I know you questioned it but you have it right. When Chris died Cassie had to runaway so she was in control of the pain. Just like with her eating disorder. It triggered her fear of abandonment - Now it’s not just that Sid could leave her for another girl like Michelle which was what past Cassie was insecure about but now she faces the reality that love can also end in death. She can’t really handle that reality.
Yeah it’s that illusion of being in control of the pain, that would make the most sense, otherwise he might break up with her first and that would be too painful
@@SerenaSkybourne Exactly but I think early Cassie was fearful of him leaving. I want to say she did move past that and thought their love would last. But then after Chris died she realized Sid could be gone from her life in this other way which was even more terrifying then her first fear of him leaving her.
The most unrealistic thing in the entirety of s2 was Cassie going to NY and everyone being nice to her, especially the taxi driver who even gave her money. I was like??? That looked straight out of a fanfic written by a 13-year-old.
Cassie was an unreliable narrator and it is heavily implied that she hallucinated and/or fantasised about things which didn't happen. For example she wrongly thought that Sid was texting her. Earlier in the series she struck up a friendship with a taxi driver who helped her with her eating disorder. I doubt the taxi driver existed. I doubt the friendly taxi driver in NYC existed either. Both are either figments of her imagination or some sort of supernatural higher power which has come to assist her in her hour of need. I don't think they are supposed to be real taxi drivers.
not necessarily. if her dying arc was followed by watching the other characters grieve and love her, or deal with survivor's guilt such as feeling guilty for how they treated her/missed the signs, then it would actually encourage many ed sufferers instead. many of them do it as a way to get noticed or love and fantasize about "showing everyone" by dying thin so that everyone finally cares, even if they're not around for it. toxic? yes. but this is so common, it's the same reason why "unaliving" (hate the term but hate the youtube algo more) rates skyrocketed after 13 reasons why came out. unfortunately, when it comes to discouraging eds, the only thing you can do is on an individual level - get them into therapy. when someone is in an untreated ed mindset, there is nothing you can do that they won't find a way to twist into motivation to keep starving.
As an anorexic teenager, I used to romanticise everything. I remember being hospitalised and literally seeing the skinniest girls, the ones who were stuck to a wheelchair because they were too weak to walk as "super coquette and beautiful" That's the issue with anorexia, we romanticise illness, even death. Especially as teenagers, we would think that looking deadly ill will bring people's attention on us.
Cassie isn't a Manic Pixie because she does have character depth and she is separable from Sid (her love interest). Manic Pixies usually exist solely in the context of their male love interests as someone who inspires them, but don't have much of their own autonomy and that's the problem with this trope. Cassie doesn't fit into this. A girl being pretty, whimsical and quirky alone does not make her a Manic Pixie.
Cassie kind of reminds me a lot of Cat from Victorious I've just realised. I was one of those people as a kid not liking Sid's treatment of Cassie (who was my favourite character in season 1) and thinking he was always the one in the wrong back then when he truly was not.
as someone who has similar mental health issues and has also done the physical ghosting multiple times, i think you absolutely hit the nail on the head about it being self sabotage. Cassie's first season arc showed how neglected she was and how everyone she cares about leaves or emotionally leaves her, then after sid's betrayal (to her) and witnessing a close friend of hers die, i could completely understand how she would want to disappear and become essentially a ghost so she wouldnt have to feel anyone else leave her. basically becoming no one so it would hurt less than becoming attached (ie sid codependency)
I believe “manic pixie dream girl” is one of the most misused and misunderstood tropes in media. People will pin that label on literally any quirky or whimsical female character regardless of any character growth. To me, the best litmus test for whether or not a character fits this trope is to ask yourself, “How does this character function in the story? What character growth does she experience? Why was she written?” In my opinion, if the answer is anything except “to facilitate the male lead’s growth,” she cannot be an MPDG. If that is her only purpose in the story, she is.
Cassie is such an iconic character and one of the most memorable of skins, alongside Effy, Tony and Cook. She annoyed me a bit in season 2 but when I think of skins she’s at the forefront of the characters I think of
Perfectly slim and fit actresses being called fat in the 2000s broke me. With my 70 kg reached at my final height of 171 cm at 14 years old, I just gave up, thinking I'll never be good enough anyways. I always hid my body, my butt and thighs which were simultaneously hideously fat but also sexualized by my religion... It's a miracle I never got an ED. It felt like too much work to lose weight so my lazy self just never really tried. But in the end I think I am healthier for it.
as someone who had cassie as her background as a 15-16 year old, watching her life including her backstory was like seeing my own. I'm now reckoning with trying to take accountability for reacting exactly how cassie does to abandonment, without hating myself into being a ghost like Cassie. videos like this that analyse what other people actually can reasonably empathise with in regards to the way Cassie's pain and fear of abandonment manifests externally, and what is unhealthy and hurtful to others to the point where it pushes them away and perpetuates the cycle of being isolated and alone help me process a lot. Thank you for making this
Yessss this is the video i wanted, cassie is such a complex and well written and well acted character. Like some of the other subs comments, my favorite series were 3-4 and id love an analysis of effy from s1 to fire if thats something you would like to do
I wanted to be Cassie. Skinny, white, beautiful, and thin. I really wanted that before. But that role was never meant for someone like me. Someone who could still be wanted when they're very very ill.
I was watching Skins much later, so I don't have the context of that time. Still, I was around 17 and just got better with my ED problems. Cassie was for my little comical portrayal of how I didn't want to end up. Nothing desireable, at least not for me. In my opinion, she was not done badly at all. She is so delusional and gets some laughs from Michel and others, which is not nice but shows how f*ck up acting like her is. They are showing a contract between the mind of a person with ED and the real world, but I admit that this probably did not work in the society of the early 2000s with the glorification of unhealty thinness. In my opinion, in the second session, they did not ruin the character; her mental illness increased. The whole relationship with Sid is about this as well. When she runs, she runs from him too because she can feel how dependent they are on each other, and that gives you a lot of enxiety. (Once Sid is ignorant to her, she says: I will love you forever, and that is the problem) He is not a good boyfriend as well as she is not good girlfriend. All this showed me the potential she has as a person, but she is wasting it. I can also relate to how much help she gets from her parents and medical institutions. Knowledge about mental health issues was quite limited then (in my time, in hers even more), so in the end, I think this was still portrayed pretty well too, although in a raw and comical way.
I felt the same about season two Cassie. I really didn’t like her behavior when I watched it in high school but as an adult reevaluating my perception of effy and Cassie I def saw her season two arc as really tragic for her as I think she just hit a breaking point with how neglected she was by everyone-jal was the only one who was shown to actually be there for her in her worst moments. She was always struggling so much and just reached a point where she became so miserable and bitter she started lashing out at everyone around her. It was really sad and really realistic and I don’t think the other characters really acknowledged how their treatment of her contributed to her reaching that point. I loved the development of her friendship w Chris which makes it that much worse when he died and I think was really the last straw for her
if you havent seen the 7th season of skins you cant do a full deep dive on cassies full character cause she has an entire arc in season 7, same with Effy (tbh my favorite seasons of skins are 3-4 i love the second generation so much, no one talks about them, i cant wait to hear what you say about them)
@@SerenaSkybourne no problem! i wasnt saying this to be mean, i just think some people think we dont see cassie and effy after second generation but thats not true
Eh... every ED is different. You can't reeaaallly say that when you contemplate that the world of EDs is crazy expansive. You have undiagnosed and unspecified ones, ones that are a type of ED (LIKE Anorexia but don't meet the criteria or are caused by things like meds or physical/mental conditions), etc. There's just too much to the ED community to truly determine it wasn't depicted well. I, too, struggled with ED. I called mine Anorexia (mine came from physical and mental illnesses as well as self-hate and a wide variety of different horrid things in my environment from poverty to guilt over my friends going hungry, etc.) despite "having a period" (a dumb criteria that determined you didn't "have Anorexia").
