Overshare, Don't Care

Social media is helping to smash taboos as we share more about our lives than ever before. But TMI doesn’t always translate IRL. Meg Mason asks, when is enough enough?

- Meg Mason

Lena Dunham has endometriosis, once bled for almost a month and recently opted to have a hysterectomy. She also has OCD and couldn’t resist checking out her sister’s vagina as a child. Lady Gaga has battled anorexia and bulimia since her teens and Demi Lovato has bipolar disorder. Shailene Woodley regularly suns her vagina, Khloé Kardashian has a “puffy pussy” and Adele had bowel issues before going on stage once. But you already knew all that. And not because seedy tabloid journalists hacked phones, stole medical records or paid off exes to acquire the intimate information. All of the women shared these details voluntarily, in magazines and in memoirs, on Instagram and their own reality shows, as jaunty asides while promoting work.

We live in a culture of confession. Radical honesty has become our highest social virtue and authenticity our end goal, achieved through total transparency. “There’s no such thing as oversharing,” declared columnist Caitlin Moran, who’s written extensively about her abortion and discovering masturbation at a young age. “I’ve never seen a taboo that I didn’t want to run into the middle of and smash up with a wooden spoon... But in order to write about taboos, you have to talk about the things you’ve done, be very honest and make yourself very vulnerable. Anytime anybody says, ‘Okay, you’ve shared and that makes it easier for me to be me,’ I feel I can share more.”