On a girl’s right to rot

Ottessa Moshfegh, Gwyneth Paltrow and why ‘rotting’ is such a radical act

According to The New York Times, ‘to “rot” is to spend the day under the covers, scrolling one’s phone, napping, bingeing a show, staring at the ceiling.’ The term ‘bed rotting’ is currently trending on TikTok and searches for the term have increased by over 5000 per cent in the last 30 days.

A legion of articles have since followed about the dangers of said ‘bed rotting’. It’s glorifying laziness. It’s wasting your youth. It’s a naïve attempt to avoid ‘real life’.

‘Girl rotting’ is an extension of the trend which sees young women slouched in bed, often makeup-free and in sweatpants. It soon developed into its own season, known as ‘Rot Girl Winter’ – the exhausted but defiant cousin of ‘Hot Girl Summer’.

The last few years have seen a cultural cry for a woman’s right to sleep. Last year, the Met Gala made dormancy its theme with an exhibition entitled Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion. Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, which follows a young woman determined to sleep her way ‘into a new life’, has recently been lauded as a cult classic. Gwyneth Paltrow, a self-proclaimed ‘sleep enthusiast’, has just launched a series titled Sleep Training for Grown-Ups in a bid to ‘normalize sleep and rest for women’.

Sleep, as Moshfegh’s protagonist puts it, offers respite from the ‘miseries of my waking consciousness.’ But bed rotting is not just about choosing unconsciousness over reality – or laziness over productivity. It’s about not having to constantly dress up and cater to someone else’s gaze.

A 2020 study by the UK law firm Slater and Gordon found that nearly one in five female employees felt that more attention was paid to their appearance than to their male peers. Almost one in ten had been told by their bosses to wear make-up, high heels or short skirts. A 2021 study from Yours Clothing found that 62% of women felt that the pressure to look good was ‘unbearable’.

For a woman, the art of trying to make yourself more “visually appealing” can be exhausting. Rotting, in all its messy glory, is an antidote that. It’s the radical acceptance of your own un-manicured appearance. A defiant refusal to bow to societal pressures within your own home.

Now, there’s no escaping the morbidity of the term ‘rotting’. It signifies decay, death and decomposition. Interestingly, within literature, the dead/dying woman has traditionally been considered an object of great beauty.

Take Edgar Allan Poe’s declaration in 1846 that ‘The death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.’ Think of Heathcliff embracing the dead Cathy in Wuthering Heights or Van Helsing encouraging Arthur to kiss his fiancée (shortly after stabbing her). Lucy Westenra, from Dracula, was a character who only became more beautiful in death.

Here, the dead woman is also subject to the male gaze. Even in death, it seems, she is not allowed to exist for herself. This is what makes ‘bed rotting’ such a liberating act. It’s decaying, and then reviving yourself, on your own terms.

Here, a woman’s need for rest is not aestheticized nor objectified. In rotting, a woman exists, rests and recovers simply for herself.

Rotting is not just an act of self-care here. It’s also a long-overdue act of rebellion.