Watching this after having watched everything goes on netflix is very interesting, the way anorexia and eating disorders are depicted is so different and shows how far we've come
I've been struggling with an ed and i was active on ed twitter up until just a few months ago. People still have her as profile pictures or make pro ana meal plans using her as inspo etc.
please stop spreading the word on this community. even if you think it deserves criticism, do it in a way that won't make people look it up. people there don't seek to be nice. They just want to feel safe to express how disordered their minds got. so if you were really there there you would know not to do this
First was so excited when you started the Skins diving! I just rewatched the first two generations a couple weeks ago you are so well-spoken and understanding with all the issues and representations
i think she’s bpd, i think you to be a little mentally unwell to make sense of her actions sadly, i relate too strongly to her your analysis of her helps me see into myself and how maladaptive and fear or of abandonment present to others thank you for handling cassie with care and empathy
To add to your point at 7:10, Cassie is introduced by the other teen characters. It was more realistic for them to introduce her in an insensitive, objectifying way. It reflects more on her friends and the early 2000s than the quality of Cassie's writing/characterisation.
i'm so glad you made this video ! i recently started rewatching skins and i couldn't really find words for how i felt about cassie's character but you said it perfectly : i liked her at first, i felt a lot of empathy for her but in the second season i actually kinda despised her ? maybe not to that extent but i was super annoyed with her attitude, and i didn't understand why everyone was always blaming sid when she acted worse than him sometimes. anyways thank you for the video ! i can't wait for you to make videos about other characters !!
Somehow Cassie was the only character from the main cast of s1-2 I couldn’t relate to or like at all because the combination of her weird smiling, airy behaviour and the mental issues seemed unrealistic to me, like a caricature, so it was very interesting to see an analysis from someone who could resonate with her character much better. The things u said totally make sense, so I look at her a bit differently now. Great video btw.
meanwhile I was the total opposite, as someone with an ED (unspecified ED/not quite Anorexia) from my ADD/undiagnosed PTSD/other mental illnesses with a very bubbly personality and other physical disabilities taking meds that kinda made me loopy and in general I just was a sweet person never really all there (A history of seizures and Functional Neurological Disorder and migraines and Meniere's Disease will do that you) so I completely resonated with her because people ALWAYS thought I was on hardcore drugs (wasn't) I just was always a loopy person between mental and physical illness and my personality. My little sister had to protect me because people took advantage of me and mistreated me a lot. Between all this and then being Asexual (got SA'ed a LOT) but also being outspoken thanks to my parents raising me to defend myself, it was a crazy journey through life. Cassie also looked like me, so to find someone remotely like me in a media was crazy.
Not sure if it was the book you saw on insta but there's an amazing book called 'fearing the black body' that talks about the racial origin of fatphobia
Im so glad Skins is getting some critical analysis! I wish more ensemble shows would lift the episode per character, its so cool to see the group dynamics and then dive into each characters private home context. I would love to hear your takes on Genera+ion. It also has some hits and misses, (student/teacher relationship) but its the first show Ive seen depict being young in a world where climate crisis and school shootings are becoming mundane. It has the same kind of mad cap ensemble vibe that reminded me of Skins and I wish it got more than one season.
I think it’s all 4 for me, it was relatable to the point of a trigger. I started enjoying Cassie as a character when she adopts her brother and actually had character development but by then it was all over :(
I honestly believe watching skins at the ripe age of 12 definitely made my imminent ed develop much faster and much aggressively than what it could have been. Still, a ffff great show, but I wish I had watched it when I was way older
She's definitely not a manic pixie dream girl; girls and women can exist and help men/boys realize things, develop their characters, etc without only being those things. People who are significant to you rub off on you, for better or for worse. Phrasing aside, calling Cass a manic pixie dream girl does a massive disservice to her character, allowing early, early Tony to define her and then stopping there. The most MPD thing Cassie does for Sid is start his emancipation from Tony in a way. In the pilot episode, before we've even seen her, Tony (and Michelle) define her for us and for Sid--crazy, astoundingly good in bed, "f*cks like a ferret on acid" and something about issues w/food. If that's all we had, ending on the trampoline with the conversation between her and Sid (which focuses nearly entirely on Sid) with Cassie telling him he likes her but loves Michelle, and then her vanishing, she'd be a kind of oracle-MPD, the MPD who isn't there as a sex object but rather to impart some x-rated Grandma Willow advice then vanishing. Instead, we get insights into Cassie's life. The serious mental health struggles. The raw pain and loneliness she tries to both hide and show. We see SO many people fail her. We see her undergo so much trauma with no support--especially when Chris dies, yes, they all band together to grieve him and have some shenanigans, but she was LIVING with him, she found him, that's a skyscrapers of levels above "just" grief (which is beyond horrible enough). But as usual, Cassie is left holding the trauma with nowhere to put it, no one to share it with, no tools to process it. And that's pretty recent after her suicide attempt, which, while self-inflicted, is another kind of trauma. Our brains aren't meant to cope with either of those things, let alone together, let alone stacked on top of everything else she's been through. The entire show we see her breaking and the entire show it's written off like, "oh that's just Cass." And you could fault the writers for that, but I actually thought it was incredibly real. The desensitization, the desire to just accept the easy solution and move on, all at the expense of the person slowly being boiled in front of you. And that theme of being left out/almost ignored is echoed throughout the show. Unlike the rest of the cast, Cassie is just left out and talked about (poorly) behind her back on top of all the other neglect she faces. It makes all the sense in the world for her to latch onto her crush as a kind of "way out," to change her narrative because she's drowning (that's not fair to Sid of course, but also, it's not fair Cassie is in that position). Hell, even Scarlett is able to ingratiate herself into the group more easily than Cassie is. Not to mention, if Cass were an MPD, she's be an astoundingly bad one. Not only does she "fail" to immediately strike Sid insensate with blind love, lust, and admiration for her within 1-2 meetings, it's the opposite--solidifying his feelings for Michelle on "date" 1, then getting stood up on "date" 2. It's not Cass who "wakes" Sid up, it's Maxxie's drawing that opens his eyes, and, after the Scotland/Michelle fiasco it's Effy who arranges things so she'll get back with Sid and stop f*cking her way through the UK (no judgements except, I hope she's doing laundry cause that nightgown must be gross). But mostly, I think calling her a MPD does a massively, insulting disservice to the mental health community as a whole. Cassie's portrayal is so real and raw and while the other characters may be insensitive about her struggles, that's part of the realness. The show does a fantastic job showing how isolating mental health struggles are, how you don't necessarily do what the "ideal" you would want, in fact, it's frequently the opposite. How they can sometimes make you nasty because that's the only way your brain--not wired to cope with that much depression and trauma--can make sense of it is seeing it happen to someone else ("yours is in the post"). Not that that makes any of it okay, but reality is frequently "not okay," and I really admired the way they wrote her character and her struggles. So while she's got the eccentricities and ethereal appearance of the manic pixie dream girl, her actions, background, and narrative just don't support her being one. Instead it's depression and trauma writ real instead of Hollywood-ized, and that makes her the definitive anti-manic pixie dream girl.
Love that you're making videos on this show. I remember when I first watched it and I always thought that there were so many discussion points about the show that weren't addressed directly in the show itself. Since you've started talking about it I went back to rewatch it for the first time in years. I really hope you make a video about Tony and Michelle's relationship because I always thought they weren't good together. Also random idea but have you ever watched the secret life of the American teenager? That show was completely unhinged. 😂
You should watch Skins Pure!!! It is my favorite out of all of the last features in Skins. It shows you how far Cassie has come to where she was as a teenager. It was so healing to watch Pure, as a young girl who empathized with Cassie. Don't wanna spoil, but I hope you do! I think Pure, Fire and Rise are all integral to the characters' stories & characterizations.
Yes same! And at that point (again without spoilers) she's trying so hard to be the point where the cycle of everything that led to the way she was ends - honestly her parents were so obsessed with themselves without ever thinking about whatever harm they were doing to their kids that it's no wonder that she wasn't doing great mentally in her teens and ultimately ended up having to do a lot of work on herself (and she'd clearly come a long way),
My issue with everyone hating on Cassie (and everyone else) is that they don't understand that these are mentally ill kids who have no real good parental figures and don't really know what love is and people are just expecting them to be good people and morally right and not act mentally ill. People hate on Cassie's depiction of her ED but no one seems to understand that she was basically ignored by her parents. To me, her environment created her ED and she wasn't selfish for it; she was a girl who was ignored and unloved and was crying out for attention. Sure she handled things with Sid in an unhealthy way, but it's not like she was raised right on how to properly love. All she really was taught was sex from her sex obsessed parents. Even if others don't think it's depicted well, I am still glad to see it because EDs don't get depicted much in media so better to see anything especially at the time it was taking place than not at all. As for the title of Manic Pixie Dream Girl- she is definitely not one; she's more of a satire of one than an actual one.
