Depression is not sexually stimulating, yet there exist multiple cultural representations of deeply unhappy women, who reach the height of their beauty when suicidal, or dead. From Ophelia, damsels in distress and swooning Victorian hysterics, ending with contemporary fashion, female suffering is glamourized. My paper answers the question why female depression is presented as sexy by culture. I seek the explanation in gender stereotypes as well as the tradition of ‘heroic melancholia’.