Girls Just Wanna Be Numb!
By Stella Speridon-Violet
Women have always been conditioned to be smaller, quieter, more palatable. To never complain or raise their voices, or they’ll face being labeled as annoying, self-centered… or god forbid, a ‘feminist.’
And for the past century or so, it’s taken us girls so much effort to be “low effort.” But now there’s an easier, more desirable way for women to live, in a way that appeases everyone: complete and utter numbness.
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Not in a dramatic, Born to Die kind of way, and not even in the romanticized sadness that defined Tumblr-era girlhood (led by Effy Stonem herself).
No, because today, numbness is aspirational.
Poor Rachel Sennott has been shoved to the forefront of this new epidemic sweeping cool girls around the nation. She’s become the unintentional spokeswoman for beta blockers and the poster child of the “Gen-Z pout.”
And, I hate to say it, but I get it.
Pop culture has always flirted with detachment, but this feels different and certainly more clinical. Less “sad girl,” more “give us nothing, girl!”
Where Skins UK made emotional chaos look intoxicating, today’s ideal is control at all costs. The modern cool girl doesn’t spiral; she self-regulates. She doesn’t dare shed a tear; she picks up that beta blocker and keeps it moving!
Even the face reflects it.
Beyond preventing wrinkles, “baby botox” is about preventing expression—and it always has been! Somehow, in some fucked up way, we’ve just accepted that it is not better to speak than to die.
This preemptive strike against feeling too much… could it be seen as a form of rebellion against the patriarchy? Dare I say, a little cosmetic surgery to appear entirely emotionless is the latest feminist movement?
Finally, women have found a way to win in society by feeling absolutely nothing at all. You can’t be called dramatic if you can’t move your forehead!
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Now, the beta blocker of it all. Take one before your 9 a.m. meeting, your 12 pm situationship check-in, and your 6 p.m. existential crisis. Who needs coping mechanisms when you can just chemically remove the physical sensation of anxiety?
Then, of course, there’s Ozempic—the crown jewel of modern womanhood. Not only can you shrink yourself down mentally with the beta blocker, but you can now shrink your body and desires completely with one weekly injection.
Hunger? Gone. Cravings? Gone. Personality? Girl, you don’t even need it anymore because everyone will be telling you how skinny you look, and you’ll be too out of it to even care.
And honestly, isn’t that the goal? To be as low-maintenance as possible, to not want too much or need too much of quite literally anything. To exist in a perfectly curated state of semi-detachment where nothing really touches you and therefore, nothing can really hurt you.
Cheers, Big Pharma! You’re getting a whole brand new demographic of girls who just want to be numb and easily hot!
But, beneath the satire, there is something very real happening.
According to the American Psychological Association, women, especially young women, are experiencing some of the highest levels of chronic stress and anxiety in recent history.
We are so fucking overstimulated and overworked, yet, still we are somehow expected to look hot while doing it. Why would we not want to do anything we can to be a little more relaxed?
But instead of opting out of the systems causing the stress, we’re opting out of feeling entirely and in a culture that rewards composure over honesty, that almost feels like the smarter choice.
Look at the girls who “win”: They’re chill, easy to get along with. They would never double text a man or overthink, or god forbid cry in a public bathroom or spiral over a slightly off-toned comment. Or at least, they don’t show it.
Meanwhile, the girl who feels everything? Well, she’s embarrassing. Thanks, Sky Ferreira.
But numbness isn’t empowerment, it’s a workaround—a very chic, socially acceptable, brand-friendly workaround, but a workaround nonetheless. Because the same systems that taught women to be small are now just offering a more aesthetically pleasing version of smallness. It’s repression with better branding.
And the scariest part? It works to not care or to completely flatten everything into something a little more manageable, something that won’t scare people away.
It’s cool to be the girl who doesn’t ask for too much, the girl who is always just slightly out of reach, even from herself. And, it can become an addiction in a sense.
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Back when Euphoria was still decent (season one), I really resonated with what Rue said when talking about chasing that ‘two seconds of nothingness.’ When you’re thrown into the world, with all of its moving pieces, it can feel nice to simply not feel anything at all.
But when you start numbing the bad parts of life, you don’t get to pick and choose what stays. As a result, all experiences dull.
The highs flatten just as quickly as the lows. The butterflies, the anticipation, the gut feelings, the moments that make you feel like you’re actually inside your life instead of just observing it from a safe, beige distance, they start to disappear too.
And suddenly, you’re not dramatic. You’re not emotional. You’re just… not much at all. Which, for a second, feels like peace. Until it starts to feel like nothing.
And maybe that’s the real catch here. Numbness isn’t some revolutionary act of resistance; it’s just a more socially acceptable form of disappearing. A way to quietly remove yourself from the intensity of being alive without ever technically leaving the room.
Because it’s always been easier to sedate yourself than it is to confront the fact that the world we’re living in is making women feel insane. And, I guess we’ve also been doing this for centuries, hello Quaaludes!
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So no, the girls don’t just wanna have fun anymore. Girls wanna be numb. And honestly, who could blame them?
If the only way to be desirable, successful, loved, or even just tolerated is to feel absolutely nothing, then maybe the problem was never that women feel too much… Perhaps it’s that we were never meant to survive in a world that requires us to feel this little.