(my comment is not meant to judge any living person, and is just my perception of Cassie as a character when I watched the show) When the show came out I was 24 and my husband and I watched it then. Honestly, I found Cassie to be the least likeable, most insufferable character of the bunch. That being said, it wasn't until my 3rd or so watch-through that I even understood that she had an ED. I thought that clinic was for a different mental health issue like maybe bipolar, and the food, the weights, the water, none of those scenes made *any* sense to me whatsoever. But as you said, my own relationship with food was completely different. I have Cystic Fibrosis, I'm a very sick person, and I've spent my entire life just trying to keep going, and trying to get enough nutrition and fight the hunger shakes and dizziness of not getting proper food no matter how well I eat. So someone fully rejecting that, or thinking it's "cute" as (that specific scene 5:00) came off to me? Ugh, in sufferable. But yeah especially in American media, this was not "a mental health thing" it was a quirky diet culture thing, and that just infuriated me. Obviously, now at 40, I view things differently. After that she was annoying for her personality and her stringing Sid along despite them being clearly awful for each other. I know that's on him too, I just hate toxic love depictions because I find real love so precious.
But the thing you need to take away from all of this at the end of the day is that none of these kids have good parental figures, so you may hate Cassie for how she treats Sid, but none of them properly know how to love because they are not educated properly on love. So next time you view the show, try not to cast stones on a child not raised properly and then see how your view of her changes. As someone who is also disabled mentally and physically, I had and ED my whole teen years and have always rejected food, even before my ed I rejected food, so it's actually an interesting concept that you would be the opposite with your condition and NOT sympathize with her in terms of her ED. I have been told my ED stems from a mix of my environment and my mental and physical disorders and that most conditions can lead to an ED. Just found it interesting that someone sick wouldn't find compassion for a fellow sick person, even if they are a fictional character.
I've always thought of Hugh Grant's character in love actually as basically a sweet version of his character in Bridget jones, the way it's meant to be 'but he's nice about the fact that she's "chubby"' like it's the inversion of Daniel's shame about being known as attracted to Bridget publicly, is both I think sincerely meant well by love actually and at the same time a hideously sad and self defeating commentary on the rhetoric we're fed as a society.
EVERY ED IS DIFFERENT. Hers is definitely depicted bad enough to be in a shelter for it, but you need to remember that every ED is different. I had one and, yes I was Asexual so I cannot talk about the Sex drive aspect or the hair part (because I shaved mine off especially since FND made me overheat and I had low self-esteem and bad hormonal issues causing hair growth issues, eventually leading to endometriosis and fibroids, and cysts that made me have a hysterectomy this year), but I can talk about how I passed out from any physical activity and I wasn't healthy enough to donate blood and did have a period but was able to go days without food and just some water, but doctors blamed mine on a mix of mental/physical illness and environmental factors, so I just wanted to point out that every ED is different and cannot be expected to be depicted properly.
Honestly my biggest hot take in regard to Cassie is that she as a character isn’t “glorifying anorexia”; she’s in fact portrayed as extremely unhealthy and dysfunctional. She’s literally just both anorexic and likable (and the fans are kinda dumb too), like as separate traits. And I’m sorry but making a mentally ill character be someone likable that you want to cheer for isn’t glorifying mental illness; it’s just making a mentally ill character that’s more than a mental illness gijinka.
This exactly. Everyone in my life that has seen Skins UK says I am exactly like her because I have a bubbly personality but I also have disabilities (mental and physical) that make up my identity that I am known for on top of a history of ED (both caused by my mental illnesses and my physical illness meds as well as self-hate and such) and they call me Cassie as more a compliment because I "am just so darn likeable" despite knowing I have a lot of issues I need to get help for (which I have acknowledged thus making these past few years the years of bettering myself) and some past employers saw me as "unstable" and "not a perfect person" and that it wasn't good to befriend me/get too close because it's essentially depicting my bad traits as good and therefore could rub off on people, but in all honesty people know me as simply a likeable person who just so happens to have issues; it's not that I am glorifying my issues (because people know I will talk and I will tell the truth of my hellish existence because the world doesn't like acknowledging the truth so I spread awareness to better help people who suffer like me) it's just that they are a part of me and I just so happen to be a very likeable person that my sister, for example, calls the living embodiment of Cassie, especially because I have the same type of front teeth as her.
I really love Skins. It was very sad and scary show but also beautiful. I think Cassie represents this show really well. She was very flawed and a very tragic character. She does have growth which is seen in Skins Pure, but these are teenage characters in the first generation. Cassie for sure had some severe trauma that was very rarely addressed. And when it was addressed, it was very short-lived. I definitely thought that her allure was in part by the damsel in distress nature. I think she is more damsel in distress than manic pixie although she subverts the damsel eventually. Sid was constantly trying to find his place and be looped into Tony’s and the rest of his friends schemes. He was always on the sidelines. He tried to be Michelle’s hero (later he actually is somewhat able to do that), But then it seemed like he was set up to save Cassie from herself. Like he could be the hero in her story vs becoming a hero for Michelle. But then we get to see that while Sid might have been important to Cassie’s story, he is not her story. She had issues before, during, and after him. She has to be the parent to herself that she needed. The friend to herself. What was interesting is that when she does runaway (granted I haven’t watched Skins in years) so some of this is fuzzy and generalized, when she does runaway it always seems to be to someone else to be rescued. But that just stops working for her. Also something about the setup of Skins is that we have an episode focused on one character and it’s like a snapshot of their life but we only get glimpses in other episodes. It’s difficult to determine what’s happening to them outside of the episode which I think creates this barrier for each character. But ultimately her damsel in distress persona starts fading away.
DW theres no spoilers here but you've GOTTA watch skins season 7, aka Pure (Cassie's episodes), Fire (Effy's episodes) & Rise (Cook's episodes)! I promise youll like them!! Fire was my favorite (and a lot of peoples) so i recommend watching that one last! Or Pure since you like(d) Cassie
Did you make a Series or Video on 13 Reasons Why, bc you said you dont think or blame ppl fir getting Eds bc of a show. And there was a whole thing abt how 13 Reasons Why causes ppl to get depressed/unalive themselves, there was a woman who blamed 13 Reasons why that her Daughter killed herself after watching it. On the other hand lots of ppl didn't do that. I think there are probably already Problems there. Immediately thought abt that. I can't remember but i think you mentioned youre not a big Fan of 13 Reasons Why. I really appreciate the fact that you're in the "you can't put someone's mental health on ppl and he's not responsible for her attempt" bc i think scenarios like this are why there's thi societal thing were ppl think that and say things like that. And im saying that as a depressed person. Youre mental health is not anyone's problem but yours y'know? I mean i know that there are problems like no therape places and availability and a lot of things. But ultimately its you're responsibility to fix it. I remember watching Skins as a Kid. The later Seasons with Cook, Freddy etc. were more my thing but i also dont really remember. I should rewatch it really. I live your Series on the Show
At the end of the day your mental health is yours, however, people can have compassion and at least care for people and try to help and love and be empathetic when possible. The world is a cruel place, even worse when your body is your enemy and you have no way to fight against it. But if you can give them support, then it goes a long way. As someone who is physically and mentally ill myself, I say this coming from a family who let generational trauma continue on for too long and finally got help herself and does her best to help others. Sure I recognize I can only do so much, but just seeing people smile or feel relieved knowing they are not alone is great. Some of my best friendships have been strengthened because of this. just keep that in mind when you, too, are out in the world.
@@oldladytrexarms That was part of my point. Apparently it didn't seem that way, if I need a reminder. (not sure if it was meant that way, just came across as yeah) I'm also physically disabled/handicapped. In a wheelchair + my mental health so I get what you're saying, I never said not be compassionate, help ppl(to your ability ofc, you burning out doesn't help anyone) And like you mentioned, the World is sometimes a cruel place, so we could use compassion(although I would argue the World is a pretty nice place, seeing all the solidarity regarding a certain "issue" right now for example, I think the World would be better if other ppl were in power, better yet we had another System. But that's another conversation) back to topic, I regarding mental/physical health more compassion would help a lot I think, that still doesn't change the Therapy issue, which some ppl need more than compassion from peers, y'know what I mean. Meds and stuff too. Which brings us back to societal changes(I guess the first point too, to have more compassion we should change some conversations). So yeah at the end of the Day, it is your problem, no one was gonna look for a Therapist for me, I had to do it myself. BUT I had Help looking for addresses and since I couldn't find a wheelchair accessible Therapist I called my Insurance company who helped me. So yeah I stand by it is your problem (but also a group effort thing, y'know with my example. I mean helping ppl along the way maybe y'know what I mean?) And making others feel bad bc someone can't handle their mental health(you didn't mention that point, I'm just saying) is ofc bad(imo) For example someone staying with you, bc you can't handle them leaving, Or someone leaving and you then doing something. I think that's what happened. That's not Sid's or anyone's fault except the Person's fault who DID it. Ofc you can try but there's only so much you can do. If someone does something like that, they don't need you to cuddle up to them, they need professional help. I mean that's not healthy.
