I knew that the younger generation was addicted to social media, obsessed with looks, prisoners of “likes”.
But following seeing the Quebec documentary damsels (currently in theaters), I felt a deep sadness.
This obsession and this addiction is much more serious and much more harmful than I imagined. Because the young women we see in this documentary suffer from a profound illness: they have no self-esteem.
AWARDED IN A FESTIVAL
With damselsQuebec director Fanie Pelletier won the award for best first feature film at the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival in the Czech Republic.
She gave the floor to three groups of young Quebec girls who spend hours on social media (TikTok, Instagram and company) to show themselves from all angles to virtual voyeurs around the world, during live videos. . They are attention-hungry, reacting to the slightest thumbs up, the most insignificant of comments, as if their lives depended on it.
One of the young girls interviewed said: “I am not able to speak with my parents or with my friends. I’m only able to talk to complete strangers.”
Another claims that it is only by getting comments under her videos that she experiences a semblance of happiness.
These young girls scrutinize their appearance, « are photoshopping”, constantly put themselves in the lens of their cell phones and are totally dependent on the way others, total strangers, look at them.
Fanie Pelletier also shows live videos of young girls all over the world: this phenomenon of lack of self-love comes in all languages.
It’s a well-known cliché: we’ve never been so connected and yet we’ve never been so isolated. This applies to us adults too. But the teenagers that we see in damsels are isolated… in a prison they have built for themselves. No one forces them to show off in front of strangers to seek a little tenderness. One of them affirms with resignation: “I don’t like what I think, what I say, I wake up in the morning and I don’t like anything regarding who I am”.
I had tears in my eyes. But how might society send such self-loathing back to these young girls?
They’re obsessed with their looks…and their gender identity. Constantly defining and redefining myself: Am I lesbian, straight, bi? Am I fluid, “asexual”, “aromantic” or downright “abrosexual” (person who has a fluid sexual orientation)? It’s quite fascinating to see this generation that rejects conventions but is so much in search of labels.
FAILURE
If this film disturbed me so much, it’s because it leads to an acknowledgment of failure for feminism in recent decades.
The women of my generation (and that of my mother) fought for girls and women to love each other, to have self-confidence and to tell themselves that they might do anything by becoming autonomous and masters of their fate.
But what a failure! We missed our shot! While we sought to free ourselves from the gaze of others (that of men), the young girls of damsels are completely addicted to it.
