Review: What Made Maddy Run

I finished this book last week. What Made Maddy Run is written by Kate Fagan, who, as her website bio lays out, "is a columnist and feature writer for espnW, ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine. She is also a regular panelist on ESPN's Around the Horn and can also be seen on Outside the Lines. Previously, Fagan spent three seasons covering the 76ers for the Philadelphia Inquirer." In addition, she was also a college athlete, as was Maddy Holleran, which I believe probably had a lot to do with how she wrote this story.

This book, in a nutshell, goes like this: Madison Holleran was the "all-American girl." Beautiful, smart, athletic, and funny. She had great middle class parents, great close friends and an enviable life. Maybe she had some underlying issues that could have been further addressed prior to college, but running cross country for Penn and her use of Instagram are mainly why she ended up committing suicide. It reads as if there simply wasn't a whole lot more that could have been done to help save her, because her use of Instagram had made her feel that life was so superficial that she couldn't truly connect to people any longer.

It was heartbreaking to read about Maddy, and I felt for her, but I just did not like this book. I think that the author took what had proven to be a successful article for herself (she mentions in the book being so pleased with the response of the article that she didn't quit refreshing her Twitter feed, looking for more kudos, for months) and tried to turn it into a book, without doing much more research. 

As shown with this NPR article, the author again only talked about the pressure put on student athletes and the use of Instagram while promoting the book in the media. And so, that's what was focused on, as shown again here. I feel like the focus on sports and Instagram seems to be aimed at scaring the bejesus out of parents and giving them easy things to place blame on. I'm sorry, but I just don't believe what afflicted Maddy was brought on so simply.

The book repeatedly mentions examples of Maddy's obviously drastic anxiety and perfectionism issues, and even names them as such, yet never much touches on them above blaming sports and IG. Instead, the author mentions repeatedly that she also was once a college athlete who had wished to quit her college team. In fact, the book mentions her own life so much I would say at least a quarter of it is about the author. She seems so stuck on the college sports aspect of things she refuses to see much else, other than Instagram, of course. She mentions Instagram so much I started rolling my eyes every time I saw it mentioned again.

There were a lot of signs of Maddy's anxiety issues manifesting in unhealthy ways, and it is pretty well-known that unchecked anxiety can lead to depression.  These include that she was controlling everything she ate, to the point that people were becoming concerned and talking about it and her weight loss, she often liked to drink to excess, she was extremely hard on herself, especially regarding getting perfect grades, and that she was too scared to learn how to drive and get a driver's license. But each time, the author kind of writes it off with a "maybe this meant more than people saw, but who knows" type attitude. 

Women have been disproportionately burdened with anxiety disorders, and they have shown they can manifest in all kinds of ways. Again, having to be the best at everything is one. I think that blaming Instagram for Maddy's perfectionism issues is like blaming one single straw for breaking the camel's back. As we have been learning in class, the dominant ideals that are imposed on women in our society are harmful, difficult to attain, and have been being put in place for a lot longer than Instagram has been around. And that isn't even touching genetic predispositions to mental illness. 

What happened to Madison Holleran was a shame, but in my opinion, this book really falls flat. I feel like if we are being honest with ourselves, we should all see that Madison very likely could have had issues even without track and Instagram, they would have just manifested elsewhere. It's a problem with society, in the messages we promote, and in our lack of mental health resources, and not a problem that should just be scapegoated onto competitive athleticism and filtered photos. 

If it hadn't been sports, it may have been debate team. Had it not been Instagram, it may have been her home décor and lawn (not age appropriate, I know, but hopefully you catch my point). In short, her issues likely still would have existed in her life. It was something ingrained in her that made her obsessed with striving to be the best, to the point it drove her over the edge. I feel like the author focused on some of the small points so much, she missed the big picture.