I don’t get why you’re surprised that their actions are not logical and morally correct, the whole point of the show is portraying mentally ill teenagers
@@SerenaSkybourne yeah, but that’s what happens to people in real life. the beauty of this show was its realism, the morally wrong decisions, the pain, the “romanticization” of it all is actually pretty common, more than the physical symptoms that may occur in later stages of the disease.
and also, mentally ill people are very often perceived as “annoying” and “weird” by others, like you said. they don’t always receive love and compassion as other film/shows may portray. I feel like it was a fairly accurate portrayal
@@valibaba0605 Exactly this. As someone finally getting help for her mental (And physical) disabilities after several generations of generational trauma left unchecked, I have seen this too much. Even now, my family bickers because everyone else just lets their issues go unchecked. I am trying to get them help but you can only do so much for adults who don't want to help themselves, so now I can only hope that talking to them about the awesome stuff that is happening by helping myself will lead to them wanting to help themselves. Just surprised that this person was shocked that mentally ill kids acted... mentally ill...
I think Cassie and Sid were with each other because of loneliness, dependency and romanticism. Sid doesn't have a mind of his own and lacks a backbone; Cassie romanctized Sid and stayed with him because everyone else was busy doing their own thing (her dad, Michelle, Tony, etc). Hannah Murray (Cassie's actress) thinks Sid and Cassie weren't good for each other.
Something I like about Cassie. Because she always speaks in the same fake happy tone of voice, you have to actually listen to WHAT she says instead of how she says it. It's easy to be swayed by how someone sounds rather than the content of what they're saying. For example, someone who sounds really confident. But if you put your listening ears on, they're actually talking total bullshit. When Cassie says things like, "I didn't eat for 3 days so I could be lovely", you should be incredibly alarmed. Not think, "Oh wow! She sounds so happy."
I've been going back and forth wondering why their hasn't been more popular thorough feminist and sociological / media critique of Skins UK. And now I'm like ya, duh, anyone with any sense is going to age restrict the commentary. But the show itself isn't restricted, and there are so many socio-politically conservative wasp critiques of skins UK that are relatively prominent. politics.
In my mind a key point to understand about this show is that there was not a single woman in the producer list, and it was co-created written/directed by a father son duo who are now the age of boomers and gen x. One takes for granted that this is just misogynistic men, and the patriarchal imaginaries about social problems speaking through the female characters in the show. It's edgelord good ole boys getting high and writing a script trying to sound deep. That's the real politics I'm assuming. And I can't find any reason to go beyond season 1 to get the jist of the value of this show. The tropes repeat themselves and gets lazier beyond that, and presents a whole lot of other things to problematize. Pearl Anderson's account (actor of Michelle )of her experience in a 2022 podcast gives the sense that a lot of these explanations by the show are something of a retrospective pre-text. But, idk. There's a lot to talk about on Skins UK
I love Skins too but i don't like Cassie. i just think she's kinda full of herself. To be honest Sid was better with Michelle, i mean even though they were both cheating, at least they got along together perfectly. I also can't believe Michelle was dumb enough to stay with Tony despite his manipulative behaviour. Cassie was a bit of a bitch anyway, expecting everyone to drop everything for her. Don;t watch Skins Pure, its pretty boring and even though Cassie is over her struggles and not seeing Sid anymore (he barely gets a mention). She just hooks up with a couple of guys (one of them played by the Years and Years singer). she also has a bit of family drama but at least her dad acknowledges her, nut only cause of his own problems I'd love to see you do some videos on Gen 2 as it was by far the best. However some of the characters were in a relationship with the wrong characters, but more on that when you get there All in all, Skins is great show and was sad it ended but at least in the final season (Redux) we got to catch up with a few of the characters. (they only did Cassie from gen 1 though, Effy was gen 2 as thats when she was a main character)
I just wanted to stop by here and say that anorexia is not contagious. You cannot get anorexia by looking at someone who has it or someone who is thin, any more than you can get obese by looking at someone who is obese. It is a serious mental health condition and you have to be born with it and then having major environmental trigger. You can't have just the environmental triggers. If it were that easy to get anorexia don't you think we would all have it? Even if you really want to get anorexia you cannot get it. Your body will physically force you to eat. It's like trying to stay up for days at a time. If you do not have a disorder you cannot force yourself to stay awake that long. Your body will force you to sleep just like your body will force you to eat. I don't know why there seems to be this double standard with anorexia and obesity I don't think people are doing it on purpose. I think it's just out of ignorance and their hearts are in the right places. But you can have anorexia without thinking you are fat. There are quite a few such as myself, where it has nothing to do with what you look, like such as autism OCD and anxiety. All of those can be a reason for anorexia as well. Where it's about the texture of food or knowing how gross food production is and a fear I've contamination or germs, or just having such severe anxiety you lose your appetite completely. The same thing with depression. Anorexia doesn't look like one thing. So as much as I believe you guys think you're doing the right thing by not wanting to quote glorify anorexia, it truly doesn't help or make a difference. And personally I feel like if someone has a mental illness and they want to make beautiful art of it I don't think they should be shamed for that. It just seems like social shaming has become okay. I mean do any of you know for sure the writers of the show didn't suffer from an eating disorder as well? Ayat just wanted to throw out another perspective as someone with anorexia. It's honestly really tiring to be constantly talde I'm ruining young girls lives by just being alive and going about my day because I have anorexia. What am I supposed to do just lock myself away in my house? Don't ever wear fashionable clothes or put on makeup so I can feel pretty because God forbid someone else might think I'm pretty too and that might make them envious and give them an eating disorder. Im not saying that's what she's advocating for in this video or anything like that. But this mindset produces people who do harass and attack those with anorexia That's really not how it works guys.
With the greatest of care, I need people who read this, and you, to know the body does ~not~ make you eat when hungry. Quoting a society who helps people with eating disorders, they says “Many people struggling with anorexia no longer feel hunger or fullness since they are disconnected from their bodies and physical needs. Therefore, they don’t need to learn how to ignore feeling hungry, as the sensation is foreign to them.”
As someone who has struggled with anorexia their entire life, respectfully you are wrong about most of your points. No its not contagious but yes you can force yourself into an eating disorder. And you can influence others into having one. It's not that cut and dry
OCD and many others you listed above stem from trauma/external factors AND preexisting chemistry. Otherwise, programs for addiction and mental health would be irrelevant. Patterned behavior is powerful, influence is powerful, depictions of these experiences (flawed) are important and don’t always demonize those suffering, it helps people get help.
I know you questioned it but you have it right. When Chris died Cassie had to runaway so she was in control of the pain. Just like with her eating disorder. It triggered her fear of abandonment - Now it’s not just that Sid could leave her for another girl like Michelle which was what past Cassie was insecure about but now she faces the reality that love can also end in death. She can’t really handle that reality.
Yeah it’s that illusion of being in control of the pain, that would make the most sense, otherwise he might break up with her first and that would be too painful
@@SerenaSkybourne Exactly but I think early Cassie was fearful of him leaving. I want to say she did move past that and thought their love would last. But then after Chris died she realized Sid could be gone from her life in this other way which was even more terrifying then her first fear of him leaving her.
yeah because he could literally die! even scarier@@shannonfilialunae1359
Also, I didn't talk about it in this video but Effy is literally the epitome of the "tragically beautiful" trope
Please do a video dedicated to Effy. She’s such an iconic character!
@@emmamartin4045🫤
The most unrealistic thing in the entirety of s2 was Cassie going to NY and everyone being nice to her, especially the taxi driver who even gave her money. I was like??? That looked straight out of a fanfic written by a 13-year-old.
This entire show is tumblr fanfic
@@Blytheunicorninoright? It really is…
Cassie was an unreliable narrator and it is heavily implied that she hallucinated and/or fantasised about things which didn't happen. For example she wrongly thought that Sid was texting her.
Earlier in the series she struck up a friendship with a taxi driver who helped her with her eating disorder. I doubt the taxi driver existed. I doubt the friendly taxi driver in NYC existed either. Both are either figments of her imagination or some sort of supernatural higher power which has come to assist her in her hour of need. I don't think they are supposed to be real taxi drivers.
