen. This combined with a lack of moderation and poor policies led to Tumblr being a platform full of racism. Intersectionality first appears on Tumblr through instances of racism that are common in the dark corners of any social media platform. “Black Tumblr is not immune from hegemonic cultural biases and network-internal forms of exclusion and discrimination, such as colorism, misogyny among Black men, and homo- and transphobia” (McCracken 51). However, with the rise in social activism & black support we expect there to be a bright future for diversity on the platform. Tumblr gained a reputation for being progressive in many categories, one of these being that it is a safe space for marginalized people. “Despite the dominant socio-politically progressive culture of Tumblr, many negative stereotypes and inaccurate or incomplete information about Black people still circulate on the platform” (McCracken 51).

Thankfully, as a response to the negative posts on social media many people came together to create “online activism” to highlight the black community and share ways for people to show their support. “Black Tumblr’s fourth major strategy of everyday online activism is promoting positive representations of Black people of diverse backgrounds, including celebrities, academics, public figures, and everyday people doing great things” (McCracken 58). Through the lens of intersectionality, we see the struggles of other marginalized groups who are also black struggling the most for equality. Visibility for these groups of people is needed and the internet is a big tool for that. “Through its dialogic practices, people who are marginalized within Black communities (e.g., women, LGBTQ+ people) also have an opportunity to make their experiences of Blackness visible to a broader audience” (McCracken 61).

The LGBTQ+ community was able to thrive in some aspects of the platform, anonymity let people be their true selves without the fear of being outed. However, much like with racism the lack of accountability on Tumblr made it difficult for people belonging to the LGBTQ+ community to exist in peace. “The user experience on the site underscores the profound vulnerability of queer individuals and communities in digital, corporatized space” (Cavalcante). We see large amounts of homophobia due to the anonymous aspect of platforms like Tumblr. “Tumblr was the first place where I felt as though people in fandom were trying to strip me of my humanity specifically because I pointed out the problematic aspects such as racism, misogyny, and homophobia in the things they liked” (McCracken 170). Another aspect of Tumblr that affected the LGBTQ+ community was the restrictions put in place in the mid-2010’s around adult content shared on the platform. TumPorn (short for Tumblr porn), was one of the few areas that LGBTQ+ people could easily and anonymously explore adult content that was featuring people like them & the fantasies that they had. “TumPorn is dead...And over the past
few years Tumblr had become one of my main go-tos for porn” (McCracken 158). This restriction on content was the beginning for the end of Tumblr because it no-longer was a wild west for people’s every desire. “2018 Tumblr banned adult content on their platform...In doing so, they destroyed a massive social media community and outlet where people, especially underrepresented communities, could freely express their sexuality” (Chase). The thing that killed Tumblr might also be the key to saving it, the platform announced on November 1st of 2022 that it would be allowing nudity back on the platform. Many LGBTQ+ users applaud Tumblr for allowing the opportunity to create a safe space for the younger generations of their community. “Trans Youth Resources (TYR1) was created in 2012 by mod (moderator) P. and his friend because there wasn’t a guide for trans teens anywhere; most community resources were by and for adults, and the rest of the resources were for parents of young children” (McCracken 274). We see this ever-moving scale between the positives and negatives of social media. One side promotes hate speech through anonymity and the other brings marginalized groups together and provides safe spaces. “I argue that for LGBTQ users, Tumblr simultaneously generates the specter of a “queer utopia”—a space where queer potential flourishes and more expansive ways to think about the future materialize—and queer “vortextuality”—an experience of being sucked into an online black hole with severe limitations” (Cavalcante).

