The 1986 movie “Betty Blue” turned men on to a concept of women with mental illness as impossibly chic, French and sexually insatiable. Clay “sure has a thing for complicated girls,” one character on the show says. But the conceit falls apart when you replace mental illness with something physical. “You sure have a thing for girls with respiratory problems” doesn’t work. At least Lena Dunham’s character Hannah Horvath, suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder on “Girls,” presented mental illness in an unvarnished way (remember the Q-tip scene?).

Source: New York Times July 28, 2018 10:00 UTC