A 13-year-old that’s never been to NY…
I believe the taxi driver was just her imagination. He didn't actually exist.
The writers were fine with killing off characters so i think having her die of her ed would have been an effective way to scare off teenage girls
Yeah, I think that would've hammered home that EDs are destructive and dangerous. Not something to be strived for or glamorised.
not necessarily. if her dying arc was followed by watching the other characters grieve and love her, or deal with survivor's guilt such as feeling guilty for how they treated her/missed the signs, then it would actually encourage many ed sufferers instead. many of them do it as a way to get noticed or love and fantasize about "showing everyone" by dying thin so that everyone finally cares, even if they're not around for it. toxic? yes. but this is so common, it's the same reason why "unaliving" (hate the term but hate the youtube algo more) rates skyrocketed after 13 reasons why came out.
unfortunately, when it comes to discouraging eds, the only thing you can do is on an individual level - get them into therapy. when someone is in an untreated ed mindset, there is nothing you can do that they won't find a way to twist into motivation to keep starving.
As an anorexic teenager, I used to romanticise everything. I remember being hospitalised and literally seeing the skinniest girls, the ones who were stuck to a wheelchair because they were too weak to walk as "super coquette and beautiful"
That's the issue with anorexia, we romanticise illness, even death. Especially as teenagers, we would think that looking deadly ill will bring people's attention on us.
Cassie isn't a Manic Pixie because she does have character depth and she is separable from Sid (her love interest). Manic Pixies usually exist solely in the context of their male love interests as someone who inspires them, but don't have much of their own autonomy and that's the problem with this trope. Cassie doesn't fit into this.
A girl being pretty, whimsical and quirky alone does not make her a Manic Pixie.
Yeah the TH-cam creator said Skins uses Cassie as a satyr of this trope
@@lucilegonn442satyr ?
Cassie kind of reminds me a lot of Cat from Victorious I've just realised. I was one of those people as a kid not liking Sid's treatment of Cassie (who was my favourite character in season 1) and thinking he was always the one in the wrong back then when he truly was not.
a lot of things were framed as Sid's fault but often both were to blame
as someone who has similar mental health issues and has also done the physical ghosting multiple times, i think you absolutely hit the nail on the head about it being self sabotage. Cassie's first season arc showed how neglected she was and how everyone she cares about leaves or emotionally leaves her, then after sid's betrayal (to her) and witnessing a close friend of hers die, i could completely understand how she would want to disappear and become essentially a ghost so she wouldnt have to feel anyone else leave her. basically becoming no one so it would hurt less than becoming attached (ie sid codependency)
I believe “manic pixie dream girl” is one of the most misused and misunderstood tropes in media. People will pin that label on literally any quirky or whimsical female character regardless of any character growth.
To me, the best litmus test for whether or not a character fits this trope is to ask yourself, “How does this character function in the story? What character growth does she experience? Why was she written?” In my opinion, if the answer is anything except “to facilitate the male lead’s growth,” she cannot be an MPDG. If that is her only purpose in the story, she is.
Cassie is such an iconic character and one of the most memorable of skins, alongside Effy, Tony and Cook. She annoyed me a bit in season 2 but when I think of skins she’s at the forefront of the characters I think of
Perfectly slim and fit actresses being called fat in the 2000s broke me.
With my 70 kg reached at my final height of 171 cm at 14 years old, I just gave up, thinking I'll never be good enough anyways. I always hid my body, my butt and thighs which were simultaneously hideously fat but also sexualized by my religion...
It's a miracle I never got an ED. It felt like too much work to lose weight so my lazy self just never really tried. But in the end I think I am healthier for it.
cope
@@krollic why the fuck would you comment this
as someone who had cassie as her background as a 15-16 year old, watching her life including her backstory was like seeing my own. I'm now reckoning with trying to take accountability for reacting exactly how cassie does to abandonment, without hating myself into being a ghost like Cassie. videos like this that analyse what other people actually can reasonably empathise with in regards to the way Cassie's pain and fear of abandonment manifests externally, and what is unhealthy and hurtful to others to the point where it pushes them away and perpetuates the cycle of being isolated and alone help me process a lot. Thank you for making this
Yessss this is the video i wanted, cassie is such a complex and well written and well acted character. Like some of the other subs comments, my favorite series were 3-4 and id love an analysis of effy from s1 to fire if thats something you would like to do
I wanted to be Cassie. Skinny, white, beautiful, and thin. I really wanted that before. But that role was never meant for someone like me. Someone who could still be wanted when they're very very ill.
I was watching Skins much later, so I don't have the context of that time. Still, I was around 17 and just got better with my ED problems. Cassie was for my little comical portrayal of how I didn't want to end up. Nothing desireable, at least not for me. In my opinion, she was not done badly at all. She is so delusional and gets some laughs from Michel and others, which is not nice but shows how f*ck up acting like her is. They are showing a contract between the mind of a person with ED and the real world, but I admit that this probably did not work in the society of the early 2000s with the glorification of unhealty thinness. In my opinion, in the second session, they did not ruin the character; her mental illness increased. The whole relationship with Sid is about this as well. When she runs, she runs from him too because she can feel how dependent they are on each other, and that gives you a lot of enxiety. (Once Sid is ignorant to her, she says: I will love you forever, and that is the problem) He is not a good boyfriend as well as she is not good girlfriend. All this showed me the potential she has as a person, but she is wasting it.
I can also relate to how much help she gets from her parents and medical institutions. Knowledge about mental health issues was quite limited then (in my time, in hers even more), so in the end, I think this was still portrayed pretty well too, although in a raw and comical way.
I felt the same about season two Cassie. I really didn’t like her behavior when I watched it in high school but as an adult reevaluating my perception of effy and Cassie I def saw her season two arc as really tragic for her as I think she just hit a breaking point with how neglected she was by everyone-jal was the only one who was shown to actually be there for her in her worst moments. She was always struggling so much and just reached a point where she became so miserable and bitter she started lashing out at everyone around her. It was really sad and really realistic and I don’t think the other characters really acknowledged how their treatment of her contributed to her reaching that point. I loved the development of her friendship w Chris which makes it that much worse when he died and I think was really the last straw for her
if you havent seen the 7th season of skins you cant do a full deep dive on cassies full character cause she has an entire arc in season 7, same with Effy (tbh my favorite seasons of skins are 3-4 i love the second generation so much, no one talks about them, i cant wait to hear what you say about them)
Honestly I had so many topics to discuss in this video, its already so long as it is 😂 but if people want to hear more I will do it of course
@@SerenaSkybourne no problem! i wasnt saying this to be mean, i just think some people think we dont see cassie and effy after second generation but thats not true
The show didn't portray cassie ed in a good way to me but I'm still glad that they did try to tackle it I struggled with an ed when I was a teenager
Eh... every ED is different. You can't reeaaallly say that when you contemplate that the world of EDs is crazy expansive. You have undiagnosed and unspecified ones, ones that are a type of ED (LIKE Anorexia but don't meet the criteria or are caused by things like meds or physical/mental conditions), etc. There's just too much to the ED community to truly determine it wasn't depicted well. I, too, struggled with ED. I called mine Anorexia (mine came from physical and mental illnesses as well as self-hate and a wide variety of different horrid things in my environment from poverty to guilt over my friends going hungry, etc.) despite "having a period" (a dumb criteria that determined you didn't "have Anorexia").
Watching this after having watched everything goes on netflix is very interesting, the way anorexia and eating disorders are depicted is so different and shows how far we've come
I've been struggling with an ed and i was active on ed twitter up until just a few months ago. People still have her as profile pictures or make pro ana meal plans using her as inspo etc.
please stop spreading the word on this community. even if you think it deserves criticism, do it in a way that won't make people look it up. people there don't seek to be nice. They just want to feel safe to express how disordered their minds got. so if you were really there there you would know not to do this
First
was so excited when you started the Skins diving! I just rewatched the first two generations a couple weeks ago
you are so well-spoken and understanding with all the issues and representations
thankyou so much 💃
I really recommend you to watch Skins ,,Pure,, it’s my fav story from season 7
And Cassie grown so much as a person
i think she’s bpd,
i think you to be a little mentally unwell to make sense of her actions
sadly, i relate too strongly to her
your analysis of her helps me see into myself and how maladaptive and fear or of abandonment present to others
thank you for handling cassie with care and empathy
UGHHH i'm so happy about the skins videos you've put out and i can't wait for more
To add to your point at 7:10, Cassie is introduced by the other teen characters. It was more realistic for them to introduce her in an insensitive, objectifying way. It reflects more on her friends and the early 2000s than the quality of Cassie's writing/characterisation.
i'm so glad you made this video ! i recently started rewatching skins and i couldn't really find words for how i felt about cassie's character but you said it perfectly : i liked her at first, i felt a lot of empathy for her but in the second season i actually kinda despised her ? maybe not to that extent but i was super annoyed with her attitude, and i didn't understand why everyone was always blaming sid when she acted worse than him sometimes.
anyways thank you for the video ! i can't wait for you to make videos about other characters !!