Glamorization of disability is remembered by many as the most damaging part of Tumblr. For some ex-users, the trauma inflicted on them from Tumblr content in the 2010’s has its effects still to this day. This subculture made things like self-harm, eating disorders, and depression “trendy”. Eating disorders have been something that people have struggled with for centuries, unfortunately what is different now is the accessibility to dangerous resources. In a study ran by the International Journal of Eating Disorders in 2019 it was found that “DE behaviors were reported by 51.7% of girls and 45.0% of boys, with strict exercise and meal skipping the most common” (Wilksch, 2019). One of the most memorable things to come out of Tumblr was the body issues it promoted. Some of the most reposted content was stick thin models and “thigh gaps” flooding feeds for girls to compare themselves to. “#Thinspiration, or #thinspo for short, established itself as one of the most infamous avenues through which to access pro-ana and pro-mia content on Tumblr, publicizing unhealthy weight loss regiments and images of thin women” (Baron). Unsurprisingly of course, these types of “trends” are not here by accident and are ideas that the patriarchy put in place to continuously oppress women. “When women are “visible” in media content, the manner of their representation reflects the biases and assumptions of those who define the public—and therefore the media—agenda” (Carter). The patriarchy subliminally putting things into the media to keep women oppressed has been an overarching idea that we have talked about throughout the semester. Constantly changing the beauty standards and shoving unattainable bodies down the throats of the female population is designed to keep women weak. “Disordered eating appears to be a symptom of these ubiquitous yet sometimes invisible patriarchal cultural values about women’s bodies. Girls and women receive 90–95% of eating disorder diagnoses [1] and risk of developing an eating disorder increases with time spent in Westernized cultures [2], which perpetuate a thin ideal female body
that became popularized were diets that people believed models like Kate Moss followed; only consuming cigarettes, coffee, and drugs. I know for me, Kate Moss’s famous quote “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” has been seared into my brain since I saw it on Tumblr in middle school. Not to mention, G-Eazy’s hit song from 2014 that solidified the male gaze and what it would take for boys to like you. “Cause I'm in love with these Tumblr girls with skinny waists type, an ideal which is largely unattainable” (McBride et al.). One of these weight loss trends and drug habits, pretty faces love status.” One of Tumblr’s common themes was romanticizing the lives of notably unhealthy celebrities. Lana Del Rey was basically the second coming of Christ to Tumblr users. Romanticizing her drug use, depression, and unhealthy relationships was a hugely participated in sub-culture. “There it was: the seemingly inevitable fall to pro-eating disorder content, thinly veiled under the guise of ♡pale soft grunge♡ aesthetic blogs” said Refinery 29 writer Maggie Zhou. This leads us to the beatification of mental illness on the platform and how this had both positive and negative effects. On the one hand, something can be said for de-stigmatizing mental health and the importance of talking about it. Unfortunately, Tumblr often saw it be taken too far and promoted pictures of self-harm, suicidal ideation, and competitive misery. “Between 2011 and 2015, blogs dedicated to eating disorders, self-harm, and other mental illnesses maintained a significant presence throughout the platform...” (Baron).

These different areas combine to make Tumblr a diverse platform but also one with a troubled past of profiting off pain. As we can see, after the mid-2010’s we seem to find an upward cycle in visibility, accountability, and activism on Tumblr. This change in the way we use social media however has begun on many platforms, largely in-part to Gen-Z being one of the internets main demographics. Gen-Z has dismantled much of what millennials built up in the early 2000’s. The LGBTQ+ community has grown largely with Gen-Z being a very welcoming and diverse group of people. We have seen many people on apps like TikTok open up about the struggles they have had with eating disorders or depression. Gen-Z has paved a way for intersectionality to thrive throughout the internet. Conversations that were never had 10 years ago are now getting millions of likes and shares. So, as we saw throughout this paper there are many instances of negative intersectionality. There has also been an increase in negative media that is very reminiscent of what we saw on Tumblr. Young people are once again discovering iconic yet sickly models like Kate Moss and videos showing Lana Del Rey’s weight change through her career. However, through my research for this assignment I have discovered there were some shining lights for intersectionality and a hopefully bright future. Things like online activism, the reinstatement of nudity on the platform, and safe spaces like TYR1 are shaping the way people treat one another online. This leads me to the second claim I had at the start of this paper. Is a Tumblr comeback in the future? And if so, are we destined to revert to racism, homophobia, and dangerous romanticization if the platform has a resurgence? As I have been writing this paper, many changes have happened in the world of social media. The biggest platform in the world, Twitter, is dying a quick yet painful death. This is due to the hypocrisy of its new owner and CEO, Elon Musk. This has led not only Twitter’s employees but its users to leave in troves. This has everyone wondering; where will all these chronically online people go to numb their minds? I think that Tumblr may be the answer to that question. With the rise of many popular aesthetics recirculating on TikTok like “indie sleaze” and the unbanning of nudity on the platform I have no doubt that Tumblr is making its comeback. I think the trajectory of Tumblr will be more positive in the future than we saw in the past. The new demographic using Tumblr will most likely be some millennials, but a proportionate amount will be Gen-Z. It is important to remember that Gen-Z is anyone born from 1997-2012, this means that a large amount of people who will most likely join then platform will not have used it in the 2010’s. I think there will be a small group of users who had used Tumblr previously and are rejoining the platform again. I would argue that this demographic has learned from the toxic environment and horrible effect that 2010’s Tumblr had on them and will be activists promoting positive content this time around. I hope that the people who were impacted negatively from 2010’s Tumblr will fight against the same happening to a new generation of users. “I just hope this time around, young teenagers aren’t exposed to the over-glamorization of skinny party girls who don’t eat and instead smoke cigarettes and drink black coffee” (Zhou).

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