Winona Ryder said she is tired of people shaming women for being vulnerable or sensitive. The "Stranger Things" actress talked about people's tendency to "pathologize female emotions," especially as it relates to her character in the new Netflix supernatural drama series.
In an interview with New York Magazine, Ryder, who plays a frantic single mother whose young son mysteriously disappeared, talked about her "Stranger Things" role and her past anxiety and depression. It can be recalled that the 44-year-old actress had opened up about her feelings of depression and loneliness in a 1999 exclusive with Diane Sawyer.
Ryder said that she feels a tremendous compassion for her character, Joyce Byers. Byers, a hardworking store clerk who has two boys and a deadbeat ex, is unraveling from anxiety, frustration, and grief.
The actress related that people have a perception of her as being "supersensitive and fragile," and even if she admits that as being true, she said she does not think of it as a bad thing. "Sensitive" is often used as a bad word and as euphemism for crazy or for weak, she noted.
She also shared that in the show, someone described her character as having anxiety problems in the past, and many people have picked up on that, calling Joyce "crazy." However, Ryder expressed that she is not pleased about this. "She is struggling. Two kids with a deadbeat dad and working her ass off, who wouldn't be anxious?" she said.
According to NY Mag, Ryder tried to remove the stigma that culture places on otherwise common emotional experiences by talking about them, but the actress only ended up stigmatizing herself more. Ryder recalled doing her interview with Sawyer where she talked about her anxiety and her depression, and then realizing that it was just impossible to change how people brand it as "crazy."
Ryder pointed out that feeling confused or conflicted is an emotion that comes with being alive and it is not a sickness. Emotional intensity and contradiction, she said, are not signs of immaturity or instability, but are the results of an intelligent mature adult's sophisticated processing.
Watch Ryder in this trailer of "Stranger Things:"