Somehow Cassie was the only character from the main cast of s1-2 I couldn’t relate to or like at all because the combination of her weird smiling, airy behaviour and the mental issues seemed unrealistic to me, like a caricature, so it was very interesting to see an analysis from someone who could resonate with her character much better. The things u said totally make sense, so I look at her a bit differently now. Great video btw.
meanwhile I was the total opposite, as someone with an ED (unspecified ED/not quite Anorexia) from my ADD/undiagnosed PTSD/other mental illnesses with a very bubbly personality and other physical disabilities taking meds that kinda made me loopy and in general I just was a sweet person never really all there (A history of seizures and Functional Neurological Disorder and migraines and Meniere's Disease will do that you) so I completely resonated with her because people ALWAYS thought I was on hardcore drugs (wasn't) I just was always a loopy person between mental and physical illness and my personality. My little sister had to protect me because people took advantage of me and mistreated me a lot. Between all this and then being Asexual (got SA'ed a LOT) but also being outspoken thanks to my parents raising me to defend myself, it was a crazy journey through life. Cassie also looked like me, so to find someone remotely like me in a media was crazy.
Not sure if it was the book you saw on insta but there's an amazing book called 'fearing the black body' that talks about the racial origin of fatphobia
This is such an important topic....
yes it is!
Im so glad Skins is getting some critical analysis! I wish more ensemble shows would lift the episode per character, its so cool to see the group dynamics and then dive into each characters private home context.
I would love to hear your takes on Genera+ion. It also has some hits and misses, (student/teacher relationship) but its the first show Ive seen depict being young in a world where climate crisis and school shootings are becoming mundane. It has the same kind of mad cap ensemble vibe that reminded me of Skins and I wish it got more than one season.
I think it’s all 4 for me, it was relatable to the point of a trigger. I started enjoying Cassie as a character when she adopts her brother and actually had character development but by then it was all over :(
loving the Skins series so far!!
thankyouuu
I thought the girl in the thumbnail was Taylor Swift
I honestly believe watching skins at the ripe age of 12 definitely made my imminent ed develop much faster and much aggressively than what it could have been. Still, a ffff great show, but I wish I had watched it when I was way older
She's definitely not a manic pixie dream girl; girls and women can exist and help men/boys realize things, develop their characters, etc without only being those things. People who are significant to you rub off on you, for better or for worse. Phrasing aside, calling Cass a manic pixie dream girl does a massive disservice to her character, allowing early, early Tony to define her and then stopping there. The most MPD thing Cassie does for Sid is start his emancipation from Tony in a way. In the pilot episode, before we've even seen her, Tony (and Michelle) define her for us and for Sid--crazy, astoundingly good in bed, "f*cks like a ferret on acid" and something about issues w/food. If that's all we had, ending on the trampoline with the conversation between her and Sid (which focuses nearly entirely on Sid) with Cassie telling him he likes her but loves Michelle, and then her vanishing, she'd be a kind of oracle-MPD, the MPD who isn't there as a sex object but rather to impart some x-rated Grandma Willow advice then vanishing.
Instead, we get insights into Cassie's life. The serious mental health struggles. The raw pain and loneliness she tries to both hide and show. We see SO many people fail her. We see her undergo so much trauma with no support--especially when Chris dies, yes, they all band together to grieve him and have some shenanigans, but she was LIVING with him, she found him, that's a skyscrapers of levels above "just" grief (which is beyond horrible enough). But as usual, Cassie is left holding the trauma with nowhere to put it, no one to share it with, no tools to process it. And that's pretty recent after her suicide attempt, which, while self-inflicted, is another kind of trauma. Our brains aren't meant to cope with either of those things, let alone together, let alone stacked on top of everything else she's been through. The entire show we see her breaking and the entire show it's written off like, "oh that's just Cass." And you could fault the writers for that, but I actually thought it was incredibly real. The desensitization, the desire to just accept the easy solution and move on, all at the expense of the person slowly being boiled in front of you.
And that theme of being left out/almost ignored is echoed throughout the show. Unlike the rest of the cast, Cassie is just left out and talked about (poorly) behind her back on top of all the other neglect she faces. It makes all the sense in the world for her to latch onto her crush as a kind of "way out," to change her narrative because she's drowning (that's not fair to Sid of course, but also, it's not fair Cassie is in that position). Hell, even Scarlett is able to ingratiate herself into the group more easily than Cassie is.
Not to mention, if Cass were an MPD, she's be an astoundingly bad one. Not only does she "fail" to immediately strike Sid insensate with blind love, lust, and admiration for her within 1-2 meetings, it's the opposite--solidifying his feelings for Michelle on "date" 1, then getting stood up on "date" 2. It's not Cass who "wakes" Sid up, it's Maxxie's drawing that opens his eyes, and, after the Scotland/Michelle fiasco it's Effy who arranges things so she'll get back with Sid and stop f*cking her way through the UK (no judgements except, I hope she's doing laundry cause that nightgown must be gross).
But mostly, I think calling her a MPD does a massively, insulting disservice to the mental health community as a whole. Cassie's portrayal is so real and raw and while the other characters may be insensitive about her struggles, that's part of the realness. The show does a fantastic job showing how isolating mental health struggles are, how you don't necessarily do what the "ideal" you would want, in fact, it's frequently the opposite. How they can sometimes make you nasty because that's the only way your brain--not wired to cope with that much depression and trauma--can make sense of it is seeing it happen to someone else ("yours is in the post"). Not that that makes any of it okay, but reality is frequently "not okay," and I really admired the way they wrote her character and her struggles.
So while she's got the eccentricities and ethereal appearance of the manic pixie dream girl, her actions, background, and narrative just don't support her being one. Instead it's depression and trauma writ real instead of Hollywood-ized, and that makes her the definitive anti-manic pixie dream girl.
Love that you're making videos on this show. I remember when I first watched it and I always thought that there were so many discussion points about the show that weren't addressed directly in the show itself. Since you've started talking about it I went back to rewatch it for the first time in years. I really hope you make a video about Tony and Michelle's relationship because I always thought they weren't good together.
Also random idea but have you ever watched the secret life of the American teenager? That show was completely unhinged. 😂
I am desperate to watch that show
I was in love with Cassie. I didn't find skins till I was 22/23 and I fell in love with her character
I'm 32 now
You should watch Skins Pure!!! It is my favorite out of all of the last features in Skins. It shows you how far Cassie has come to where she was as a teenager. It was so healing to watch Pure, as a young girl who empathized with Cassie. Don't wanna spoil, but I hope you do! I think Pure, Fire and Rise are all integral to the characters' stories & characterizations.
Yes same! And at that point (again without spoilers) she's trying so hard to be the point where the cycle of everything that led to the way she was ends - honestly her parents were so obsessed with themselves without ever thinking about whatever harm they were doing to their kids that it's no wonder that she wasn't doing great mentally in her teens and ultimately ended up having to do a lot of work on herself (and she'd clearly come a long way),
Your skin looks great!
I am glad because your girl has not been sleeping 😂 thankyou
I feel that Edie Sedwick might be a real example of this sad, troubled girl vibe. Same ED,drug use, problematic family
this is so perfect thank you!
My issue with everyone hating on Cassie (and everyone else) is that they don't understand that these are mentally ill kids who have no real good parental figures and don't really know what love is and people are just expecting them to be good people and morally right and not act mentally ill. People hate on Cassie's depiction of her ED but no one seems to understand that she was basically ignored by her parents. To me, her environment created her ED and she wasn't selfish for it; she was a girl who was ignored and unloved and was crying out for attention. Sure she handled things with Sid in an unhealthy way, but it's not like she was raised right on how to properly love. All she really was taught was sex from her sex obsessed parents. Even if others don't think it's depicted well, I am still glad to see it because EDs don't get depicted much in media so better to see anything especially at the time it was taking place than not at all. As for the title of Manic Pixie Dream Girl- she is definitely not one; she's more of a satire of one than an actual one.
