![]() What the whole trainwreck industry is pushing for: The one form of permanent redemption that the culture freely allows to a woman who is mad, bad, and dangerous to know. This obsession about death and redemption is what came to my mind when this news about Demi Lovato broke. Dead, she was Ophelia, lost and lovely, garlanded and mourned as she passed downstream.” Yet, when she was alive, she was called crazy, bulimic, self-harming, and “addicted to media attention.” As Doyle aptly put it, “Alive, she was a madwoman and a blight on the British Crown. ![]() Elton John re-wrote “Candle in the Wind” for her. With Princess Diana, mourners came out in a massive funeral that had 3 million people in attendance and 2.5 billion people watching on TV, calling her an angel. Doyle points out that in 2008, Winehouse was named one of the “Villains of the Year,” was the butt of several jokes about how she was probably going to die young, and that reporters mentioned that her achievements were overshadowed by her “tumultuous personal life.” Both women have been deified after death, but during their lifetimes, both were torn down by the media. The chapter about Death covers the deaths of Amy Winehouse and Princess Diana. The book goes through several women throughout history who have been in the public eye, with a focus on Britney Spears, and discussing how media loves to tear down women who express their pain through their art, while simultaneously shitting on them for the negative side effects of that pain. Lovato’s hospitalization made me think of Amy Winehouse and, as a result, the book Trainwreck, by Sandy Doyle. ![]() Lovato’s history of addiction is something the artist has been very outspoken about, yet so many people were shocked that it was heroin and that “she seemed so well before.” The language we use around addiction is already problematic, but when it comes to women in the public eye, especially ones with a history of mental illness (Lovato is bipolar), we tend to feed off their pain when it fuels their art, while simultaneously not truly believing them when they say they are hurting. As of right now, Lovato is reported to be stable and with her family in the aftermath of this terrifying event. Yesterday, actress, activist, and singer Demi Lovato was hospitalized in what has been reported as a heroin overdose, although there is some back and forth about that. ![]()
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