Weird Girl Lit vs. Sapphic Lit: Are They Merging?
Written by Erin Norton
Image curtesy of Erin Norton
During a recent and mindless scrolling session on Instagram reels, I came across a video critiquing an unnamed bookstore’s“ Weird Girl Lit” display. Though the concept of“ weird” is highly subjective, especially concerning art or literature, there seems to be a specific posse of books that have earned their blue ribbon in this budding genre. The person recording the video showed the books in the display, and commented on which ones contain sapphic themes. It turns out many of them did: Hungerstone, Chlorine (hello past DWG book club pick!), Monstrilio, Victorian Psycho, The Starving Saints, and Big Swiss, were just a few of the titles, yet, it was enough of a pattern for the person to express their concern: is Weird Girl Lit becoming synonymous with sapphic lit? If we equate“ weird” with“ bad,” then I can understand where this person is coming from. However, I don’t perceive Weird Girl Lit in that same way.
What even is the origin of Weird Girl Lit (for the sake of this essay and my fingers, let’s shorten it to WGL)? With BookTok and other forms of book influencing rising to prominence in these past few years, there has been a surge of subgenre recognition. This is due to every chronically online person’s inclination to separate themselves from the masses. Though we are all generally interested in similar things, it’s undeniable that most young people, specifically content creators, now reach for niches that they can proclaim as their own domain. WGL is one of those topics under a massive umbrella of a subject that many claim to have as their favorite or specialty. When searching WGL, the first instance of that exact phrase“ Weird Girl Lit” was from a 2024 Goodreads list titled“ essential weird girl lit.” The list includes many titles, older and more contemporary alike. They range in genres from literary fiction to horror to short stories; weird girls are all over the map! I believe that before the term was coined, WGL was regarded as stories with unhinged female main characters, or even broader and slightly more simple, just weird literature.
While researching the beginning of the WGL genre, I stumbled across an article so painfully 2016, I didn’t even have to check the date to confirm that it was, in fact, published in 2016.“ 11 Nasty Women Dominating Weird Fiction.” I wasn’t very old at the time of the“ Nasty Woman” comment made by Donald Trump, directed at Hillary Clinton, but it’s both a political and cultural event that has a permanent place in my psyche. The phrase alone has its own Wikipedia page due to its societal impact. Even though calling a rich white woman nasty could be considered one of the more“ tame” things Trump has said about women, it caused hundreds and thousands of people to march across the nation wearing Pink Pussy Hats and demand that he be held accountable for his offenses against women.“ Nasty Woman” also became a source of reclamation and an acknowledgement of men’s general perception of women. Presently, the term has aged and feels a little more true to a white feminist ideology as opposed to a radical intersectional feminist ideology; however, its effect on womanhood lives on today.
In understanding that“ Nasty Woman” is a form of subversive culture, being weird can be as well. Weird, as a word, has always carried negative connotations, and yet peculiarity has always been a home for different subcultures throughout history. Think punk, goth, drag, etc. It’s in these scenes that art and literature have always, and will always, flourish. Nothing that is revolutionary is the status quo. Weird fiction entertains a mix of different elements ranging in form, theme, and diction. What makes WGL so subversive is its reclamation of difference. Everyday, we wake up and are subjected to the uncanniness of womanhood. In WGL prose, we see what we are forced to hold back. We see our temptations, our losses, our fears. We see our own intimacies, the ones that are impossible to disclose to others out of fear of alienation, reflected in the pages of our books. Seeing ourselves written in a distorted, hyperbolic way helps us become privy to our own everyday sufferings. It is undeniably cathartic.
“In WGL prose, we see what we are forced to hold back. We see our temptations, our losses, our fears. We see our own intimacies, the ones that are impossible to disclose to others out of fear of alienation, reflected in the pages of our books.”
Furthermore, sapphic identities and stories within WGL exemplifies a full rejection of male-imposed standards. Girls, regardless of sexuality, are discouraged from being strange or off-putting. However, featuring an unhinged feminine main character, especially a queer or lesbian one, offers solace to those who don’t care for partaking in the“ male gaze.” It’s freeing! If there’s one thing that every sapphic wants, it’s freedom from male attention. Seeing sapphic lit and WGL becoming synonymous with each other is not a concern in the slightest. It’s a homecoming.
In WGL, readers support women’s rights and women’s wrongs. If you were to be on the same level as some of the characters in WGL books, you would surely hope that someone would have your back too, or at the very least, understand you.