Loving the Skins vids!!
(my comment is not meant to judge any living person, and is just my perception of Cassie as a character when I watched the show) When the show came out I was 24 and my husband and I watched it then. Honestly, I found Cassie to be the least likeable, most insufferable character of the bunch. That being said, it wasn't until my 3rd or so watch-through that I even understood that she had an ED. I thought that clinic was for a different mental health issue like maybe bipolar, and the food, the weights, the water, none of those scenes made *any* sense to me whatsoever. But as you said, my own relationship with food was completely different. I have Cystic Fibrosis, I'm a very sick person, and I've spent my entire life just trying to keep going, and trying to get enough nutrition and fight the hunger shakes and dizziness of not getting proper food no matter how well I eat. So someone fully rejecting that, or thinking it's "cute" as (that specific scene 5:00) came off to me? Ugh, in sufferable. But yeah especially in American media, this was not "a mental health thing" it was a quirky diet culture thing, and that just infuriated me. Obviously, now at 40, I view things differently. After that she was annoying for her personality and her stringing Sid along despite them being clearly awful for each other. I know that's on him too, I just hate toxic love depictions because I find real love so precious.
But the thing you need to take away from all of this at the end of the day is that none of these kids have good parental figures, so you may hate Cassie for how she treats Sid, but none of them properly know how to love because they are not educated properly on love. So next time you view the show, try not to cast stones on a child not raised properly and then see how your view of her changes. As someone who is also disabled mentally and physically, I had and ED my whole teen years and have always rejected food, even before my ed I rejected food, so it's actually an interesting concept that you would be the opposite with your condition and NOT sympathize with her in terms of her ED. I have been told my ED stems from a mix of my environment and my mental and physical disorders and that most conditions can lead to an ED. Just found it interesting that someone sick wouldn't find compassion for a fellow sick person, even if they are a fictional character.
now im picturing kathy griffin as a skins teen
I think Natalie was in love actually to show, that an attractive guy can fell in love with a curvy woman. It's not mockery, but it's so patronising.
I've always thought of Hugh Grant's character in love actually as basically a sweet version of his character in Bridget jones, the way it's meant to be 'but he's nice about the fact that she's "chubby"' like it's the inversion of Daniel's shame about being known as attracted to Bridget publicly, is both I think sincerely meant well by love actually and at the same time a hideously sad and self defeating commentary on the rhetoric we're fed as a society.
I love your deep dives! Would you ever consider doing one on Mad Men? I think it’s a very interesting story line!
A bigger thing is ed tend to lower your sex drive too and make body hair more prominent, things which Cassie doesn’t take notice from
EVERY ED IS DIFFERENT. Hers is definitely depicted bad enough to be in a shelter for it, but you need to remember that every ED is different. I had one and, yes I was Asexual so I cannot talk about the Sex drive aspect or the hair part (because I shaved mine off especially since FND made me overheat and I had low self-esteem and bad hormonal issues causing hair growth issues, eventually leading to endometriosis and fibroids, and cysts that made me have a hysterectomy this year), but I can talk about how I passed out from any physical activity and I wasn't healthy enough to donate blood and did have a period but was able to go days without food and just some water, but doctors blamed mine on a mix of mental/physical illness and environmental factors, so I just wanted to point out that every ED is different and cannot be expected to be depicted properly.
Honestly my biggest hot take in regard to Cassie is that she as a character isn’t “glorifying anorexia”; she’s in fact portrayed as extremely unhealthy and dysfunctional. She’s literally just both anorexic and likable (and the fans are kinda dumb too), like as separate traits. And I’m sorry but making a mentally ill character be someone likable that you want to cheer for isn’t glorifying mental illness; it’s just making a mentally ill character that’s more than a mental illness gijinka.
This exactly. Everyone in my life that has seen Skins UK says I am exactly like her because I have a bubbly personality but I also have disabilities (mental and physical) that make up my identity that I am known for on top of a history of ED (both caused by my mental illnesses and my physical illness meds as well as self-hate and such) and they call me Cassie as more a compliment because I "am just so darn likeable" despite knowing I have a lot of issues I need to get help for (which I have acknowledged thus making these past few years the years of bettering myself) and some past employers saw me as "unstable" and "not a perfect person" and that it wasn't good to befriend me/get too close because it's essentially depicting my bad traits as good and therefore could rub off on people, but in all honesty people know me as simply a likeable person who just so happens to have issues; it's not that I am glorifying my issues (because people know I will talk and I will tell the truth of my hellish existence because the world doesn't like acknowledging the truth so I spread awareness to better help people who suffer like me) it's just that they are a part of me and I just so happen to be a very likeable person that my sister, for example, calls the living embodiment of Cassie, especially because I have the same type of front teeth as her.
I really love Skins. It was very sad and scary show but also beautiful. I think Cassie represents this show really well. She was very flawed and a very tragic character. She does have growth which is seen in Skins Pure, but these are teenage characters in the first generation. Cassie for sure had some severe trauma that was very rarely addressed. And when it was addressed, it was very short-lived. I definitely thought that her allure was in part by the damsel in distress nature. I think she is more damsel in distress than manic pixie although she subverts the damsel eventually. Sid was constantly trying to find his place and be looped into Tony’s and the rest of his friends schemes. He was always on the sidelines. He tried to be Michelle’s hero (later he actually is somewhat able to do that), But then it seemed like he was set up to save Cassie from herself. Like he could be the hero in her story vs becoming a hero for Michelle. But then we get to see that while Sid might have been important to Cassie’s story, he is not her story. She had issues before, during, and after him. She has to be the parent to herself that she needed. The friend to herself. What was interesting is that when she does runaway (granted I haven’t watched Skins in years) so some of this is fuzzy and generalized, when she does runaway it always seems to be to someone else to be rescued. But that just stops working for her. Also something about the setup of Skins is that we have an episode focused on one character and it’s like a snapshot of their life but we only get glimpses in other episodes. It’s difficult to determine what’s happening to them outside of the episode which I think creates this barrier for each character. But ultimately her damsel in distress persona starts fading away.
Just off work, and here u are ✨🔥
it's like fate
I was way to young to have watched skins, but I will say it helped me
DW theres no spoilers here but you've GOTTA watch skins season 7, aka Pure (Cassie's episodes), Fire (Effy's episodes) & Rise (Cook's episodes)! I promise youll like them!! Fire was my favorite (and a lot of peoples) so i recommend watching that one last! Or Pure since you like(d) Cassie
Do a video on skins pure please
Did you make a Series or Video on 13 Reasons Why, bc you said you dont think or blame ppl fir getting Eds bc of a show. And there was a whole thing abt how 13 Reasons Why causes ppl to get depressed/unalive themselves, there was a woman who blamed 13 Reasons why that her Daughter killed herself after watching it. On the other hand lots of ppl didn't do that. I think there are probably already Problems there. Immediately thought abt that. I can't remember but i think you mentioned youre not a big Fan of 13 Reasons Why. I really appreciate the fact that you're in the "you can't put someone's mental health on ppl and he's not responsible for her attempt" bc i think scenarios like this are why there's thi societal thing were ppl think that and say things like that. And im saying that as a depressed person. Youre mental health is not anyone's problem but yours y'know? I mean i know that there are problems like no therape places and availability and a lot of things. But ultimately its you're responsibility to fix it. I remember watching Skins as a Kid. The later Seasons with Cook, Freddy etc. were more my thing but i also dont really remember. I should rewatch it really. I live your Series on the Show
At the end of the day your mental health is yours, however, people can have compassion and at least care for people and try to help and love and be empathetic when possible. The world is a cruel place, even worse when your body is your enemy and you have no way to fight against it. But if you can give them support, then it goes a long way. As someone who is physically and mentally ill myself, I say this coming from a family who let generational trauma continue on for too long and finally got help herself and does her best to help others. Sure I recognize I can only do so much, but just seeing people smile or feel relieved knowing they are not alone is great. Some of my best friendships have been strengthened because of this. just keep that in mind when you, too, are out in the world.
