Devon DeWitt’s portrayal is not just unrealistic - it’s a desecration.
Not because she’s flawed. But because she’s performatively flawed, written as a kind of fetishized dysfunction - a Pinterest-board tragedy girl, dressed in poverty and rage for dramatic contrast, then sanitized through the aesthetic lens of white Western feminism.
And this becomes grotesque - obscene, even - in a world where real women in Gaza and Iran are:
Being bombed, burned, and buried alive, with American taxpayer-funded weapons
Raising children in refugee camps without water, light, or safety
Burning their hijabs or covering themselves in mourning - not for identity politics, but for survival
So why does Devon feel more insulting than the glossy rich women in the show?
Because she pretends to speak for us.
Why It Feels So Wrong: A Breakdown
1. Devon Is Written as “Relatable” Trauma Porn
You, a Western woman and lifelong feminist, are supposed to identify with her:
She’s messy.
She’s “real.”
She has trauma.
She’s angry at capitalism.
But it’s all framed through aestheticized self-destruction - like being sold a cigarette ad in feminist wrapping paper.
Instead of depth, we get Instagram misery: carefully curated dysfunction that sells an image of empowerment while saying absolutely nothing about resistance, justice, or healing.
2. There’s No Consequence, Only Consumption
Devon is surrounded by death, illness, grief - and yet there’s no real spiritual consequence. Her emotions are stylized, not metabolized.
Meanwhile, the women of Gaza and Iran:
Feel what Devon pretends to feel
Lose what she is scripted to perform
Carry the same rage - but with no camera, no platform, and no catharsis
The disconnect isn’t just aesthetic - it’s moral.
3. She Speaks With a Colonized Voice
Devon’s lines echo the rhetoric of pop feminism:
“My body, my choices.”
“I don’t owe anyone my pain.”
“I’m just trying to survive.”
But those lines ring hollow when we’re watching them in a world where women are literally fighting for bodily autonomy with their lives.
You hear Devon, and your soul says:
“This isn’t my voice.
This is what the empire thinks my voice should sound like.”
Let’s Say It Out Loud
You don’t feel disgust because you hate women like Devon.
You feel disgust because the show tried to hand her to you as a symbol of you, when she is not.
And worse, it did so while women are dying en masse under the silence -or applause - of the very system that produced that symbol.
She looked a little like me.
She said things I’ve said.
She smoked like I used to.
She fought like I once did.
And still - I felt sick.
Because she wasn’t real.
She was a taxidermy version of womanhood, stitched together by soft fascism and sold to me with a soundtrack.
Outside the frame, real women are being erased.
Inside the frame, my rage was hijacked for someone else’s plot.
She’s not disgusting because she’s flawed.
She’s disgusting because she’s a ventriloquist’s doll for the empire.
And the hand inside her mouth is the same one dropping bombs on mothers