I’m fine: Gender and modest displays of mental distress

In this article I will provide examples of intermedial representations of emotions and feelings that consists ofimages and texts appearing in the same visual field in a meme, that has here has been called the I'm-fine meme . I will argue that this meme can be understood as a sign in a discourse that articulates mental distress in a way that limits the possible ways in which girls and young women can express their experiences of bad feelings. The purpose of this study is to examine examples of gendered articulations of mental distress in a special meme, that I name the ‘I'm-fine meme’. It is a meme spread through different internet platforms that combines the text ‘I'm fine’ with an image or images and sometimes also additional texts. It is usually published in an image format (in this case often as jpg/jpeg or png). The I’m-fine meme is characterised by juxtaposing the positive message with contradictive representations of mental distress in textual or image forms. As all internet memes it is characterised by evolving and transforming through mutations or remixes during as it spreads over the internet (Knobel & Lankshear 2005:13–14). In focus are intermedial memes that combine text content with image content. The questions I am asking are as follows: What kinds of articulations of mental distress are found in the I’m-fine meme? Do these articulations follow a genderedbinarism? If so, which attributes of mental distress are connected to gendered coded bodies?