@@oldladytrexarms That was part of my point. Apparently it didn't seem that way, if I need a reminder. (not sure if it was meant that way, just came across as yeah) I'm also physically disabled/handicapped. In a wheelchair + my mental health so I get what you're saying, I never said not be compassionate, help ppl(to your ability ofc, you burning out doesn't help anyone) And like you mentioned, the World is sometimes a cruel place, so we could use compassion(although I would argue the World is a pretty nice place, seeing all the solidarity regarding a certain "issue" right now for example, I think the World would be better if other ppl were in power, better yet we had another System. But that's another conversation) back to topic, I regarding mental/physical health more compassion would help a lot I think, that still doesn't change the Therapy issue, which some ppl need more than compassion from peers, y'know what I mean. Meds and stuff too. Which brings us back to societal changes(I guess the first point too, to have more compassion we should change some conversations). So yeah at the end of the Day, it is your problem, no one was gonna look for a Therapist for me, I had to do it myself. BUT I had Help looking for addresses and since I couldn't find a wheelchair accessible Therapist I called my Insurance company who helped me. So yeah I stand by it is your problem (but also a group effort thing, y'know with my example. I mean helping ppl along the way maybe y'know what I mean?) And making others feel bad bc someone can't handle their mental health(you didn't mention that point, I'm just saying) is ofc bad(imo) For example someone staying with you, bc you can't handle them leaving, Or someone leaving and you then doing something. I think that's what happened. That's not Sid's or anyone's fault except the Person's fault who DID it. Ofc you can try but there's only so much you can do. If someone does something like that, they don't need you to cuddle up to them, they need professional help. I mean that's not healthy.
I don’t get why you’re surprised that their actions are not logical and morally correct, the whole point of the show is portraying mentally ill teenagers
im not surprised, just a bit disappointed that her character went so downhill
@@SerenaSkybourne yeah, but that’s what happens to people in real life. the beauty of this show was its realism, the morally wrong decisions, the pain, the “romanticization” of it all is actually pretty common, more than the physical symptoms that may occur in later stages of the disease.
and also, mentally ill people are very often perceived as “annoying” and “weird” by others, like you said. they don’t always receive love and compassion as other film/shows may portray. I feel like it was a fairly accurate portrayal
@@valibaba0605 Exactly this. As someone finally getting help for her mental (And physical) disabilities after several generations of generational trauma left unchecked, I have seen this too much. Even now, my family bickers because everyone else just lets their issues go unchecked. I am trying to get them help but you can only do so much for adults who don't want to help themselves, so now I can only hope that talking to them about the awesome stuff that is happening by helping myself will lead to them wanting to help themselves. Just surprised that this person was shocked that mentally ill kids acted... mentally ill...
@@valibaba0605boohoo hoo cry us a river get over yourself she has no malintent if you are triggered that’s your responsibility to deal with.
Would love a deep dive on Cathy.... Whoever she is 😂
She’s intriguing right, there’s just something about her
More videos on "Skins" please
Love your channel
💖
I think Cassie and Sid were with each other because of loneliness, dependency and romanticism. Sid doesn't have a mind of his own and lacks a backbone; Cassie romanctized Sid and stayed with him because everyone else was busy doing their own thing (her dad, Michelle, Tony, etc). Hannah Murray (Cassie's actress) thinks Sid and Cassie weren't good for each other.
Something I like about Cassie. Because she always speaks in the same fake happy tone of voice, you have to actually listen to WHAT she says instead of how she says it.
It's easy to be swayed by how someone sounds rather than the content of what they're saying. For example, someone who sounds really confident. But if you put your listening ears on, they're actually talking total bullshit. When Cassie says things like, "I didn't eat for 3 days so I could be lovely", you should be incredibly alarmed.
Not think, "Oh wow! She sounds so happy."
Do Cook next! Plz and then Rich!
I love Cassie sm
I've been going back and forth wondering why their hasn't been more popular thorough feminist and sociological / media critique of Skins UK. And now I'm like ya, duh, anyone with any sense is going to age restrict the commentary. But the show itself isn't restricted, and there are so many socio-politically conservative wasp critiques of skins UK that are relatively prominent. politics.
In my mind a key point to understand about this show is that there was not a single woman in the producer list, and it was co-created written/directed by a father son duo who are now the age of boomers and gen x.
One takes for granted that this is just misogynistic men, and the patriarchal imaginaries about social problems speaking through the female characters in the show. It's edgelord good ole boys getting high and writing a script trying to sound deep.
That's the real politics I'm assuming.
And I can't find any reason to go beyond season 1 to get the jist of the value of this show. The tropes repeat themselves and gets lazier beyond that, and presents a whole lot of other things to problematize.
Pearl Anderson's account (actor of Michelle )of her experience in a 2022 podcast gives the sense that a lot of these explanations by the show are something of a retrospective pre-text. But, idk.
There's a lot to talk about on Skins UK
Great vid
I almost choked when you said Anne Hathaway is the most beautiful woman on the planet 😂
I love Skins too but i don't like Cassie. i just think she's kinda full of herself. To be honest Sid was better with Michelle, i mean even though they were both cheating, at least they got along together perfectly. I also can't believe Michelle was dumb enough to stay with Tony despite his manipulative behaviour. Cassie was a bit of a bitch anyway, expecting everyone to drop everything for her.
Don;t watch Skins Pure, its pretty boring and even though Cassie is over her struggles and not seeing Sid anymore (he barely gets a mention). She just hooks up with a couple of guys (one of them played by the Years and Years singer). she also has a bit of family drama but at least her dad acknowledges her, nut only cause of his own problems
I'd love to see you do some videos on Gen 2 as it was by far the best. However some of the characters were in a relationship with the wrong characters, but more on that when you get there
All in all, Skins is great show and was sad it ended but at least in the final season (Redux) we got to catch up with a few of the characters. (they only did Cassie from gen 1 though, Effy was gen 2 as thats when she was a main character)
Oh wow
I just wanted to stop by here and say that anorexia is not contagious. You cannot get anorexia by looking at someone who has it or someone who is thin, any more than you can get obese by looking at someone who is obese. It is a serious mental health condition and you have to be born with it and then having major environmental trigger. You can't have just the environmental triggers. If it were that easy to get anorexia don't you think we would all have it? Even if you really want to get anorexia you cannot get it. Your body will physically force you to eat. It's like trying to stay up for days at a time. If you do not have a disorder you cannot force yourself to stay awake that long. Your body will force you to sleep just like your body will force you to eat. I don't know why there seems to be this double standard with anorexia and obesity I don't think people are doing it on purpose. I think it's just out of ignorance and their hearts are in the right places. But you can have anorexia without thinking you are fat. There are quite a few such as myself, where it has nothing to do with what you look, like such as autism OCD and anxiety. All of those can be a reason for anorexia as well. Where it's about the texture of food or knowing how gross food production is and a fear I've contamination or germs, or just having such severe anxiety you lose your appetite completely. The same thing with depression. Anorexia doesn't look like one thing. So as much as I believe you guys think you're doing the right thing by not wanting to quote glorify anorexia, it truly doesn't help or make a difference. And personally I feel like if someone has a mental illness and they want to make beautiful art of it I don't think they should be shamed for that. It just seems like social shaming has become okay. I mean do any of you know for sure the writers of the show didn't suffer from an eating disorder as well? Ayat just wanted to throw out another perspective as someone with anorexia. It's honestly really tiring to be constantly talde I'm ruining young girls lives by just being alive and going about my day because I have anorexia. What am I supposed to do just lock myself away in my house? Don't ever wear fashionable clothes or put on makeup so I can feel pretty because God forbid someone else might think I'm pretty too and that might make them envious and give them an eating disorder. Im not saying that's what she's advocating for in this video or anything like that. But this mindset produces people who do harass and attack those with anorexia That's really not how it works guys.
With the greatest of care, I need people who read this, and you, to know the body does ~not~ make you eat when hungry. Quoting a society who helps people with eating disorders, they says “Many people struggling with anorexia no longer feel hunger or fullness since they are disconnected from their bodies and physical needs. Therefore, they don’t need to learn how to ignore feeling hungry, as the sensation is foreign to them.”
As someone who has struggled with anorexia their entire life, respectfully you are wrong about most of your points. No its not contagious but yes you can force yourself into an eating disorder. And you can influence others into having one. It's not that cut and dry
@@Dryadfolkyeah I read that too. Agreed. It’s control also. I was mostly trying to counter the OP’s point on hunger
@@DollfaceLizkahthank you for saying this truth with such care.
OCD and many others you listed above stem from trauma/external factors AND preexisting chemistry. Otherwise, programs for addiction and mental health would be irrelevant. Patterned behavior is powerful, influence is powerful, depictions of these experiences (flawed) are important and don’t always demonize those suffering, it helps people get help.
love your skins commenntary serie
Cassie from
💝💝💝💝