Sad Girls and Carefree Black Girls: Affect, Race, (Dis)Possession, and Protest

This paper examines the "Sad Girl" and "Carefree Black Girl" to theorize the role of affect and raced sociopolitical identity in digital spaces. In their selective visual representation, Sad Girls are often white and embody white narratives of history, erasing the Latina/x roots of Sad Girl identity formation. Simultaneously, the #CarefreeBlackGirl hashtag has become an alternative and prominent form of narrative identity, centralizing race, gender, and affect through selfies and other forms of art. Using theories of affect, race, and gender formation, this paper explores how affective positions sublimate, disrupt, and commodify forms of embodied representations. By putting white and Latina/x Sad Girls and Carefree Black Girls in dialogue, this paper explores how raced and gendered affect contours resistant identities online.